Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item The Intentionality and Social Information Processing Patterns Associated with Ethnic Minority Children's Aggression(2009) Simcox, April Guzy; Teglasi-Golubcow, Hedwig; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)According to Dodge and colleagues' social information processing model (e.g. Crick and Dodge, 1994) when faced with social situations, children engage in five components of decision making. In previous research using the model and corresponding social information processing (SIP) instruments, deficiencies in different components corresponded with childhood aggression. In particular, a tendency to interpret others' intentions as hostile is associated with aggression. Dodge and his colleagues cite schemas, or mental structures, as responsible for SIP deficiencies. However, the relationship between schemas and childhood aggression has not been systematically examined. This study investigated the social information processing patterns and schemas of ethnic minority children in relation to reactive and proactive aggression, as rated by teacher, peer, and self informants. The SIP instrument measured participants' social information processing patterns and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) assessed schemas underlying aggression using portions of Teglasi's coding system (2001) and coding procedures developed to capture SIP components. The TAT and SIP instruments were not correlated with one another and each correlated with different aspects of aggression. The SIP correlated primarily with teacher rated reactive aggression whereas the TAT correlated primarily with both peer and teacher rated proactive aggression. Prior research using the SIP instrument which found relationships between intentionality and aggression were not replicated. The TAT showed that among second and third grade children, most do not spontaneously consider the intentionality behind a provocation (intent attribution) but do consider the intention behind their response to a provocation (goal formation). Older age--within the two year span, significantly correlated with improved performance on some aspects of the SIP and TAT. On the SIP, girls were more likely than boys to select aggressive responses to a hypothetical situation, but expressed these in proactive ways while boys expressed more reactive aggression. Gender differences on the TAT were not present. Overall the TAT was a better predictor of both aggression types than the SIP and this was true for all informants. The use of multiple measures and multiple informants to capture various aspects of aggression is discussed along with implications for theory and practice, and directions for future research.Item Attributional processes in accounting for conflict behaviors(2009) Yao, Shuo; Cai, Deborah A.; Fink, Edward L.; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)One simple way to handle interpersonal conflict is to use accounts to explain one's behaviors. Although accounts play a significant role in managing conflict, relatively little research has explored the processes offenders use to determine the accounts selected in conflict situations. The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the attributional processes offenders use that determine their accounts in conflict. Ten hypotheses were proposed about how the severity of the conflict outcome and the closeness between the parties involved in the conflict influence offenders' choice of accounts. A structural equation model was developed and tested based on the proposed hypotheses. An experiment was conducted, with two levels of outcome severity and three levels of relational closeness. Offenders' attributions (i.e., the degree of internal attribution, the degree of external attribution, controllability, and uncontrollability), anticipated consequences (i.e., expected responsibility and expected anger), and offenders' expected choice of accounts (i.e., the likelihood of selecting concessions, justifications, excuses, and refusals) were measured. Two hundred thirty-eight participants were recruited and randomly assigned to one of the six experimental conditions. Participants read a hypothetical conflict scenario, imagined that they were the offender in the scenario, and completed a questionnaire that had the dependent measures. Results indicated that outcome severity influenced offenders' choice of accounts directly and indirectly. Offenders tended to choose a more defensive account when they perceived the outcome to be severe than when the outcome was not severe. The influence of outcome severity on offenders' choice of accounts was also mediated by the attributions offenders made, the responsibility expected to be assigned to offenders, and anger expected to be felt by victims. When offenders perceived the outcome to be severe, offenders made more attributions, expected more responsibility to be assigned to them, and expected that victims felt angrier about offenders' behavior than when the outcome was not severe. Consequently, when offenders expected more anger from victims, they tended to be less defensive. Interpretations and implications of results, the limitations of the study, and future directions were discussed.