NCJ Number
216656
Journal
Journal of Youth and Adolescence Volume: 35 Issue: 6 Dated: December 2006 Pages: 999-1014
Date Published
December 2006
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This study examined how two forms of reasoning by adolescents in social interactions--"epistemic reasoning" (processes used by an individual in dealing with conflicting information) and "adolescent egocentrism" (an adolescent's belief that he/she is the central focus of any social situation)--were linked to various adolescent emotional and behavioral problems.
Abstract
The study found that an adolescent's level of epistemic reasoning distinguished between boys with and without emotional and behavioral problems. Boys with emotional and behavioral disorders tended to deal with conflicting information either by adhering dogmatically to a set of beliefs handed down by an authority figure or by adopting the skeptical belief that all knowledge and beliefs were just opinion rather than the result of rational thought and analysis. Adolescent boys without problem behaviors had reached a higher level of epistemic reasoning. Such reasoning considers that although absolute certainty is not possible, the weighing of alternatives and their consequences produces better results for one's life. Adolescent egocentrism was not significant in distinguishing between boys with and without emotional and behavioral problems. Participants were 59 boys, with 29 diagnosed as having "behavioral disorders" (BD) and 30 without behavioral disorders. They were recruited from three middle schools and two high schools within a large urban school district in Washington State. Study instruments provided data and information on participants' demographics, verbal ability, problem behaviors (teacher reports), epistemic reasoning (the Epistemic Doubt Interviews), and egocentrism (New Imaginary Audience Scale and the New Personal Fable Scale). 7 tables, appended study instruments, and 45 references