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Impulse Control and Callous-Unemotional Traits Distinguish Patterns of Delinquency and Substance Use in Justice Involved Adolescents: Examining the Moderating Role of Neighborhood Context

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Abstract

Both callous-unemotional (CU) traits and impulse control are known risk factors associated with delinquency and substance use. However, research is limited in how contextual factors such as neighborhood conditions influence the associations between these two dispositional factors and these two externalizing behaviors. The current study utilized latent class analysis (LCA) to identify unique classes of delinquency and substance use within an ethnically diverse sample (n = 1216) of justice-involved adolescents (ages 13 to 17) from three different sites. Neighborhood disorder, CU traits, and impulse control were all independently associated with membership in classes with more extensive histories of delinquency and substance use. The effects of CU traits and impulse control in distinguishing delinquent classes was invariant across levels of neighborhood disorder, whereas neighborhood disorder moderated the association between impulse control and substance use. Specifically, the probability of being in more severe substance using classes for those low in impulse control was stronger in neighborhoods with fewer indicators of social and physical disorder.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, 78207, USA

    James V. Ray

  2. University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Laura C. Thornton & Paul J. Frick

  3. Australian Catholic University, Banyo, Australia

    Paul J. Frick

  4. Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Laurence Steinberg

  5. King Adulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

    Laurence Steinberg

  6. University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Elizabeth Cauffman

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  1. James V. Ray
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Ray, J.V., Thornton, L.C., Frick, P.J. et al. Impulse Control and Callous-Unemotional Traits Distinguish Patterns of Delinquency and Substance Use in Justice Involved Adolescents: Examining the Moderating Role of Neighborhood Context. J Abnorm Child Psychol 44, 599–611 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-015-0057-0

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