Social Information Processing Model Research Articles

Surprising Empirical Directions for Thomistic Moral Psychology: Social Information Processing and Aggression Research

One of the major contemporary challenges to Thomistic moral psychology is that it is incompatible with the most up-to-date psychological science. Here Thomistic psychology is in good company, targeted along with most virtue-ethical views by philosophical Situationism, which uses replicated psychological studies to suggest that our behaviors are best explained by situational pressures rather than by stable traits (like virtues and vices). In this essay we explain how this body of psychological research poses a much deeper threat to Thomistic moral psychology in particular. For Thomistic moral psychology includes descriptive claims about causal connections between certain cognitive processes and behaviors, even independent of whether those processes emerge from habits like virtues. Psychological studies of correlations between these can provide evidence against those causal claims. We offer a new programmatic response to this deeper challenge: empirical studies are relevant only if they investigate behaviors under intentional descriptions, such that the correlations discovered are between cognition and what Aquinas calls human acts. Psychological research on aggression already emphasizes correlations between cognition and intentional behavior, or human acts, and so is positioned to shed light on how well Thomistic moral psychology fits with empirical data. Surprisingly, Aquinas’s views have quite a lot in common with a leading model of aggression, the social information processing (SIP) model. We close by suggesting how we might examine claims of Thomistic moral psychology from an empirical perspective further using research on social information processing and aggression.

Investigation of the Relationship between Academic Competencies and Social Information Processing of 60–72 Month-Old Children

Starting from the preschool period, children need to grow up as individuals with high academic skills, academic enablers and respond positively to their social situations. Academic skills and academic enablers together constitute academic competence. The positive reaction of children to the problems they face constitutes social information processing. This study aimed to examine the relationship between the academic competencies of 60–72-month-old children and their social information processing. The study was designed with the relational survey method. The study group consisted of 132 children aged 60–72 months with normal development who attend preschool education. The data collection tools of the study are as follows: Personal Information Form, The Social Information Processing Interview–Preschool Version, and Teacher Rating Scales of Early Academic Competence. Spearman's rank-order correlation test was used to evaluate the relationship between the scales. The findings of the study revealed that there is a relationship between the interpretation of cues and response decision, which are subdimensions of the social information processing model, academic skills (numeracy, early literacy, thinking skills, and comprehension) and academic enablers (social-emotional competence, approaches to learning, and communication).

Social Information Processing in Preschool Children: Relations to Social Interaction

The Social Information Processing Process Model consists of organizing the social adaptation and behavior of children in line with their responses to the social situations they encounter with their peers in their daily lives. The Social Information Processing Model affects children's ability to interact with their peers, their level of interaction, and provides information about the structure of interaction. In this direction, it was aimed to examine the relationship between social information processing and social interaction skills of 60-72 month-old children. The study was designed in relational screening model. The study group of the research consisted of 250 children, between 60 - 72 months, with normal development in the fall semester of the 2020-2021 academic year. The Social Information Processing Interview–Preschool Version and Children's Interaction Rating Scale were used as data collection tools in the study. The data were collected by reading stories with children, asking questions about the story and observation. Since no normal distribution was observed in the analysis of the data, Spearman's Rank-Order Correlation Test was used. As a result of the study, there was a statistically significant and positive relationship between "interpretation, response diversification, response decision", which were sub-dimensions of Social Information Processing Interview and "cooperation, self-control, assertiveness”, sub-dimensions of the Interaction Rating Scale for Children. This situation can be evaluated as children who make positive comments in social situations they encounter, who create positive reactions and react positively, are more cooperative in the context of social interaction, have a strong sense of self-control, and their assertiveness skills are high.

Parent-to-child aggression, intimate partner aggression, conflict resolution, and children's social-emotional competence in early childhood.

