Children’s social information processing (SIP) encompasses cognitive and behavioral sequence that underlies social responses. SIP in peer interactions is well studied. Less is known about SIP in mother-child interchanges. Youth who show one SIP pattern a hostile attribution of intent (HAI) bias—in peer interactions consistently exhibit externalizing symptoms. This relationship is less consistently observed for HAI biases toward mothers. I hypothesized that this inconsistent association reflects moderating factors; specifically, engaging in foundational parenting practices (monitoring/supervision, consistent discipline) would weaken the relationship between HAI biases toward mothers and externalizing behaviors. Logistic regression yielded limited support for hypotheses. Consistent discipline predicted externalizing behaviors in some contexts; however, moderator effects were not detected. Isolated parenting practices thus may not buffer against the risk of externalizing behaviors linked to HAI biases toward mothers. Future research might examine how different HAI biases (peer, mother, etc.) related to each other and outcome variables.

The internet has become an important social context in adolescence, and communicating online with friends has become a natural part of everyday life. The present cross-sectional study examined the effects of social cues and popularity on developing adolescent social cognitions in online settings using a sample of 90, 11- to 14-year-old students from British Columbia, Canada. Participants completed self-report cyber-bullying, cyber-victimization, and cyber-aggression motivation measures. Hostile intent attributions were obtained using an instrument containing 8 hypothetical vignettes, where potentially harmful messages were sent to the protagonist, but the sender’s intentions were ambiguous. The results show an increasing cyber-bullying and cyber-victimization trend from early- to mid- adolescence. There was some evidence to suggest that individuals in mid-adolescence were more sensitive to online social cues and popularity. Individuals in mid-adolescence were more likely to engage in cyber-aggressive behavior to obtain a material or social reward. Despite having a small sample size, this study provides a good foundation for further research examining developmental processes that underlie cyberbullying behavior. / Graduate

Peer victimization is characterized by acts of physical, relational, and verbal aggression that can contribute to maladjustment. Youths’ responses to peer victimization are guided by social information-processing (SIP) skills that impact their adjustment. Maladjustment can contribute to biases in SIP. Biased processing occurs when youth rely on existing schemas without attending to cues from the immediate social context. These processing deficits contribute to the enactment of problematic responses that may lead to further maladjustment. However, not all youth exhibit SIP deficits. A recent study identified four adjustment clusters based on differences in aggression, anxiety, depression, social acceptance, and victimization within a predominantly African American sample of adolescents (Sullivan & Farrell, 2008). These clusters included aggressive-victims, passive-victims, neglected youth, and well-adjusted youth. Data suggest that cluster membership influences SIP and responses to peer victimization. This study used latent profile analysis (LPA) and the Articulated Thoughts in Simulated Situations (ATSS) paradigm, a think-aloud approach to cognitive assessment, to examine differences in SIP between well-adjusted youth and subgroups of maladjusted youth in response to simulated peer victimization situations. Participants included a primarily African American sample of 523 sixth grade students who completed a series of self-report measures of adjustment. LPA identified a four-class solution that included: Aggressive-victims, Aggressors, Passive-victims, and Well-adjusted youth. This model closely approximated the clusters previously identified. However, the current solution includes a purely aggressive group whereas the prior solution contained a neglected group. A sub-sample of 176 students was then randomly selected to complete ATSS interviews. Logistic regression was used to examine SIP pattern differences across the groups. As hypothesized, aggressors and aggressive-victims were more likely to report intentions to engage in physical aggression compared to well-adjusted youth. In addition, aggressors were more likely to report beliefs that it is ok to fight in response to physical aggression compared to their well-adjusted peers. Further, well-adjusted youth were more likely to report intentions to behave nonviolently compared to their maladjusted peers. However, six of the ten hypotheses were not supported. Additional findings related to gender differences and situation-specific SIP patterns were identified. These findings have important implications for violence prevention interventions.

