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This dissertation conceptualized and evaluated the moderating effect of the treatment group on treatment responsiveness and recidivism among a sample of drug-involved offenders who received in-prison substance abuse treatment. Few studies of drug treatment simultaneously consider individual level variables and the context of group treatment. Those that have typically operationalize the treatment context with organizational indicators such as attributes of the staff, staff perceptions of the program, therapeutic orientation, and program accreditation. In contrast, the current work operationalized context from the perspective of the participant using as indicators client-based measures of treatment progress and satisfaction. The study expands existing theoretical models and extends what is known about treatment effectiveness by considering how the social group - the collection of individuals that constitute the prison unit in which the inmates received their 12 months of substance abuse treatment - may or may not moderate the influence of psychosocial functioning and treatment process variables and later outcomes. Such moderating impacts have theoretical implications for understanding the connections between treatment context, individual differences, and outcomes. Moderating impacts also have implications for the ways practitioners monitor treatment group climate and processes, thereby potentially improving service delivery. Finally, the present study contributes to the treatment literature by examining group influences of treatment on measures of recidivism - reincarceration and rearrest - that are of particular interest to practitioners and policymakers. The research was guided by three central questions: 1) Do significant differences on recidivism exist between treatment groups? 2) Does the treatment group moderate the impacts of psychosocial and treatment process variables on recidivism? 3) Does treatment modality have an effect on recidivism? To examine these questions, data from an evaluation of the treatment programs at the State Correctional Institution (SCI) at Chester, PA, were used (Welsh, 2006). The sample consisted of 618 adult male offenders who were randomly assigned to either the therapeutic community (TC) or the less-intensive group counseling treatment modality, each of which was 12 months in duration. A multilevel framework was applied to the data, as the offenders (level-1) were nested within 12 treatment units (level-2) in a single prison. The level-2 grouping was the prison unit where the offenders were housed and where they participated in the 12 months of treatment, and these units can be considered self-contained treatment programs. The predictors of primary importance were treatment responsiveness measures that were collected in the last month of the treatment experience. These included second-order factor analysis scores of measures of depression, anxiety, hostility, therapeutic engagement, trust in the treatment group, and peer support among others. Each was theoretically and empirically related to group functioning and later outcomes. Controls for other factors related to reoffending included time at risk, prior substance abuse and criminal history, age and race/ethnicity of the offender. These variables were all entered at level-1. A single level-2 variable was entered to examine and control for the effect of the type of treatment received (TC or group counseling). The data were analyzed using hierarchical generalized linear modeling (HGLM). This was the appropriate method because the data were nested and the outcomes were the binary measures of reincarceration and rearrest. Notably, multilevel models revealed significant variation on the reincarceration outcome across treatment units (level-2), controlling for treatment modality. This supported the first hypothesis that treatment effects could be attributed to something other than individual level variables or type of treatment received. A similar significant finding across treatment units (level-2), however, was not detected for the rearrest variable. Further, this method allowed for the examination of treatment group impacts on the individual psychosocial functioning and treatment process measures controlling for the type of treatment received. The second hypothesis stated that the treatment group would differentially affect the impact of these variables on recidivism. To reduce the number of individual-level predictors, the various subscales were entered into a second order principal components factor analysis. Three factors emerged: negative affect, positive attitude, and treatment satisfaction. Controlling for the composition of the group, the negative affect factor had a significant, positive direct effect on reincarceration. When the slopes of the three factors were allowed to vary, the model with treatment satisfaction and positive attitude as random effects fit the model best, as the treatment group significantly affected the impact these variables had on reincarceration. With regard to the third research question, in no analyses conducted did the treatment modality have a significant effect on the outcome. The third hypothesis that stated TC participants would have lower rates of reincarceration and rearrest, therefore, was not supported. This was a surprising result, as TCs have been found to be effective at reducing recidivism in previous research. In none of the existing studies, however, did the comparison group receive professional treatment services as the group counseling participants at SCI-Chester received. Several findings have implications for treatment research and policy. First, reincarceration significantly varied across the treatment units, even when controlling for the treatment modality and time at risk in the community. Second, the analysis of level-2 group impacts on individual level variables and recidivism were new contributions to the research in this area. These findings have implications for both theory (macro-to-micro theoretical effects of substance abuse treatment) and treatment delivery to those in prison. This research supported the first and second hypotheses that the group-level dimensions of prison-based substance abuse treatment have not been adequately considered in prior studies. This study takes an important first step in the direction of a more complete view of treatment experiences and outcomes that considers individuals nested within treatment groups. / Criminal Justice

