RESEARCH_FILE
Kenneth A. Dodge
Duke University
Known for:Foundational research on hostile attribution bias in children — showing that early experiences of maltreatment shape children's processing of ambiguous social cues as hostile, laying groundwork for later RS theory
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THE THOUGHT
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YOUR RECORDED RESPONSE
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ONE PRIVATE MOVE
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Key findings
- 1980
Dodge demonstrated that children who had experienced physical abuse were significantly more likely than non-abused peers to attribute hostile intent to others in ambiguous peer interaction scenarios — establishing that early relational trauma creates systematic biases in the processing of social cues. Social cognition and children's aggressive behavior ↗