SafeTY: Threat/safeness perception, mind-body mechanisms of action, and behavior of youth during detention

SafeTY is a quantitative longitudinal study examining threat and safeness perceptions, social decision-making, prefrontal cortex (PFC) connectivity, and behavior in detained youth. The study has two assessment time points, conducted approximately three months apart, across all six Portuguese juvenile detention facilities. At each time point, participants complete a set of validated self-report measures and perform an adapted version of the Third-Party Dictator Game (TP-DG) concurrent with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to capture PFC hemodynamic connectivity during social decision-making. Behavioral data are additionally collected from institutional records. The study aims to examine how detained youth perceive their rearing environment and the detention context in terms of threat and safety across time, and whether detention length and/or threat/safeness perceptions influence youth's (anti)social decision-making, concurrent PFC connectivity, and behavior. Statistical analyses will include multilevel modeling, and network analysis to examine intraindividual change and predictors of prosocial and antisocial behavioral outcomes.