Sibling aggression is one of the most frequently occurring forms of aggression within the family and has been associated with socioemotional problems. Guided by the cultural context perspective and family systems theory, a conceptual model depicting the direct and indirect effects of cultural orientation values, traditional gender role attitudes, parental differential treatment, and parent-child conflict on sibling aggression and psychosocial functioning (i.e., psychological distress and interpersonal difficulties) was developed. It was hypothesized that perceptions of cultural values and gender role attitudes endorsed by primary caregivers would be associated with family dynamics factors (i.e., parental differential treatment and parent-child conflict) that contributed to sibling aggression and resulting impaired psychosocial functioning. A total of 272 participants completed the online questionnaire that measured the variables of interest. Structural equation modeling (SEM) methods were used to analyze the data. Findings of the final models lent clear support to the indirect effects of cultural values and gender role attitudes on sibling aggression and resulting psychosocial functioning through differential treatment and parent-child conflict although the results also yielded some unexpected nuances regarding the indirect effect paths. Specifically, lower levels of independent cultural values contributed to greater levels of sibling aggression and impaired psychosocial functioning through more differential treatment and parent-child conflict, while higher levels of traditional gender role attitudes contributed to the outcome variables only through differential treatment. Findings are discussed from the cultural context and family systems framework. Limitations, future directions, and clinical implications are also discussed.

No / Past research tells us that individuals can infer information about a target’s emotional state and intentions from their facial expressions (Frith & Frith, 2012), a process known as mentalising. This extends to inferring the events that caused the facial reaction (e.g. Pillai, Sheppard, & Mitchell, 2012; Pillai et al., 2014), an ability known as retrodictive mindreading. Here, we enter new territory by investigating whether or not people (perceivers) can guess a target’s social context by observing their response to stimuli. In Experiment 1, perceivers viewed targets’ responses and were able to determine whether these targets were alone or observed by another person. In Experiment 2, another group of perceivers, without any knowledge of the social context or what the targets were watching, judged whether targets were hiding or exaggerating their facial expressions; and their judgments discriminated between conditions in which targets were observed and alone. Experiment 3 established that another group of perceivers’ judgments of social context were associated with estimations of target expressivity to some degree. In Experiments 1 and 2, the eye movements of perceivers also varied between conditions in which targets were observed and alone. Perceivers were thus able to infer a target’s social context from their visible response. The results demonstrate an ability to use other minds as a window onto a social context that could not be seen directly.

This study was designed to assess follower prototypes as dynamic structures. Connectionist theory is a good framework to understand the process by which followership perceptions are altered by contextual factors. Organizational culture, change in immediate leader and follower prototypes were measured in an applied setting across time to assess the dynamism of the cognitive networks of implicit followership theories. Change in culture and immediate leader was measured at three time points, across six months, during the acquisition of one organization by a second. Change scores were created by computing difference scores from surveys completed at the first time point to the second time point, three months later, to the third and final time point, three months later. There were no significant effects of change in culture on reported follower networks. There was, however, a significant effect of leader change at time points two and three when regressed on individual's follower networks. The overall findings of this study suggest that IFT's like leadership prototypes remain fairly stable across time (Epitropaki, 2004), but are subject to organizational change. / Master of Science

Research on the autonomic specificity of emotion has spanned several decades. Even though considerable evidence exists for supporting autonomic specificity for discrete emotion states (Kreibig, 2010), there is still an active debate, and conflicting explanations, for these findings (Quigley and Barrett, 2014). There have been several studies employing multivariate pattern classification analytic techniques and calls for those types of studies are still prevalent (Kragel and LaBar, 2014). Although many studies have explored the autonomic specificity of emotions, few have explored what effects the induction methods, themselves, have had in inducing the autonomic change. Autonomic specificity of induction methods might be a meaningful, and confounding, phenomenon in this literature. Based on this unknown variable, the current experiment was designed to see if methods for emotion elicitation could be meaningfully captured by these same pattern classification techniques. This was accomplished using three separate emotion-elicitation methods to elicit five separate emotions. A sample of 64 college-aged students watched film clips, read imagery scripts, and recalled personal memories for five discrete emotions. Using discriminant analysis, the evidence from the current study lent less support for autonomic specificity of emotion than past experiments, and lends some support for providing future exploration into autonomic change that is related to methods for induction. Potential confounds and task fatigue effects are discussed. / Ph. D.