Verbal victimization (W), consisting of verbal threats and teasing, is a common problem among adolescents. How youth choose to respond to VV situations is guided by their social information-processing (SIP) skills. The SIP model describes how youth organize and decide to respond to social cues. According to this model, responses arise after a series of mental steps that include encoding and interpreting cues, selecting goals, accessing and constructing responses, and deciding on a response. Youth's SIP patterns are associated with individual differences in adjustment. Maladjustment (i.e. aggressive or anxious behavior) is associated with biased SIP patterns. Biased processing, characterized by a reliance on internal structured knowledge (schemas) and heuristics to the exclusion of situational cues from the immediate social context, can impact a variety of other internal factors (i.e. attribution style, self-efficacy), and thus can affect any SIP step. However, not all youth exhibit biased SIP patterns. Understanding how 4 subgroups of youth (well-adjusted, neglected, passive-victims, aggressive-victims) process social stimuli and enact responses to VV has important implications for interventions promoting positive youth development. This project uses ATSS, a think aloud approach that allows participants to report their cognitions related to a situation as they occur, to examine how SIP pattern differences among these four groups influence behavioral responses to W situations, and to identify the range of responses to W enacted by youth.
The aims of this project will be achieved through the recruitment of 100 middle school students as part of an ongoing CDC-funded study to participate in ATSS assessments on VV situations after completing paper and pencil measures of adjustment.
Results of this project will help identify how well-adjusted youth process social stimuli and respond to a common adolescent problem, VV. This knowledge will inform the development of interventions that will increase the likelihood that students will enact pro-social responses to problems (i.e. VV), and decrease the likelihood that they will enact aggressive or ineffective responses. Thus, the goals of this project are consistent with the current focus within the field of prevention science on the promotion of positive youth development.
