Exposure to Gun Violence: Associations with Anxiety, Depressive Symptoms, and Aggression among Male Juvenile Offenders.

Objective: To examine whether at-risk male youth experience increases in anxiety, depressive symptoms, and aggression during years when they are exposed to gun violence, adjusting for relevant covariates.Method: Participants were 1,216 male, justice-involved adolescents who were recently arrested for the first time for a moderate offense. They were interviewed 9 times over 5 years. Fixed effects (within-individual) regression models were used to estimate concurrent associations between exposure to gun violence and three outcomes: depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and aggression (both overall and separately for proactive and reactive aggression). The reverse direction (anxiety, depressive symptoms, and aggression predicting gun violence exposure) was also modeled.Results: After controlling for covariates, exposure to gun violence was significantly associated with increases in reactive aggression and, to a lesser extent, increases in proactive aggression. In addition, gun violence exposure was associated with increased anxiety but not depressive symptoms. We found no support for the reverse direction.Conclusions: At-risk males experienced significant increases in anxiety and aggression (particularly reactive aggression) during years when they are exposed to gun violence, even after accounting for several potential confounding factors. The greater impact on reactive aggression suggests that exposure to gun violence may affect self-regulation and/or social information processing. The analyses shed light on the less-visible damage wrought by gun violence and underscore the importance of mental health screening and treatment for youth who have been exposed to violence - especially gun violence - both to assist individual youths and to disrupt cycles of violence.

Around the world, adolescence is a time of heightened sensation seeking and immature self-regulation.

The dual systems model of adolescent risk-taking portrays the period as one characterized by a combination of heightened sensation seeking and still-maturing self-regulation, but most tests of this model have been conducted in the United States or Western Europe. In the present study, these propositions are tested in an international sample of more than 5000 individuals between ages 10 and 30 years from 11 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, using a multi-method test battery that includes both self-report and performance-based measures of both constructs. Consistent with the dual systems model, sensation seeking increased between preadolescence and late adolescence, peaked at age 19, and declined thereafter, whereas self-regulation increased steadily from preadolescence into young adulthood, reaching a plateau between ages 23 and 26. Although there were some variations in the magnitude of the observed age trends, the developmental patterns were largely similar across countries.

Puberty Predicts Approach But Not Avoidance on the Iowa Gambling Task in a Multinational Sample.

According to the dual systems model of adolescent risk taking, sensation seeking and impulse control follow different developmental trajectories across adolescence and are governed by two different brain systems. The authors tested whether different underlying processes also drive age differences in reward approach and cost avoidance. Using a modified Iowa Gambling Task in a multinational, cross-sectional sample of 3,234 adolescents (ages 9-17; M = 12.87, SD = 2.36), pubertal maturation, but not age, predicted reward approach, mediated through higher sensation seeking. In contrast, age, but not pubertal maturation, predicted increased cost avoidance, mediated through greater impulse control. These findings add to evidence that adolescent behavior is best understood as the product of two interacting, but independently developing, brain systems.

Severe Violence During Adolescence and Early Adulthood and Its Relation to Anticipated Rewards and Costs.

This report compares the effects (concurrent and lagged) of the anticipated rewards and costs of violent crime on engagement in severe violence in a sample of male juvenile offenders (N = 1,170; 42.1% black, 34.0% Hispanic, 19.2% white, and 4.6% other; ages 14-18 at baseline). Anticipated rewards (social approval, thrill) are more predictive of concurrent severe violence than are anticipated costs (social disapproval, risk of punishment). The analysis finds no evidence that perceptions of the rewards and costs of violent crime influence engagement in severe violence 6 months later. The results support the view that adolescence is a time of heightened reward salience but raise doubt about the longitudinal predictive validity of perceptions about crime during this time of life.

