Kathryn C. Monahan

Age Differences in Resistance to Peer Influence

Prior research describes the development of susceptibility to peer pressure in adolescence as following an inverted U-shaped curve, increasing during early adolescence, peaking around age 14, and declining thereafter. This pattern, however, is derived mainly from studies that specifically examined peer pressure to engage in antisocial behavior. In the present study, age differences and developmental change in resistance to peer influence were assessed using a new self-report instrument that separates susceptibility to peer pressure from willingness to engage in antisocial activity. Data from four ethnically and socioeconomically diverse samples comprising more than 3,600 males and females between the ages of 10 and 30 were pooled from one longitudinal and two cross-sectional studies. Results show that across all demographic groups, resistance to peer influences increases linearly between ages 14 and 18. In contrast, there is little evidence for growth in this capacity between ages 10 and 14 or between 18 and 30. Middle adolescence is an especially significant period for the development of the capacity to stand up for what one believes and resist the pressures of ones peers to do otherwise.

Affiliation with antisocial peers, susceptibility to peer influence, and antisocial behavior during the transition to adulthood.

Developmental theories suggest that affiliation with deviant peers and susceptibility to peer influence are important contributors to adolescent delinquency, but it is unclear how these variables impact antisocial behavior during the transition to adulthood, a period when most delinquent individuals decline in antisocial behavior. Using data from a longitudinal study of 1,354 antisocial youth, the present study examined how individual variation in exposure to deviant peers and resistance to peer influence affect antisocial behavior from middle adolescence into young adulthood (ages 14 to 22 years). Whereas we find evidence that antisocial individuals choose to affiliate with deviant peers, and that affiliating with deviant peers is associated with an individuals own delinquency, these complementary processes of selection and socialization operate in different developmental periods. In middle adolescence, both selection and socialization serve to make peers similar in antisocial behavior, but from ages 16 to 20 years, only socialization appears to be important. After age 20, the impact of peers on antisocial behavior disappears as individuals become increasingly resistant to peer influence, suggesting that the process of desistance from antisocial behavior may be tied to normative changes in peer relations that occur as individuals mature socially and emotionally.

A Multimethod Assessment of Juvenile Psychopathy: Comparing the Predictive Utility of the PCL:YV, YPI, and NEO PRI

The current study compares 3 distinct approaches for measuring juvenile psychopathy and their utility for predicting short- and long-term recidivism among a sample of 1,170 serious male juvenile offenders. The assessment approaches compared a clinical interview method (the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version [PCL:YV]; Forth, Kosson, & Hare, 2003), a new self-report measure (the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory; Andershed, Kerr, Stattin, & Levander, 2002), and a personality-based approach (the NEO Psychopathy Resemblance Index; Lynam & Widiger, 2007). Results indicate a modest overlap between the 3 measures (rs = .26-.36); however, youths were often identified as psychopathic by 1 measure but not by others. Measures were weakly correlated with reoffending during subsequent 6- and 12-month periods. Findings suggest that although such scores may be useful indicators of the need for heightened monitoring in the short term, care should be taken when making predictions about long-term recidivism among adolescents. Moreover, the lack of long-term predictive power for the PCL:YV and the inconsistent psychopathy designations obtained with different measures raise serious questions about the use of such measures as the basis for legal or clinical treatment decisions.

Sustained Decreases in Risk Exposure and Youth Problem Behaviors After Installation of the Communities That Care Prevention System in a Randomized Trial

OBJECTIVE To test whether the Communities That Care (CTC) prevention system reduced levels of risk and adolescent problem behaviors community-wide 6 years after installation of CTC and 1 year after study-provided resources ended. DESIGN A community randomized trial. SETTING Twenty-four small towns in 7 states, matched within state, randomly assigned to control or intervention condition in 2003. PARTICIPANTS A panel of 4407 fifth-grade students was surveyed annually through 10th grade from 2004 to 2009. INTERVENTION A coalition of community stakeholders received training and technical assistance to install CTC, used epidemiologic data to identify elevated risk factors and depressed protective factors in the community, and implemented programs to address their communitys elevated risks from a menu of tested and effective programs for youths aged 10 to 14 years, their families, and schools. OUTCOME MEASURES Levels of risk and incidence and prevalence of tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use; delinquency; and violent behavior by grade 10. RESULTS Mean levels of targeted risks increased less rapidly between grades 5 and 10 in CTC than in control communities and were significantly lower in CTC than control communities in grade 10. The incidence of delinquent behavior, alcohol use, and cigarette use and the prevalence of current cigarette use and past-year delinquent and violent behavior were significantly lower in CTC than in control communities in grade 10. CONCLUSIONS Using the CTC system can produce enduring reductions in community-wide levels of risk factors and problem behaviors among adolescents beyond the years of supported implementation, potentially contributing to long-term public health benefits. TRIAL REGISTRATION clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT01088542.