Early childhood is critical to the development of children's social-emotional competence, which predicts peer relations and school adjustment in later periods of childhood. The effects of experiencing or witnessing aggression on children's social-emotional development are well known, yet the role of conflict resolution within the family has not been sufficiently studied. Social information processing models suggests that children who experience positive forms of conflict resolution within the family are likely to generalize these experiences and related skills outside the family, and thus develop greater social-emotional competence. In this longitudinal study, 128 parents (representing 79 families) participated in four quarterly telephone interviews in which they described aggressive conflicts that occurred in their family for which their children were present, including the degree to which each conflict was resolved. They also reported on the frequency of intimate partner aggression (IPA) and parent-to-child aggression (PCA) that occurred while the child was in toddlerhood and preschool as well as children's social-emotional competence at the end of the study. Multi-level models reveal that parents' reports of positive conflict resolution mitigated the concurrent and longitudinal negative effects of children's exposure to both IPA and PCA on their social-emotional competence. These findings reinforce prevention scientists' emphasis on conflict resolution skills as an essential component of parent education programs.

Κατανοώντας τα κοινωνικο-παρωθητικά χαρακτηριστικά των αρχηγών-θυτών του εκφοβισμού: Ο ρόλος των κοινωνικών στόχων και των λειτουργιών της επιθετικότητας

The present study examines the role of social goals of ringleader bullies on school bullying according to Social Information Processing Model as well as the role of proactive and reactive aggression. The sample consisted of 222 fifth-grade and sixth-grade elementary school students from Northern Greece, who completed self-report questionnaires and responded to questions regarding social scenarios of ambiguous intent shown on video. The results showed that boys choose revenge more often than girls. Furthermore, ringleader bullies and ringleader bully followers choose more often, than the uninvolved, revenge as a motive in a social scenario of ambiguous intent. It is noteworthy that ringleader bullies choose more often than ringleader bully followers the social goal of building a relationship, while both ringleader bullies and ringleader bully followers adopt both forms of aggression, proactive and reactive, more than the uninvolved. The findings underline the motivational role of social goals in bullying, contribute to the discussion regarding ringleader bullies’ social cognition and emphasize the necessity of intervention programs focusing on social motives of preadolescent bullies.

A Dual-Mode Social-Information-Processing Model to Explain Individual Differences in Children’s Aggressive Behavior

Children differ considerably in the social-information-processing (SIP) patterns underlying their aggressive behavior. To clarify these individual differences, we propose a dual-mode SIP model that predicts which processing steps children will take, which children will take them, and under which circumstances, and how this may lead to aggression. This dual-mode SIP model distinguishes between an automatic and reflective processing mode. The automatic mode is characterized by fast automatic processing and impulsive behavioral responses, whereas the reflective mode is characterized by deliberate processing and controlled behavioral responses. Whether children use the automatic or reflective processing mode is moderated by their level of arousal, which depends on an interplay between child-specific factors (i.e., emotional dispositions, motivational dispositions, and executive functioning) and dynamic factors (i.e., internal state and type of situation). The dual-mode SIP model provides new insights into children’s unique SIP styles and provides possibilities to tailor treatment to children’s individual needs.

Attentional variability and avoidance of hostile stimuli decrease aggression in Chinese male juvenile delinquents

BackgroundAs a prominent issue worldwide, juveniles’ aggressive and violent crimes have attracted much interest in recent years. Based on the social information processing model, the present study aimed to evaluate the Chinese male juvenile delinquents’ attention bias towards hostile stimuli from both static and dynamic perspectives. Additionally, the predictive effect of attention bias on aggressive behavior and the moderating effect of group (juvenile delinquents and the controls with no criminal history) were also investigated.MethodsThe hostile attention bias and aggressive behavior of 76 juvenile delinquents (Mage = 17.5 years, SD = 0.59 years) and 67 controls (Mage = 18.3 years, SD = 0.73 years) were measured with the emotional dot-probe task, emotional Stroop task, and the Chinese version of the Buss & Perry aggression questionnaire, respectively.ResultsThe results showed that compared with controls, juvenile delinquents showed more attention biases towards hostile faces and words, and demonstrated higher levels of physical aggression and anger. Furthermore, the type of participants moderated the relationship between hostile attention bias and aggressive behavior. For juvenile delinquents, attention bias away from hostile stimuli and attention variability negatively predicted anger, while for controls, attention variability positively predicted self-directed aggression.ConclusionAttentional variability and avoidance of hostile stimuli are expected to reduce the aggressive level of Chinese male juvenile delinquents. The relationship between attention bias and aggression should be further considered and applied in the clinical practice.

