Participants

     Twenty-six second grade boys attending public school in a rural area of Northeastern Pennsylvania will be selected for this study. Participants will range in age form 7.0-8.0 years of age. The boys will have had displayed frequent aggressive episodes, as measured by t-scores of at least 66 on both the Asocial and Conduct Problem scales from the Conner’s Teacher Rating Scale. T-scores of 66 and higher indicate that the aggression level ranges from "much above average" to "very much above average". A signed parental consent form, as well as certain demographic information, will be required of all participants.

Materials

     The Conners’ Teacher Rating Scale (1990), a 6-scale inventory, will be used to rate the frequency and severity of the boys’ aggressive displays. The CTRS is a 39-item survey that requires the rater to respond one of four ways (not at all, just a little, pretty much, very much) to statements regarding the frequency of the behavior in question. Teachers in the current study will be asked to retrospectively rate behavior displayed over the past week. Responses are coded as 0, 1, 2, and 3. The six scales included on the CTRS are Hyperactivity, Conduct Problem, Emotional Overindulgent, Anxious-Passive, Asocial, and Daydream-Attention Problem.

Procedure

     The CTRS scores from the will be collected blindly from teachers on all of the students three weeks prior to the intervention. This information will be used not only to select those students who qualify, but also to establish a base line. Once selected, participants will be randomly assigned into one of two groups. The Experimental group will be exposed to the 13 week PBS video series, "Adventures from the Book of Virtues"; a program designed to promote profound moral development. The control group will simultaneously be exposed to the PBS animated series "The Magic School Bus", a purely academic production.

     Intervention strategies will be extended over a 7-week time span. Both groups will undergo 26 sessions; 13 video periods and 13 discussion periods. There will be four sessions per week, alternating video and discussion periods per session. The program facilitators will be two school psychologists who will alternate between the experimental and control groups, supervising one video presentation in addition to the instruction of the appropriate discussion period for that video per group every week. All sessions will be conducted Monday through Thursday morning from 9:00 to 9:35. Post-treatment teacher ratings will be collected immediately following the intervention to observe possible changes in behavior, and then 3 weeks following the completion of the intervention.