Xiaotian

Research Proposal


In recent years, we often see a lot of news about juvenile delinquency on social media.  The impression is that juvenile delinquency seems to increase year by year with the passage of time.  The chart above is from the website: http://www.cjcj.org/news/10134, which shows juvenile delinquency in California from 1990 to 2010.  So I wonder why the youth incarceration rate and youth crime plummets.

Hypothesis

Next, I tried to list some factors that may cause a decline of juvenile delinquency, including:

  1. Education: social media speed up the wide spread of information so that juveniles can be more easily exposed to law popularization education.

  2. Smartphone: Before the popularity of smartphones, teenagers' entertainment activities were mainly to go out and socialize in their spare time, go to the Internet bar to play games, or do some outdoor sports.  Now, more and more teenagers are using their spare time to play mobile games and visit Facebook and Twitter.  To some extent, this avoids their face-to-face contact, thus reducing the probability of face-to-face quarrels.  Even if there is a quarrel with people on the Internet, they merely go to meet each other offline to fight.

  3. Mobile payment: Most of the time, juvenile delinquency happens because they don't have enough pocket money to rob.  But now the popularity of electronic payment makes it difficult for them to get cash directly from other children.

Method


This project mainly uses the survey method to carry out investigation and research on juvenile offenders and other teenagers.  The contents of the questionnaire include:

1. Smartphone related
  • How much time do you use your smartphone every day?
  • What do you do mainly with smartphones? (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Games, Shopping)
By comparing the answers of juvenile offenders and teenagers, if there is a big difference in the duration and purpose of using mobile phones between the two, I have reason to believe that smartphones have affected the juvenile crime rate to a certain extent.

2. Education related
  • Have you ever seen an advertisement about Popularizing Legal Knowledge in your smartphone?
  • If so, is it mainly about the apps you use why you see these ads?

3. Mobile payment
  • Do you always take cash with you?
  • Where will your pocket money mainly be used?

Contribution

The plummet of youth incarceration rate and youth crime is a high tendency. Therefore, to find out what factors lead to it can make us more targeted to prevent juvenile delinquency.

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OBSERVATIONAL  LEARNING  APPROACHES: LEARNING  TO  HURT  OTHERS

        I  am  interested  in  the  topic: OBSERVATIONAL  LEARNING  APPROACHES:  LEARNING  TO  HURT  OTHERS.  It  tells  that children will be more aggressive to hurt others if aggressive behaviors are encouraged or rewarded by their parents. In social  psychology,  we  learn  that  it  focuses  on  studying  how  people’s  thoughts,  feelings,  and  actions are  affected  by others. Under this case, children's behavior (more easily being aggressive) is affected by their parents. (American Psychological Association, 2006)


    We also learn that peripheral route processing occurs when people are persuaded on the basis of factors unrelated to the nature or quality of the content of a persuasive message. Instead, factors that are irrelevant or extraneous to the issue, such as: who is providing the message, how  long  the  arguments  are  or  the  emotional  appeal  of  the  arguments influence them.  (American Psychological Association, 2010)


        Under  this  case, compared  with central  route  processing  that  occurs  when  the  recipient  thoughtfully  considers  the  issues  and  arguments involved  in  persuasion  and  that  makes  people  to  sway  in  their   judgments  by  the  logic,  merit,  and  strength of  arguments, peripheral route processing is a preference for children because they lack social experience and ability to think about a question  in  a  logic  and  reasonable  way. (American Psychological Association, 2012)


        So,  to  some  extent, parents  spoiling fosters  children's  wrong  attitude  towards aggressive behavior. From "The Bullying Parent: Why Aggressive Parenting Doesn’t Work" by James Lehman, we see that  parents'  behavior  will  affect  their  children  to  be  more  aggressive. However,  under  this  case, parents' behavior is not "spoiling", but "fostering". (Lehman, 2019)


        James said in this article that "Parents who don’t have effective parenting skills will often use aggression as a substitute. This is especially common with parents who don’t have good relationships or effective coping skills and use aggression to compensate for a whole range of things. Ultimately, it can lead to aggression with  their  kids." Although  parents'  behavior  is  not  the  same  as  that  in  our  case,  it  also  shows  that  parents'  inappropriate behavior will affect their children, making them be more aggressive, feeling like the center of the world. (American Psychological Association, 2018)

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First Memory

Childhood memory refers to the memory formed in childhood. The role of memory is generally considered to guide current behavior and predict what may happen in the future. Childhood memory is different from that of other ages. These differences are mainly reflected in quality and quantity.


My first memory should be when I was very young. I should not have been able to walk at that time because my mother was holding me. Why do I know my parents were holding me? I'll talk about it later. One of my relatives who I can't remember who she is was feeding me a powdered snack. I remember that snack tasted sweet and sour. This scene happened in my own house. At that time, the furniture in my own house was very simple, not as it is now.


I later verified this memory with my mother. It was real, but she was shocked when she heard about it, because I was less than one year old when it happened. The strangest thing is that this memory is not the first perspective! It's that I can see the whole thing from the perspective of a bystander! So I could see how my mother held me and how the relative fed me snacks. I even knew that there was a row of sofas behind my mother at that time which can never be seen by the 'kid' held by my mother. There were about three sofas in the color of green. Therefore, I always believe that people have souls. Maybe at that moment, my soul and body are not well integrated, so my soul goes out and floats for a while.

Please trust me this is not a story! This is real!