Psychometric properties of Virtual Environment for Social Information Processing, a social information processing simulation assessment for children

AbstractVirtual Environment for Social Information Processing (VESIPTM) is a web‐based social information processing assessment developed for youth in grades 3–7. VESIP was developed to address: (a) the broader assessment of social information processing in a variety of socially challenging situations and (b) the need for technically strong and scalable assessments that can be administered universally in schools as a growing number of states adopt social and emotional learning standards. Consistent with the Crick and Dodge theoretical model of social information processing, VESIP assesses six different dimensions: solution preference, problem identification, emotion response, intent attribution, goal preference, and social self‐efficacy. This study summarizes technical properties of VESIP based on the evaluation of two general education samples: a multi‐state group of students whose data were part of a large‐scale norming study (N = 2,156), and a subset of local students from that group who participated in a validation study (n = 334). Confirmatory factor analyses supported a model that has three distinct facets: (a) one that includes five social information processing factors, (b) one that includes five situational factors, and (c) one overall social information processing factor. This model closely parallels the Crick and Dodge model and suggests that social information processing is somewhat situation specific. Internal consistency and test–retest reliabilities for social information processing factors were good. VESIP scores were consistently associated with an alternate measure of social information processing and other criterion measures. Implications for theory and practice are considered.

Cognitive beliefs about, affective reactions to, and behavioral preferences for parent-adolescent conflict

ABSTRACT The proliferation of communication technologies provides channel choices to supplement or substitute face-to-face parent-adolescent conflict. Using social information-processing models as a foundation, this study examined the frequency of text-based and voice-based mediated channels to navigate conflict between parents and adolescents as a function of cognitive beliefs about, affective reactions to, and behavioral preferences for conflict. One hundred and seventy-six parents and paired adolescents completed measures assessing the variables of interest. The results and discussion illuminate how individuals’ schemata for conflict influence preferences for conflict style and the frequency of text-based and voice-based mediated conflict communication.

Executive function and the development of social information processing during the preschool years

The six-step social information processing (SIP) model (Crick & Dodge, 1994) describes how children respond to difficult social situations, but little is known about the underlying cognitive abilities that support the individual SIP steps. Given excu executive function’s (EF) association with behavioral displays of competent and aggressive responses to provocation, the current study examined how three EF components (i.e., response inhibition, working memory, cognitive flexibility) relate to four SIP steps (i.e., encoding, interpretation, response generation, and response evaluation). In addition, the current study looked at how attributions made about the transgressor in the first two SIP steps affect processing in the later SIP steps. Seventy-two 4- to 5-year-old children completed one EF task for each component and were given a structured interview that assessed four steps of the SIP model. Working memory and age were related to encoding (fact recall and emotion attributions), response generation, and response evaluation. Cognitive flexibility was only related to response evaluation. The individual contributions of EF and age, as well as early SIP steps, differ for each step. The specific processes by which working memory may relate to each step are discussed, as well as how the encoding step provides a foundation for adequate processing in later steps. The results of the current study provide novel information about how cognitive processes contribute to the development of SIP.

Longitudinal relationships among interpersonal openness trait, hostile attribution bias, and displaced aggressive behaviour: Big Five treated as covariates

Displaced aggressive behaviour is associated with many negative outcomes. Although certain personality traits predict displaced aggressive behaviour, the uniquely longitudinal effect of indigenous interpersonal traits on displaced aggressive behaviour is ignored. To address this gap, we explored the longitudinal relationship among an indigenously interpersonal trait of China (interpersonal openness), hostile attribution bias, and self-reported displaced aggressive behaviour. Additionally, we tested whether hostile attribution bias mediated the relationship between interpersonal openness and self-reported displaced aggressive behaviour. The Interpersonal Self-Support Scale for Undergraduate Students, Word Sentence Association Paradigm for Hostility, Displaced Aggression Questionnaire, and the NEO Personality Inventory-3 were administered to 942 undergraduates on two occasions, 6months apart. A cross-lagged model showed that, after controlling for the Big Five personality traits, interpersonal openness predicted subsequent hostile attribution bias, and hostile attribution bias predicted self-reported displaced aggressive behaviour 6months later. Hostile attribution bias at time 2 mediated the relationship between interpersonal openness at time 1 and self-reported displaced aggressive behaviour at time 2. These results were consistent with the interpersonal self-support theory's appraisals of interpersonal openness, and they extended the social information processing and general aggression models to explain displaced aggressive behaviour.