Beliefs about aggression play a key role in how youth interpret and respond to social situations and are related to aggressive behavior. Adolescents may report beliefs supporting aggression and engage in aggression due to reinforcement within their environment, rather than due to maladaptive social information-processing (SIP) biases. The purpose of this study was to examine adolescents’ patterns of beliefs about aggression and how these patterns relate to SIP. This study used latent class analysis (LCA), the Articulated Thoughts in Simulated Situations paradigm, and a Problem Solving Interview to examine differences in SIP between adolescents with varying patterns of beliefs about aggression. Participants included 435 sixth and seventh grade students (45% male, 63% African American, 22% Caucasian) from two urban schools and a semi-rural school. A LCA of the beliefs about aggression measure identified four classes of adolescents: (a) a Beliefs Against Fighting (Against) class that opposed the use of aggression (21% of the sample); (b) a Fighting is Sometimes Necessary (Sometimes) class that endorsed beliefs that fighting is sometimes inevitable (31%); (c) a Beliefs Supporting Fighting (Support) class that supported aggression across multiple contexts (33%); and (d) a Low Responders class that disagreed with all items (12%). Differences among classes were found on gender and race/ethnicity. As hypothesized, significant differences were found such that the Sometimes and Against classes differed from the Support class in reporting that it is ok to fight in response to non-physical aggression and effectiveness ratings of physical aggression and effective nonviolent responses. The Sometimes class was also less likely than the Support class, but more likely than the Against class to report behavioral intentions for aggression, revenge goals, and aggression as a first response to problem situations. Contrary to the hypotheses, classes did not differ in several areas, including hostile and benign intent attributions and generation of prosocial responses. These differences suggest the need for using prevention approaches that address multiple patterns of beliefs about aggression, such as interventions that improve SIP for adolescents with beliefs supporting aggression and universal prevention programs that address school climate for adolescents with beliefs that fighting is sometimes necessary.

Ample research shows that revenge goals are correlated with maladjustment and retaliation is an important factor driving youth violence. Still, in environments with limited institutionalized interventions revenge might be an indispensable tool to maintain social equilibrium. This qualitative secondary analysis of 50 (30 Boys) revenge scenarios from a larger longitudinal study (N=358 dyads of youth/maternal caregiver) expands existing one-dimensional knowledge of revenge from closed-answer vignettes to the rich real world experience of 10-16 year old youth from an urban community sample. Key findings showed significant qualitative differences in both cognition and emotions of revenge scenarios. Ten distinct patterns emerged and were discussed in relation to the revised model of Social Information Processing (SIP) by Lemerise and Arsenio (2000). Specifically, importance of reputation, retaliation as a public event, confidence in non-violent solutions, parental messages, and the influence of intense emotions were important themes. Gender differences and implications for prevention are discussed.

Crick and Dodge’s SIP theoretical model proposes that children use previously stored memories, past experiences, and formed representations that influence six mechanisms that are in turn used in deciding how to act in social situations (Crick & Dodge, 1994). Research has demonstrated a strong link between social information processing (SIP) and child aggression. Furthermore, SIP has been shown to mediate the relation between several parenting practices and child aggression. Research has also shown a strong relation between interparental conflict and child aggression. The focus of the current study was to determine if SIP serves as a mediator between parental conflict and aggression in children. This study conducted secondary analyses of longitudinal data from the Child Development Project. Participants were children, parents, and teachers across three sites and two cohorts who were recruited as the child participants entered kindergarten. Data were collected across seven waves from child ages 5 through 11. Interparental Conflict was assessed using mother and father reports on the Conflict Tactics Scale and four SIP steps were measured using four paper and pencil measures. Child aggression was assessed by mothers and teachers using the aggression scales on the Child Behavior Checklist and Teacher Report Form, respectively. Longitudinal mediation models following guidelines outlined by McKinnon (2008) were used to test SIP as a mediator between interparental conflict and aggression. Confirmatory Factor Analysis supported the creation of latent variables for SIP and child aggression. A composite score was calculated and used for interparental conflict in the SEM models. SEM revealed that interparental conflict did not predict changes in SIP or changes in child aggression. For the most part, SIP also did not predict concurrent child aggression or changes in child aggression over time. Direct effects of aggression on interparental conflict, indirect effects of aggression on SIP and of SIP on interparental conflict, and total effects in the models were not significant. The data did not support the hypothesis that SIP mediates the relation between parental conflict and child aggression. Study strengths and limitations and future research directions are discussed.