INVESTIGATING THE LONGITUDINAL RELATION BETWEEN OFFENDING FREQUENCY AND OFFENDING VARIETY

Researchers interested in longitudinal patterns of criminal offending have paid close attention to several dimensions of criminal careers. Although it might be expected that several dimensions are strongly linked to one another, research has not explored their joint distribution. The study uses trajectory-based methodology to examine the joint relation between offending variety and offending frequency in a large sample of serious offenders from adolescence to early adulthood and also tests how several risk factors relate to the joint covariation between variety and frequency. Results indicate strong concordance between low and high rate variety and frequency trajectories but a more modest concordance among moderate rate variety and frequency trajectories. Criminal history, individual, parent, and peer characteristics predict differences in concordance between variety and frequency trajectories. Theoretical implications and directions for further research are outlined.

Arrested development: The effects of incarceration on the development of psychosocial maturity

Improvements in temperance, perspective, and responsibility are a part of typical development of psychosocial maturity during adolescence. The existing literature suggests that the developmental course of psychosocial maturity is influenced by normative variations in social context, but little is known about how atypical contexts, such as incarceration, influence its development. The study investigates how the development of psychosocial maturity is affected by incarceration, using data from a 7-year longitudinal study of 1,171 adolescent males. We compared the effects of confinement in juvenile facilities with varying degrees of focus on incarceration versus rehabilitation (i.e., secure vs. residential treatment facilities) and tested whether facility quality and age at incarceration moderate the effect of incarceration on psychosocial maturity. The results indicate that incarceration in a secure setting, but not a residential treatment facility, is associated with a short-term decline in temperance and responsibility. The total amount of time incarcerated in a residential treatment facility, but not a secure setting, had a negative effect on the developmental trajectory of psychosocial maturity. Age at incarceration, but not the facility quality, moderated the effect of recent incarceration: older youths were more susceptible to short-term negative effects of recent incarceration in a secure setting, but they also benefited more than younger participants from short-term positive effects of incarceration in a residential treatment setting. Furthermore, youths who perceived their incarceration setting as unsafe evinced a decline in temperance. Future research and policy implications are discussed.

Revisiting the Impact of Part‐Time Work on Adolescent Adjustment: Distinguishing Between Selection and Socialization Using Propensity Score Matching

The impact of part-time employment on adolescent functioning remains unclear because most studies fail to adequately control for differential selection into the workplace. The present study reanalyzes data from L. Steinberg, S. Fegley, and S. M. Dornbusch (1993) using multiple imputation, which minimizes bias in effect size estimation, and 2 types of propensity score matching, to account for selection effects. In this sample (N = 1,792; Grades 10-11, M = 16.26), youth who begin working more than 20 hr per week evince declines in school engagement and increases in substance use and delinquency compared with youth who remain unemployed. Conversely, working 20 hr or less a week has negligible effects, positive or negative, on academic, psychological, or behavioral outcomes.

Is adolescence-onset antisocial behavior developmentally normative?

Largely because of the influence of Moffitts useful distinction between adolescence-limited and life-course persistent antisocial behavior, it has become increasingly common to view problem behavior that makes its first appearance in adolescence as developmentally normative. This study prospectively examined the lives of individuals in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development whose patterns of antisocial behavior varied with respect to age of onset and stability from kindergarten through age 15. Consistent with past research, early-onset, persistently deviant youth experienced more contextual adversity and evinced higher levels of intraindividual disadvantages than their peers from infancy through midadolescence. However, relative to youth who never showed significantly elevated antisocial behavior through age 15, children who showed antisocial behavior primarily in adolescence also were more disadvantaged from infancy forward, as were youth who only demonstrated significant externalizing problems in childhood. Findings generally replicated across sex and did not vary as a function of whether antisocial behavior groups were defined using T-scores normed within sex or identified using an empirically driven grouping method applied to raw data.

Psychosocial (im)maturity from adolescence to early adulthood: distinguishing between adolescence-limited and persisting antisocial behavior.

In the psychological tradition, desistance from antisocial behavior is viewed as the product of psychosocial maturation, including increases in the ability to control impulses, consider the implications of ones actions on others, delay gratification in the service of longer term goals, and resist the influences of peers. The present study investigates how individual variability in the development of psychosocial maturity is associated with desistance from antisocial behavior in a sample of 1,088 serious juvenile offenders followed from adolescence to early adulthood (ages 14-25). We find that psychosocial maturity continues to develop to the midtwenties and that different developmental patterns of maturation are found among those who desist and those who persist in antisocial behavior. Compared to individuals who desisted from antisocial behavior, youths who persisted exhibited diminished development of psychosocial maturity. Moreover, earlier desistance compared to later desistance is linked to greater psychosocial maturity, suggesting that there is an association between desistance from antisocial behavior and normative increases in psychosocial maturity.

Changes in self-control problems and attention problems during middle school predict alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use during high school.

Although deficits in impulse control have been linked to adolescent use of alcohol and illicit drugs, less attention has been given to variability in change in impulse control across adolescence and whether this variability may be a signal of risk for early substance use. The goals of the current study were to examine growth in two aspects of impulse control, self-control problems and attention problems, across middle adolescence, and to test the prospective effects of level and change in these variables on levels and change over time in substance use. Data are from a community sample of 955 adolescents interviewed (along with their parents and teachers) annually from 6th to 11th grade. Results indicated that greater self-control problems and attentional problems in the 6th grade and increases in these problems over time were associated with higher levels of substance use at 11th grade. Our results suggest that modeling change over time enhances the understanding of how impulse control influences the development of substance use.