Context processing in adolescent and adult offenders

University Of Alabama In Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa AL

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Abstract

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This study examines differences between adolescent offenders in juvenile court, adolescent offenders in adult court, and adult offenders on cognitive tasks measuring the maintenance of internal representations of task relevant context information (i.e., modified Stroop task, Continuous Performance Test, and Lexical Disambiguation task). It is expected that both transferred and non-transferred youthful offenders will exhibit more disturbances in context processing compared to adult offenders. These patterns in context processing will be evident across task domains. It is also hypothesized that context processing will be differentiated from short-term memory for all participant groups. It is expected that disrupted context processing will be associated with lower levels of risk perception, consideration of future consequences, and general sophistication-maturity. Participants will be matched samples of adolescent inmates and adult offenders from an adult correctional facility and youths from a juvenile detention facility. Statistical analyses for each of the proposed hypotheses include repeated measures analysis of variance, planned orthogonal contrasts, correlations, and multiple regression. The implications of the proposed study will be discussed in terms of culpability and juvenile transfers to adult court. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]