Les interactions agressives chez l'enfant. Etude par observation directe dans différents groupes de vie.

摘要

The authors intended to analyze aggressive behaviors observable in kindergarden and primary school grades. Without any experimental intervention, « natural » behaviors have been observed, such as they spontaneously appear and develop between children or between children and adults. At a first stage two types of difficulties had to be faced. The theoretical issue was to define which behaviors were to be considered as being agressive, and here one sees the necessity of taking into consideration the intentionality of the act as well as its interpretation by the protagonists. The technical difficulty is that of the observer's presence in the classroom and of the contingency of observations. The choice was made to focus analysis on aggressive interactions considered as communication facts. A chart was first established, listing 66 modalities of aggressive interactions. It was then used to code 302 hours of observation covering the 3-9 age group: three kindegarden grades, two primary school grades and a special class for retarded children. The quantitative analyses made possible by this method show that as children grow the volume of aggressive interactions decreases. But also there is a change in their nature: a progressive symbolization and increasing complexity of coding-decoding processes in the aggressive messages. Such an evolution demonstrates the strong influence of social frames which tend to reduce aggressive acts and transpose them symbolically. The observations made in the special class have been more particula- ry analyzed to characterize each child's status and role in the general network of aggressive interactions within the group.