Modification of hostile interpretation bias and self-reported aggression in juvenile delinquents: A randomized controlled trial

Background/ObjectiveThe social information processing model holds that aggressive behavior is closely related to the hostile interpretation of ambiguous social cues, suggesting the possibility that an intervention that reduces hostile interpretations could reduce aggression. This study in Mainland China evaluated the remediating effects of cognitive bias modification for interpretation (CBM-I) on the hostile interpretation bias and self-reported aggressive behaviors of male juvenile delinquents, taking into account initial hostile interpretation bias as a possible moderator of the intervention effect. MethodFifty-six male juvenile delinquents aged 16-18 were recruited and randomly assigned to the CBM-I group (n = 28) or the Waiting-List group (n = 28). Interpretation bias and self-reported aggressive behavior were assessed at pre-test and post-test. ResultsThe positive interpretations of participants in the CBM-I group were significantly increased compared with participants in the Waiting-List group. The intervention effect of CBM-I on self-reported physical aggression was significant only for juvenile delinquents with high pre-test hostile interpretation bias. ConclusionsCBM-I can significantly improve the positive interpretation bias of juvenile delinquents, and reduce the self-reported physical aggression for some male juvenile delinquents. The results have implications for providing low-cost and high-efficiency intervention for juvenile delinquents’ self-reported aggression behavior.

Linking Parental Phubbing to Adolescent Self-Depreciation: The Roles of Internal Attribution and Relationship Satisfaction

Phubbing is suggested to be a new form of social rejection, yet little is known about how people who are being “phubbed” interpret it within different relationships. Based on the social information processing model and the sociometer theory, this cross-sectional study investigated adolescents’ attribution for parental phubbing and its associations with adolescents’ relationship satisfaction and core self-evaluations. With a survey data from 300 Chinese adolescents, ages 12 to 16, a model linking parental phubbing to adolescents’ core self-evaluations was assessed, in which adolescents’ relationship satisfaction was a mediator and adolescents’ internal attribution for parental phubbing was a moderator. Parental phubbing was found to be associated with lower relationship satisfaction among adolescents who tended to internally attribute for it, which was predictive of their lower core self-evaluations.

Predictors of HbA1c Trajectories in Predominantly Black Adolescents With Type 1 Diabetes.

Following the Journal of Pediatric Psychology's special edition on health disparities, calling for Phase 2 research exploring mechanisms of racial groups in health disparities, this study aims to explore social information processing predictors of longitudinal hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) trajectories in a racially diverse group of adolescents. The social information processing model of glycemic control in type 1 diabetes (T1D) posits that adolescents who make negative attributions about reactions of friends are likely to find adherence difficult in social situations, have increased stress, and have suboptimal glycemic control. One hundred eighty-four youth with T1D completed self-report measures and HbA1c at three time points within 1 year was extracted from medical records. Growth mixture modeling empirically derived classes of HbA1c trajectories and explored predictive relationships of social information processing variables, demographics, and diabetes characteristics. Three classes emerged: High Decelerating, Mid-High Accelerating, and Near-Optimal Accelerating. Black/African American participants were highly likely to be in the High and Mid-High groups. Higher anticipated adherence difficulties in social situations predicted increased odds of being in the Mid-High versus Near-Optimal HbA1c group. Increased diabetes stress predicted increased odds of being in the High versus Near-Optimal and Mid-High groups. Continuing research on mechanisms behind this health disparity is necessary with more representation from varied racial and ethnic groups. Equal access to diabetes technology and psychosocial treatments are recommended and implications for clinical intervention development are discussed.

