ABSTRACT
The current research used longitudinal data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 1104) to examine the developmental cascades of hostile attribution bias, aggressive behavior, and peer victimization in preadolescence. With the use of autoregressive latent trajectory model, this study disaggregated the between- and within-person effects. Between-person effects confirmed that hostile attribution bias, aggressive behavior, and peer victimization were positively associated with each other. Within-person effects showed that an increase from one’s own typical growth trajectory of hostile attribution bias was predictive of a subsequent decrease from the individual’s own trajectory of aggressive behavior; an increase from one’s own typical growth trajectory of aggressive behavior was predictive of a subsequent decrease from the individual’s own trajectory of peer victimization; an increase from one’s own typical growth trajectory of peer victimization was predictive of a subsequent increase from the individual’s own trajectory of hostile attribution bias. Implications for developmental cascade models, progressions, and preventive interventions were discussed.