Violent behaviors among adolescents serve as a disruption to many aspects of society. If these behaviors remain uncorrected, there is increased potential for serious self-harm, harm to others, incarceration, and escalation of violence into homicide or suicide. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between youth exposure to community violence and adolescents' social information processing underlying aggressive responses, as well as the potential role of gender in moderating this relationship. A sample of 160 male and female 18-year-olds from the Midwestern United States completed an online survey, which included the Things I Have Seen and Heard (TISH) Scale to assess exposure to community violence and a measure of aggressive responding to ambiguous social situations, based on 4 vignettes devised by Crick and Dodge. The data were analyzed using moderated multiple regression analysis and correlational analysis. Results indicated that a relationship between community violence exposure and adolescents' social information processing of aggressive responses is moderated by gender; there was a significant correlation between TISH scores and the total score from the vignettes among females but not among males. The study results suggest that school-based interventions and violence prevention programs should target the ways in which adolescent girls and young women make decisions when placed in ambiguous or potentially threatening situations, with reference to the level of community violence to which they have been exposed. Hence, this study has implications for positive social change to break the cycle of community violence, based upon enhancing the understanding of mechanisms that relate previous exposure to violence and aggressive responding among youth.

Playful teasing is an ancient form of interaction that now occurs through computer-mediated communication. Teasing through short message service texting is examined conceptually and empirically in this dissertation. Teasing and computer-mediated communication are framed in the theoretical lens of social information processing in Chapter 1. The development of study materials and stimuli to examine teasing through texting, using iterative focus groups and online pilot data collection, are detailed in Chapter 2. The two studies that examined message features, social context, and rejection sensitivity in the context of playful teasing via texting are presented in Chapter 3. The influence of two commonly used message features (the “winking face with tongue” emoji and the “lol” initialism) on teasing text message interpretation, compared to unadorned texts, were investigated in Study 1. Rejection sensitivity was also examined in relation to interpretation. Texts with the emoji contributed to more positive interpretations compared to texts with the “lol” initialism or unadorned texts, providing the first evidence that emoji and initialism function differently in the context of teasing. The influence of social context (the sender-receiver relationship) on the interpretation of teasing texts, and the relationship between message interpretation and rejection sensitivity were examined in Study 2. Teasing texts sent by close friends were rated more positively than those from acquaintances. In both studies, higher rejection sensitivity was related to more negative interpretations of teasing texts, however, teasing texts with the emoji did not show this pattern. The studies’ findings are discussed in Chapter 4 in the context of social information processing theory and in practice, examining implications for individuals with rejection sensitivity and practices for text message composition.

There is a gap in the academic achievement of African American males when compared to their peers, this gap has been maintained for many years. The purpose of this study is to conduct a quantitative non-experimental secondary analysis utilizing a national data set focusing on African American male students from the 4th through the 6th grade. To test the hypothesis that, all things being equal, social skills positively affect academics in African American boys and that social information processing, school commitment, and work habits mediate this effect. In total, 60 African American male students in 4th through 6th grades who participated in the NICHD study were included in the data set. None of the proposed mediators mediated the effects of social skills on academic achievement while controlling for socioeconomic status, classroom climate, school resources, and previous school performance. To better understand the relation between social skills and achievement, it is recommended that future research associated with the variables identified in this research focus on one academic year opposed to a three-year gap.

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