| Sibling aggression is a common referral for clinical psychologists, yet little is known about best practices regarding its treatment. Standard treatments for sibling aggression presume a motivational deficit, and therefore, aim to restructure the environmental contingencies (e.g., timeout or token economies) to enhance sibling motivation to inhibit aggression. However, a subset of aggressive children may be insensitive to motivational treatment strategies. Treatment failure for these children may be partially explained by a limited set of sibling problem-solving abilities. Specifically, some children may resort to aggressive reactions to routine sibling conflict since they lack skillful alternatives. In contrast to motivational approaches, skill-building treatments focus on expanding the child’s repertoire of alternative, pro-social reactions to sibling conflict. The current project was designed to evaluate an uncontrolled clinical trial of a new skill building approach to decrease sibling aggression, referred to as the SCRST-FV (Sibling Conflict Resolution Skill Training – Family Version). Following a two-week baseline measurement, five families with aggressive, skill-deficit siblings completed the five-week SCRST-FV protocol. Baseline measures included evaluations of sibling skills to standardized sibling conflicts presented in an extended, interaction role-play test (i.e., The Sibling Conflict Resolution Scale-III or SCRS-III), as well as daily counts of aggressive interactions recorded by parents on a Behavior Record Card in the home. Treatment consisted of five clinic sessions targeting common sibling conflicts and skillful alternatives to physical fighting. Siblings role-played the targeted skills and parents practiced detecting conflicts, reinforcing skills, and prompting skill use when needed. Parents reinforced skills and helped the children when conflicts were not adequately resolved at home. Upon completion of the five-week intervention, all baseline measures were repeated. As predicted, siblings significantly enhanced their repertoire of social skills from pre- to-post intervention as measured by the SCRS-III, replicating and extending prior research. Siblings also displayed significant decreases in the frequency of aggression from pre- to-post intervention, suggesting that a skill building approach may be a sufficient treatment. Several methodological limitations, however, limit the replicability and generalization of outcomes. |