Individual in Context: The Role of Impulse Control on the Association between the Home, School, and Neighborhood Developmental Contexts and Adolescent Delinquency

Abstract

Social ecological theories and decades of supporting research suggest that contexts exert a powerful influence on adolescent delinquency. Individual traits, such as impulse control, also pose a developmental disadvantage to adolescents through increasing risk of delinquency. However, such individual differences may also predispose some youth to struggle more in adverse environments, but also to excel in enriched environments. Despite the prominence of impulse control in both developmental and criminological literatures, researchers are only beginning to consider impulse control as an individual characteristic that may affect developmental outcomes in response to environmental input. Using a racially diverse (Latino 46 %; Black 37 %; White 15 %; other race 2 %) sample of 1,216 first-time, male, juvenile offenders from the longitudinal Crossroads Study, this study examined key interactions between baseline impulse control and the home, school, and neighborhood contexts in relation to delinquency within the following 6 months. The results indicated that even after accounting for prior delinquency, youth in more negative home, school, and neighborhood contexts engaged in the same amount of delinquency in the following 6 months regardless of their level of impulse control. However, the effects of positive home, school, and neighborhood contexts on delinquency were stronger for youth with moderate or high impulse control and minimally affected youth with low impulse control. The findings suggest two risk factors for delinquency: low impulse control as a dispositional vulnerability that operates independently of developmental context, and a second that results from a contextual vulnerability.

Concerns of Parents with or Raising Adolescent Children: a Qualitative Study of Iranian Families

“…Review of literature and study existing research gaps according to result of studies contexts (family, home, school, and neighborhood) exert a powerful influence on adolescent development. 4 , 13 , 14 Severe offenses in families create and solidify emotional and behavioral problems in adolescents15 and, in some cases, these might have outcomes such as delinquency, addiction, neurotic disorders, dropping out of school, leaving home, etc. 16 , 17…”

Neighborhood Moderation of Sensation Seeking Effects on Adolescent Substance Use Initiation

“…These studies hypothesize that the effects of sensation seeking would be stronger in advantaged neighborhoods and weaker in disadvantaged neighborhoods. There is also evidence to support this hypothesis, with studies demonstrating stronger effects of impulsivity and impulse control on delinquency in neighborhoods characterized by higher SES and less disorder, whereas impulsivity effects are suppressed in the most disadvantaged, disorganized neighborhoods (Zimmerman 2010; Fine et al 2016). Most relevant to the current study of substance use, Ray and colleagues (2016) studied a cross-sectional sample of justice-involved youth and found that youth impulse control was negatively related to youth substance use, and that this relation was stronger in the most socially organized neighborhoods.…”

Impulse Control Moderates the Link Between Parent–Child Cultural Orientation Gaps and Externalizing Problems in Chinese Immigrant Early Adolescents

“…Yet surprisingly little attention has been paid to individual factors that may be additionally important in coping resources amenable to interventions. Here, we propose that the cultural orientation gap–externalizing problems link may depend on levels of early adolescents’ IC (Fine, Mahler, Steinberg, Frick, & Cauffman, 2017). IC is the ability to self-regulate and inhibit an automatic response in order to successfully complete a goal (Bezdjian, Baker, Lozano, & Raine, 2009).…”

“…IC is the ability to self-regulate and inhibit an automatic response in order to successfully complete a goal (Bezdjian, Baker, Lozano, & Raine, 2009). It becomes a crucial skill at the entry into adolescence and has been found to moderate the effects of contextual stressors (e. g., poverty, negative parenting) on externalizing difficulties (see Fine et al, 2017). IC transcends innate abilities linked to intelligence, involving behavioral components that are susceptible to environmental influences, including parenting practices and poverty (see Jaramillo, Rendón, Muñoz, Weis, & Trommsdorff, 2017; Li-Grining, 2012).…”