NCJ Number
84391
Date Published
1976
Length
181 pages
Annotation
This study of 60 boys (30 adjudicated delinquent and 30 nondelinquents) aged 11, 13, and 15 in Massachusetts found that the extent to which learning can modify behavior correlates with the degree to which knowledge up to that point can be radically reorganized.
Abstract
The 30 adjudicated delinquents had been committed to the Massachusetts Division of Youth Services, while the 30 nondelinquents regularly attended a branch of the Boys Club of Boston located in an inner city, high-delinquency rate area of Boston. The study contended that immature patterns of conceptual organization characterize delinquency-prone children and adolescents. Specifically, the failure of abstract thought to emerge beyond the sensory and perceptual processes common to Piaget's stage of concrete operations creates a ceiling beyond which social and moral reasoning cannot extend. The Role Taking Task and the 'Butch and Slim' game of propositional logic assessed two capacities supporting formal operations: interpersonal decentration skills and mastery of propositional logic. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test was also administered. Results established that a significant association existed between the subjects' qualitative cognitive development and their behavior. The restricted cognitive structures of concrete operations do not permit the delinquent to organize multiple perspectives. Figures, tables, and references are included. (Author abstract modified)