Hearing Status Affects Children's Emotion Understanding in Dynamic Social Situations: An Eye-Tracking Study.

For children to understand the emotional behavior of others, the first two steps involve emotion encoding and emotion interpreting, according to the Social Information Processing model. Access to daily social interactions is prerequisite to a child acquiring these skills, and barriers to communication such as hearing loss impede this access. Therefore, it could be challenging for children with hearing loss to develop these two skills. The present study aimed to understand the effect of prelingual hearing loss on children's emotion understanding, by examining how they encode and interpret nonverbal emotional cues in dynamic social situations. Sixty deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) children and 71 typically hearing (TH) children (3-10 years old, mean age 6.2 years, 54% girls) watched videos of prototypical social interactions between a target person and an interaction partner. At the end of each video, the target person did not face the camera, rendering their facial expressions out of view to participants. Afterward, participants were asked to interpret the emotion they thought the target person felt at the end of the video. As participants watched the videos, their encoding patterns were examined by an eye tracker, which measured the amount of time participants spent looking at the target person's head and body and at the interaction partner's head and body. These regions were preselected for analyses because they had been found to provide cues for interpreting people's emotions and intentions. When encoding emotional cues, both the DHH and TH children spent more time looking at the head of the target person and at the head of the interaction partner than they spent looking at the body or actions of either person. Yet, compared with the TH children, the DHH children looked at the target person's head for a shorter time (b = -0.03, p = 0.030), and at the target person's body (b = 0.04, p = 0.006) and at the interaction partner's head (b = 0.03, p = 0.048) for a longer time. The DHH children were also less accurate when interpreting emotions than their TH peers (b = -0.13, p = 0.005), and their lower scores were associated with their distinctive encoding pattern. The findings suggest that children with limited auditory access to the social environment tend to collect visually observable information to compensate for ambiguous emotional cues in social situations. These children may have developed this strategy to support their daily communication. Yet, to fully benefit from such a strategy, these children may need extra support for gaining better social-emotional knowledge.

Loving Your Parents and Treating Others Well: The Effect of Filial Piety on Cyberbullying Perpetration and Its Functional Mechanism Among Chinese Graduate Students.

Although a few studies have investigated the effect of family factors on cyberbullying perpetration, these studies have mainly focused on the roles of parents. Few studies have examined the roles of children. In traditional Chinese culture, the filial piety belief (FPB) refers to the viewpoint that considers the roles of children in a family context. We suggest that how children consider their roles in a family might also influence cyberbullying perpetration. Based on the dual filial piety model and social information processing model, this study examined the effect of FPB on cyberbullying perpetration and tested its mediation of hostile attribution bias. In total, 588 graduate students participated. The participants completed several questionnaires, including the FPB scale, the social information processing-attribution response questionnaire, and the cyberbullying scale. The results were as follows. First, reciprocal filial piety (RFP) was significantly negatively correlated with hostile attribution bias and cyberbullying perpetration, while authoritarian filial piety (AFP) was significantly positively correlated with hostile attribution bias and cyberbullying perpetration. Second, hostile attribution bias mediated the association between FPB (comprising AFP and RFP) and cyberbullying perpetration; RFP decreased hostile attribution bias, while AFP increased hostile attribution bias; and hostile attribution bias increased cyberbullying perpetration. The current study expands our understanding of the influential factors and formation mechanism of cyberbullying perpetration in Chinese culture.

Emotion processing associated with aggression in early adolescents: A focus on affective theory of mind.

Social-emotional factors associated with youth aggression have largely been studied in the context of social information-processing models. The ability to accurately encode and appropriately interpret others' emotions has yet to be fully examined in the context of aggressive behavior, particularly during adolescence. Using cross-sectional data from a sample of 282 at-risk early adolescents, the present study examined associations between teacher-reported aggression and youth performance on a task assessing two components of affective theory of mind: emotion recognition and situational attribution. Results indicated that emotion recognition, but not situational attribution accuracy, was significantly associated with teacher-reported aggressive behavior. Over-recognizing anger and under-recognizing sadness were unique error patterns associated with aggression, and these associations remained significant after controlling for demographics and other key social information-processing variables. Findings suggest that difficulties with emotion processing play an important role in the social information-processing patterns observed in the context of youth aggression. Implications for preventive interventions for youth at risk of engaging in aggressive behavior are discussed.

