A Social Information Processing Model of Social Competence in Children

History suggests that the most rapid and widespread advances in our knowledge of basic scientific processes often occur in pursuit of the solution to a practical and applied problem. The applied problem guiding the field of research to be described in this chapter is a simple one: How can aggressive children be taught to adopt nonaggressive behavioral patterns in their interactions with peers? In pursuing the solution to this problem I have frequently borrowed ideas from the theories of cognitive, social, and developmental psychology. At the same time, one outcome of this research program may well be a contribution to those theories. The interplay between the basic and the applied is an aspect of this research which seems to have a favorable impact on both theory and practice.