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Impulsivity Moderates Promotive Environmental Influences on Adolescent Delinquency: A Comparison Across Family, School, and Neighborhood Contexts

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Abstract

The present study examined moderating effects of impulsivity on the relationships between promotive factors from family (family warmth, parental knowledge), school (school connectedness), and neighborhood (neighborhood cohesion) contexts with delinquency using data collected from N = 2,978 sixth to eighth graders from 16 schools surrounding a major city in the Midwestern United States. More than half of the respondents were non-Caucasian (M age  = 12.48; 41.0 % male). Multilevel modeling analyses were conducted to take into account the clustering of the participants within schools. Impulsivity was positively associated with adolescent delinquency. Additionally, family warmth, parental knowledge, and school connectedness, but not neighborhood cohesion, were independently and inversely related to adolescent delinquency. Finally, impulsivity moderated relationships between family warmth and parental knowledge with delinquency but not relationships between school attachment and neighborhood cohesion with delinquency. Specifically, the negative relationship between family warmth and delinquency was significant for adolescents with high levels of, but not for those with below-average levels of, impulsivity. In addition, parental knowledge had a stronger association with decreased levels of delinquency for adolescents reporting higher levels of impulsivity. The moderating effects of impulsivity did not differ for males and females or for minority and non-minority participants. Findings indicate that impulsivity may have greater impact on adolescents’ susceptibility to positive family influences than on their susceptibility to promotive factors from school or neighborhood contexts. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Although the items concerning parental knowledge did not ask adolescents to specify their primary caregiver, we do have data on the primary female and male caregivers in the household. The majority of participants (97.2 %) identified a biological mother, step-mother, or adoptive mother as their primary female caregiver (92.1 % of the sample) and/or identified a biological father, step-father, or adoptive father as their primary male caregiver (80.2 % of the sample). Thus the items comprising parental knowledge do reflect knowledge of behavior from at least one residential parent for most youth. Most of the remaining 2.8 % of the sample reported that other relatives (e.g., grandmother/grandfather, aunt/uncle, older brother/sister) served as their primary female/male caregivers.

  2. The moderate correlations between environmental factors suggest low potential for multicollinearity. Additional analyses testing correlations between the interaction terms examined and other indicators of multicollinearity (i.e., tolerance and variance inflation factor statistics) also detect no issues of multicollinearity.

  3. Additional analyses based on the original categories of race/ethnicity found that none of the interaction effects reported in Model 8 differed between African American, Hispanic, and other minority youth.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the National Opinion Research Council (NORC) at the University of Chicago who conducted the data collection for the current study. In addition, we acknowledge current and former staff at the University of Chicago Clinical Neuroscience & Psychopharmacology Research Unit (CNPRU), especially Ms. Crystal Johnson, Ms. Kristen Jezior, and Ms. Bing Chen, for their assistance with this project. Finally, we are grateful for the participation of the schools in the Chicago area that allowed this study to take place and thank the individuals of the Neighborhoods to Neurons and Beyond cohort for participating in this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, University of Chicago, CNPRU, Chicago, IL, USA

    Pan Chen & Kristen C. Jacobson

  2. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, L-607, University of Chicago, CNPRU, 5841 S Maryland Ave., MC3077, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Pan Chen

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  1. Pan Chen
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  2. Kristen C. Jacobson
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Correspondence to Pan Chen.

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This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health through the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award Program, grant number DP2-OD-003021 to Dr. Kristen C. Jacobson. Information on the New Innovator Award Program is at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/new_investigators/innovator_award/.

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Chen, P., Jacobson, K.C. Impulsivity Moderates Promotive Environmental Influences on Adolescent Delinquency: A Comparison Across Family, School, and Neighborhood Contexts. J Abnorm Child Psychol 41, 1133–1143 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-013-9754-8

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