Type of Submission

Poster

Keywords

Cognitive distortion, juvenile delinquent, institutional misconducts

Abstract

It has been found that juvenile delinquents usually possess inaccurate explanations or thoughts about their experiences, which are called as cognitive distortions. The prior findings also suggested that juvenile delinquents’ antisocial behaviors are associated with their cognitive distortions. Therefore, many juvenile centers utilized cognitive treatment programs and tried to reduce juvenile delinquents’ cognitive distortions. Thus, it is useful to measure the changes of juvenile delinquents’ cognitive distortions in a rehabilitation center to design treatment plans and evaluate its effectiveness.

The present study aimed to measure the changes of cognitive distortions in a group of 43 adolescent juvenile delinquents at a secure, long-term, juvenile Rehabilitation Center in a Midwestern state. The juveniles were given the How I Think (HIT) questionnaire to measure their cognitive distortions at the beginning of and at the end of their treatment. Their daily institutional misconducts were also recorded during their residency in the center. The pre- and post-test scores were compared and the analysis result indicated that the posttest scores were significantly lower than the pretest scores revealing the effectiveness of the treatment of the Rehabilitation Center in lowering cognitive distortions. Secondly, the relationship between the cognitive distortion pretest scores and the number of these juvenile delinquents’ institutional misconducts were examined. A significant positive correlation was found between these two variables. Thirdly, a regression analysis was conducted and the HIT subscales of angry/irritable and lying pretest score were significant factors in predicting the number of misconducts at the Rehabilitation Center. Lastly, the relationships between specific cognitive distortions (i.e. self-centeredness, blaming others, minimizing/mislabeling, and assuming the worst) and specific misconduct categories will be examined. We plan to report the results during the symposium.

Faculty Sponsor or Advisor’s Name

Dr. Di Wu, Dr. David Leitch

Campus Venue

Stevens Student Center

Location

Cedarville, OH

Start Date

4-1-2015 11:00 AM

End Date

4-1-2015 2:00 PM

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Share

COinS
 
Apr 1st, 11:00 AM Apr 1st, 2:00 PM

Cognitive Distortions and Institutional Misconducts in Juvenile Delinquents

Cedarville, OH

It has been found that juvenile delinquents usually possess inaccurate explanations or thoughts about their experiences, which are called as cognitive distortions. The prior findings also suggested that juvenile delinquents’ antisocial behaviors are associated with their cognitive distortions. Therefore, many juvenile centers utilized cognitive treatment programs and tried to reduce juvenile delinquents’ cognitive distortions. Thus, it is useful to measure the changes of juvenile delinquents’ cognitive distortions in a rehabilitation center to design treatment plans and evaluate its effectiveness.

The present study aimed to measure the changes of cognitive distortions in a group of 43 adolescent juvenile delinquents at a secure, long-term, juvenile Rehabilitation Center in a Midwestern state. The juveniles were given the How I Think (HIT) questionnaire to measure their cognitive distortions at the beginning of and at the end of their treatment. Their daily institutional misconducts were also recorded during their residency in the center. The pre- and post-test scores were compared and the analysis result indicated that the posttest scores were significantly lower than the pretest scores revealing the effectiveness of the treatment of the Rehabilitation Center in lowering cognitive distortions. Secondly, the relationship between the cognitive distortion pretest scores and the number of these juvenile delinquents’ institutional misconducts were examined. A significant positive correlation was found between these two variables. Thirdly, a regression analysis was conducted and the HIT subscales of angry/irritable and lying pretest score were significant factors in predicting the number of misconducts at the Rehabilitation Center. Lastly, the relationships between specific cognitive distortions (i.e. self-centeredness, blaming others, minimizing/mislabeling, and assuming the worst) and specific misconduct categories will be examined. We plan to report the results during the symposium.

 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.