Master of Arts / Department of Communication Studies / Soo-Hye Han / Advancements in technology, particularly the introduction of online social networking sites, have expanded the modes available when handling the death of a loved one. This study examines how individuals use the Facebook profile pages of deceased persons to cope with loss and maintain relationships with them. An extensive content analysis of Facebook profiles of ten deceased individuals was conducted to investigate what the living discuss in their messages to the deceased in the semi-public setting of a Facebook profile page and if this content changes over the course of time. This analysis revealed that messages to the deceased reflect three themes: 1) processing the death, 2) remembering the deceased, and 3) maintaining the relationship. In addition to these dominant themes, the data also indicated that the content of messages shifted over time. Messages that contained the processing of death remained consistent over time, while posts that reflected remembrance of the deceased decreased, and messages that demonstrated relationship maintenance increased with time. This study utilizes the theoretical frameworks of continuing bonds and social information processing to draw implications of these findings. By examining the content written and how messages change over time, this study provides insight into how people cope with loss and maintain relationships with their deceased loved ones in the digital age.

Social learning plays a valuable role in the lives of many animal taxa, sometimes allowing individuals to bypass the costs of personal exploration. The ubiquity of this behaviour may arise from the fact that learning from others is often underpinned by simple learning processes that also enable individuals to learn asocially. Insects have proven to be particularly valuable models for investigating parsimonious hypotheses with regards to social learning processes, due to their small brain sizes and the prevalence of social information use in their life histories. In this thesis, I use social insects to further investigate the mechanisms underlying more complex social learning behaviours and explore the circumstances under which social information use manifests. In the first chapter, I investigate the proximate mechanisms underlying social learning and demonstrate that even seemingly complex social learning behaviours can arise through simple associative learning processes. In Chapter two, I investigate whether bees are more predisposed to learning from conspecific cues and discover that social information is learnt to a greater extent than information originating from non-social sources. In Chapter four, I demonstrate that classical conditioning also underpins learning from evolved social signals in honeybees. Finally, I investigate whether social information is used adaptively by bumblebees: Chapter three demonstrates that joining behaviour in free-flying bees is contingent upon whether flowers are familiar or not, and in Chapter six, I show that when social information is costly to acquire, bees are more likely to rely on social information to make foraging decisions. Taken as a whole, my findings suggest that bees may be specially adapted for receiving social information, but the ability to learn from others arises through general associative learning mechanisms.

Using a multimethod-multimodal approach, this study compared the contributions of executive function (EF) abilities (Go No-Go, Visual Search, 2-Back task, and Task Switching) to narrative comprehension tasks (False Belief, Strange Stories, Self-Reported Theory of Mind Inventory [TOMI-SR]) and a narrative production task (interpersonal decentering) in a sample of young adults. Separate regression models were conducted for each theory of mind (ToM) measure with EF measures as predictor variables and empirically selected demographic variables controlled. As expected, in this college student sample (N = 110), False Belief demonstrated a ceiling effect and was not associated with any EF ability. Task Switching and 2-Back accounted for significant variance in Strange Stories. No EF task significantly predicted performance on TOMI-SR or interpersonal decentering. Both story comprehension tasks (False Belief and Strange Stories) were significantly associated, but these tasks were not correlated with either self-reported ToM or interpersonal decentering. Several unanticipated demographic associations were found; having more siblings and English proficiency accounted for significant variability in Strange Stories; education, presence or absence of self-disclosed autism diagnosis and mental health diagnosis explained a large portion of variance in TOMI-SR; interpersonal decentering maturity differed significantly between cisgender men and cisgender women. Lastly, interpersonal decentering number of interactions demonstrated an advantage for individuals without diagnosed or suspected autism diagnosis. This study raises critical concerns regarding measurement method error variance and variability of task demands in explaining cognitive mechanisms relevant to social cognitive processes.

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