Cognitive Impulsivity as a Mediator of the Parental Knowledge-Childhood Aggression Relationship

Abstract

In a previous study, reactive criminal thinking or cognitive impulsivity mediated the relationship between parental knowledge and delinquency. This study sought to determine whether cognitive impulsivity also mediated the relationship between parental knowledge and childhood aggression. A path analysis was performed on a sample of 438 early adolescent boys (n = 206) and girls (n = 232) from the Illinois Study of Bullying and Sexual Violence using three waves of non-overlapping data. As predicted, cognitive impulsivity mediated the relationship between parental knowledge and childhood aggression, but cognitive insensitivity did not. The results of this study provide ongoing support for the general conceptual argument that childhood aggression parallels delinquency in certain respects and that parental knowledge deters both future delinquency and childhood aggression by reducing the cognitive impulsivity that is central to the behavioral patterns of delinquency and childhood aggression.

Keywords

parental knowledge cognitive impulsivity childhood aggression

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Baldry

A. C.

Farrington

D. P.

(2000). Bullies and delinquents: Personal characteristics and parental styles. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 10, 17-31.

Bosworth

Espelage

D. L.

Simon

T. R.

(1999). Factors associated with bullying behavior in middle school students. Journal of Early Adolescence, 19, 341-362.

Burkhart

K. M.

Knox

Brockmyer

(2013). Pilot evaluation of the ACT Raising Safe Kids program on children’s bullying behavior. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 22, 942-951.

Collins

L. M.

Schafer

J. L.

Kam

C. M.

(2001). A comparison of inclusive and restrictive strategies in modern missing data procedures. Psychological Methods, 6, 330-351.

Elwert

Winship

(2014). Endogenous selection bias: The problem of conditioning on a collider variable. Annual Review of Sociology, 40, 31-53.

Espelage

D. L.

Asidao

C. S.

(2001). Conversations with middle school students about bullying and victimization: Should we be concerned? In Geffner

Loring

Young

(Eds.), Bullying behaviors: Current issues, research, and interventions (pp. 123-142). Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press.

Espelage

D. L.

Holt

M. K.

(2001). Bullying and victimization during early adolescence: Peer influences and psychosocial correlates. In Geffner

Loring

Young

(Eds.), Bullying behaviors: Current issues, research, and interventions (pp. 49-62). Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press.

Espelage

D. L.

Low

S. K.

Anderson

De La Rue

(2014). Bullying, sexual, and dating violence trajectories from early to late adolescence (Report submitted to the National Institute of Justice Grant #2011-MU-FX-0022). Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.

Farrington

D. P.

Ttofi

M. M.

(2009). Reducing school bullying: Evidence-based implications for policy. Crime and Justice, 38, 281-345.

10.

Fletcher

A. C.

Steinberg

Williams-Wheeler

(2004). Parental influences on adolescent problem behavior: Revisiting Stattin and Kerr. Child Development, 75, 781-796.

11.

Fosco

W. D.

Hawk

L. W.

Colder

C. R.

Meisel

S. N.

Lengua

L. J.

(2019). The development of inhibitory control in adolescence and prospective relations with delinquency. Journal of Adolescence, 76, 37-47.

12.

Gottfredson

M. R.

Hirschi

(1990). A general theory of crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

13.

Hoeve

Dubas

J. S.

Eichelsheim

V. I.

van der Laan

P. H.

Smeenk

Gerris

J. R. M.

(2009). The relationship between parenting and delinquency: A meta-analysis. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 37, 749-775.

14.

Kenny

D. A.

(2013). Mediation: Sensitivity analysis [webinar]. Retrieved from http://davidakenny.net/webinars/Mediation/Sensitivity/Sensitivity.html

15.

Lahey

B. B.

Van Hulle

C. A.

D’Onofrio

B. M.

Rodgers

J. L.

Waldman

I. D.

(2008). Is parental knowledge of their adolescent offspring’s whereabouts and peer associations spuriously associated with offspring delinquency? Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 36, 807-823.

16.

Longobardi

Badenes-Ribera

(2019). The relationship between animal cruelty in children and adolescent and interpersonal violence: A systematic review. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 46, 201-211.

17.

Lösel

Bender

(2014). Aggressive, delinquent, and violent outcomes of school bullying: Do family and individual factors have a protective function? Journal of School Violence, 13, 59-79.

18.

Morcillo

Ramos-Olazagasti

M. A.

Blanco

Sala

Canino

Bird

Duarte

C. S.

(2015). Socio-cultural context and bulling others in childhood. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24, 2241-2249.

19.

Muthén

(2017). Mplus user’s guide (8th ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Author.

20.

Olweus

(1993). Bullying at school: What we know and what we can do. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

21.

Piquero

A. R.

Jennings

W. G.

Diamond

Farrington

D. P.

Tremblay

R. E.

Welsh

B. C.

Reingle Gonzalez

J. M.

(2016). A meta-analysis update on the effects of early family/parent training programs on antisocial behavior and delinquency. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 12, 229-248.

22.

Preacher

K. J.

Selig

J. P.

(2012). Advantages of Monte Carlo confidence intervals for indirect effects. Communication Methods and Measures, 6, 77-98.

23.

Shadish

W. R.

Cook

T. D.

Campbell

D. T.

(2002). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for generalized causal inference. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

24.

Stattin

Kerr

(2000). Parental monitoring: A reinterpretation. Child Development, 71, 1072-1085.

25.

Stavrinides

Nikiforou

Georgiou

(2015). Do mothers know? Longitudinal associations between parental knowledge, bullying, and victimization. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 32, 180-196.

26.

Tokić

Pećnik

(2010). Parental behaviors related to adolescents’ self-disclosure: Adolescents’ views. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 28, 201-222.

27.

Walters

G. D.

(2016). Proactive and reactive criminal thinking, psychological inertia, and the crime continuity conundrum. Journal of Criminal Justice, 46, 45-51.

28.

Walters

G. D.

(2017). Modelling the criminal lifestyle: Theorizing at the edge of chaos. London, England: Palgrave Macmillan.

29.

Walters

G. D.

(2018). Unsupervised routine activities as a mediator of the parent knowledge–delinquency relationship. Justice Quarterly, 35, 871-894.

30.

Walters

G. D.

(2020a). Parental control as a stimulus for youth control: Mediating the parental knowledge–child delinquency relationship with reactive criminal thinking. Crime & Delinquency. Advance online publication. doi:10.1177/0011128720962449

31.

Walters

G. D.

(2020b). Trajectories of bullying victimization and perpetration in Australian school children and their relationship to future delinquency and conduct problems. Psychology of Violence. Advance online publication. doi:10.1037/vio0000322

32.

Walters

G. D.

Espelage

D. L.

(2018). Cognitive insensitivity and cognitive impulsivity as mediators of bullying continuity: Extending the psychological inertia construct to bullying behavior. School Psychology Quarterly, 33, 527-536.