Recognizing children's emotions in child abuse and neglect.

Past research has suggested that parents' ability to recognize their children's emotions is associated with an enhanced quality of parent-child interactions and appropriateness of parental caregiving behavior. Although this association has also been examined in abusive and neglectful parents, the results are mixed and do not adequately address child neglect. Based on the Social Information Processing model of child abuse and neglect, we examined the association between mothers' ability to recognize children's emotions and self- and professionals-reported child abuse and neglect. The ability to recognize children's emotions was assessed with an implicit valence classification task and an emotion labeling task. A convenience sample of 166 mothers (78 with at least one child referred to Child Protection Services) completed the tasks. Child abuse and neglect were measured with self-report and professionals-report instruments. The moderating role of mothers' intellectual functioning and socioeconomic status were also examined. Results revealed that abusive mothers performed more poorly on the negative emotions recognition task, while neglectful mothers demonstrated a lower overall ability in recognizing children's emotions. When classifying the valence of emotions, mothers who obtained higher scores on child neglect presented a higher positivity bias particularly when their scores in measures of intellectual functioning were low. There was no moderation effect for socioeconomic status. Moreover, the results for child abuse were mainly observed with self-report measures, while for child neglect, they predominantly emerged with professionals-report. Our findings highlight the important contribution of the social information processing model in the context of child maltreatment, with implications for prevention and intervention addressed.

The Effect of Social Information Processing (SIP) Model Intervention on Reducing Challenging Behavior Among Children with Mild To Borderline Intellectual Functioning

Introduction. It is believed that children with mild to borderline intellectual functioning are not successful in processing the information received from peers and other people in their surroundings during social interactions, which leads to challenging and aggressive behavior. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of social information processing (SIP) model intervention on reducing challenging behavior among children with mild to borderline intellectual functioning.Method. For the purpose of this study, a two-way repeated measures ANOVA, with pre-post – and follow up test in two groups were employed. A total of 40 children in the age of 5–10 participated. Participants were 33 boys and 7 girls with a mean age of 8.32 (SD=3.14) and a mean IQ of 75.64 (SD=7.34).Results. Findings from this study revealed the effectiveness of social information processing (SIP) model intervention on reducing challenging behavior among children with mild to borderline intellectual functioning.Discussion and Conclusion. In conclusion, results from this study suggested that children with mild to borderline intellectual functioning utilized the Social Information Processing (SIP) Model and their challenging behaviors and prosocial behaviors (challenging behavior) could be reduced. Application and implications, limitations, future research were included.

The social information processing model in child physical abuse and neglect: A meta-analytic review

BackgroundChild maltreatment has been recently examined from a cognitive-behavioral perspective. The Social Information Processing (SIP) model specifies how parental cognitions can be associated with child physical abuse and neglect and suggests that maltreating parents do not adequately respond to the child’s needs due to errors/bias in the cognitive processing of child-related information. ObjectiveThis study provides two separate meta-analytic reviews of research exploring the role of parents’ socio-cognitive variables in shaping child physical abuse and child neglect, identifying the association of each SIP stage to these types of maltreatment. MethodAfter a four-phase systematic literature search based in PRISMA with inter-judges’ agreement, 130 effect sizes were extracted from the 51 studies selected. ResultsOverall, the effect sizes of the four cognitive stages of the model were significant for physical abuse and ranged from small (r = .190 for parents’ interpretations of children’s signals) to moderate (r = .315 for parents’ perceptions of children’s signals). Regarding neglect, only the overall effect of parent’s preexisting schemata was significant but small in magnitude (r = .231). ConclusionsThe results of these multilevel meta-analyses support the general hypothesis that physically abusive parents may incur in biases in processing child-related information, but further research is still required regarding neglect. Theoretically this work is likely to provide a more solid framework to understand parental cognitions underlying child maltreatment with potential implications for evaluation and intervention with maltreating or at-risk parents.