Background: The existing literature suggests that positive parenting might serve as a protective factor against immigrant adolescents' engagement in externalizing difficulties when they are exposed to negative experiences of ethnic derogation. To date, little is known, however, about whether different dimensions of positive parenting may moderate…

In this article we examine whether different agents of socialization--family, school, and peers--are differentially associated with offending among different immigrant groups. Our expectation is to find that the association between delinquent friends and offending is stronger for first- and second-generation immigrants than for youths of native…

Parental warmth and hostility are two key dimensions of parenting for child development, but the differential effects of these parenting dimensions on child prosocial and antisocial development has not been adequately investigated. The current study hypothesized that parental warmth would be uniquely related to child callous-unemotional traits and…

The current study explored early adolescent child-level predictors (physical aggression, impulsivity, empathy) and contextual-level predictors (peer deviance, neighborhood dangerousness) of violent and nonviolent antisocial behavior (AB) in late adolescence. Additionally, we tested the moderating role of rejecting parenting on these associations…

Longitudinal links between early childhood temperament, maternal sensitivity, and adolescents' adjustment have been proposed and found in several longitudinal studies, but the mechanisms of influence have not been explored. The authors examined the paths from maternal sensitivity and temperament in early childhood to adolescents' prosocial,…

Contextual research on delinquency is primarily based on the idea that residential areas provide a major ecological setting that (indirectly) shapes observed differences in delinquency. Just like neighborhoods, schools differ in terms of their level of structural characteristics such as the concentration of immigrant children and children from…

Adolescent consumption of screen media continues to increase. A variety of theoretical constructs hypothesize the impact of media content on health-related attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. This study uses a coding instrument based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Youth Risk Behavior Survey to analyze health behavior contained in…

Developmental taxonomies of crime disagree on whether distinctive offender trajectories are related to common or unique risks. This study examined childhood risks of differing arrest trajectories across childhood through early adulthood (from ages 10-11 to 26-27 years) that were identified in prior work for 203 at-risk, predominantly Caucasian…

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits (i.e., lack of empathy/guilt, uncaring attitudes) are believed to be a developmental antecedent to adult psychopathy and identify antisocial youth at risk for severe and persistent aggression. The psychosocial histories of antisocial and aggressive individuals with psychopathic traits are characterized by abusive or…

In a study of 5285 8th graders from the Gang Resistance and Education Training (G.R.E.A.T.) research, this study applied Travis Hirschi's social bonding theory to examine the curriculum's efficacy in increasing conventional bonding (friends with positive peers, succeeding at education etc.) and decreasing non-conventional bonding (drug…

Developmental trajectories of parents' knowledge of their adolescents' whereabouts and activities were tested as moderators of transactional associations between friends' antisociality and adolescent delinquent behavior. 504 adolescents (50% female) provided annual reports (from ages 12 to 16) of their parents' knowledge and (from ages 13 to 16)…

This study examined the interrelations between parental relationships, romantic relationships, and antisocial behavior among female and male juvenile delinquents. Participants from a diverse sample of 1,354 adolescents (14-17 years) adjudicated of a serious (i.e. felony) offense were matched based on age, race, and committing offense, yielding a…

Social learning theory provides a useful conceptual framework for understanding abuse and the teaching and learning of antisocial or criminal behavior in young offenders. This article examines social learning theory and the quality of parent-child relationships from the perspective of behavioral analysis, and provides a rationale for a…

Although the quality of parenting predicts externalizing behavior problems generally, ineffective parenting may be less relevant to explaining the behavior problems of children high in callous-unemotional traits. This study tested the potential moderating role of psychopathic features among juvenile offenders (n = 76). Youths were administered the…

The involvement of adolescents with deviant peer groups is one of the strongest proximal correlates to juvenile delinquency and stems from a variety of causes. Past research has linked ineffective parenting with peer variables, including deviant peer group involvement and peer conflict during adolescence. In this study, adolescents' appraisals of…