Using wise interventions to motivate deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice leads to world-class excellence across domains. In the current investigation, we examined whether psychologically "wise" interventions targeting expectancies and values-stock antecedents of ordinary effortful behaviors-could motivate nonexperts to engage in deliberate practice and improve their achievement. As a preliminary, we developed and validated a novel task measure of deliberate practice and confirmed its association with (a) expectancy-value beliefs, and (b) achievement in the nonexpert setting (Study 1). Next, across 4 longitudinal, randomized-controlled, field experiments, we intervened. Among lower-achievers, wise deliberate practice interventions improved math performance for 5th and 6th graders (Study 2), end-of-semester grades for undergraduates (Study 3), and end-of-quarter grades for 6th graders (Study 4); the same pattern of results emerged in end-of-quarter grades for 7th graders (Study 5). Following the intervention, expectancy-value beliefs and deliberate practice improved for 1 month (Study 4), but not 4 (Study 5). Treatment proved beneficial over and above 2 control conditions: 1 that taught standard study skills (Studies 2 and 3), and 1 that discussed deep interests, generalized motivation, and high achievement (Studies 4 and 5). Collectively, these findings provide preliminary support for the heretofore untested hypothesis that deliberate practice submits to the same laws that govern typical forms of effortful behavior, and that wise interventions that tap into these laws can spur short-term gains in adaptive beliefs, deliberate practice, and objectively measured achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record

Self-reported intolerance of uncertainty and behavioural decisions.

Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) appears to be a robust transdiagnostic risk factor related to anxiety and depression. Most transdiagnostic IU research has used the self-report Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale-Short Form; however, there is comparatively little research exploring presumed behavioral correlates of IU. The current study was designed to assess relationships between self-reported IU and decisions in uncertainty-based behavioral tasks (specifically, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, the Risky Gains Task, and the Modified Iowa Gambling Task). Participants comprised compensated community members (n = 108; 69% women) and undergraduates (n = 98; 78% women). Community member compensation was not contingent on performance, but undergraduate compensation was partially contingent on performance. Results replicated prior research, with both samples producing small (r = .19) to moderate (r = -.29) correlations (ps < .05) between self-reported IU and outcome variables from each of the behavioral tasks. The relationships were larger in the undergraduate sample, likely due to the compensation incentive. In general, the results suggest that increasing IU is associated with increasingly risk adverse behaviors; however, the relationship appears complex and in need of substantial additional research to understand how clinically-significant IU would impact pathology-related behaviours.

The dual systems model: Review, reappraisal, and reaffirmation.

According to the dual systems perspective, risk taking peaks during adolescence because activation of an early-maturing socioemotional-incentive processing system amplifies adolescents' affinity for exciting, pleasurable, and novel activities at a time when a still immature cognitive control system is not yet strong enough to consistently restrain potentially hazardous impulses. We review evidence from both the psychological and neuroimaging literatures that has emerged since 2008, when this perspective was originally articulated. Although there are occasional exceptions to the general trends, studies show that, as predicted, psychological and neural manifestations of reward sensitivity increase between childhood and adolescence, peak sometime during the late teen years, and decline thereafter, whereas psychological and neural reflections of better cognitive control increase gradually and linearly throughout adolescence and into the early 20s. While some forms of real-world risky behavior peak at a later age than predicted, this likely reflects differential opportunities for risk-taking in late adolescence and young adulthood, rather than neurobiological differences that make this age group more reckless. Although it is admittedly an oversimplification, as a heuristic device, the dual systems model provides a far more accurate account of adolescent risk taking than prior models that have attributed adolescent recklessness to cognitive deficiencies.

Peers Increase Late Adolescents' Exploratory Behavior and Sensitivity to Positive and Negative Feedback.

Adolescents take more risks with peers than when alone. It is not clear how peer presence affects adolescents' risky decision making, however. We used the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT)-a game used to assess decision making involving risk and reward-to examine how peers affect late adolescents' exploration of relevant environmental cues, ability to learn from the outcomes (positive and negative) of that exploration, and ability to integrate feedback to adjust behavior toward optimal long-term outcomes. One hundred and one 18- to 22-year old males (M = 19.8 years) were randomly assigned to play the IGT either alone or observed by peers. Late adolescents tested with observers engaged in more exploratory behavior, learned faster from both positive and negative outcomes, and evinced better task performance than those tested alone.

The effects of violence exposure on the development of impulse control and future orientation across adolescence and early adulthood: Time-specific and generalized effects in a sample of juvenile offenders.

Impulse control and future orientation increase across adolescence, but little is known about how contextual factors shape the development of these capacities. The present study investigates how stress exposure, operationalized as exposure to violence, alters the developmental pattern of impulse control and future orientation across adolescence and early adulthood. In a sample of 1,354 serious juvenile offenders, higher exposure to violence was associated with lower levels of future orientation at age 15 and suppressed development of future orientation from ages 15 to 25. Increases in witnessing violence or victimization were linked to declines in impulse control 1 year later, but only during adolescence. Thus, beyond previous experiences of exposure to violence, witnessing violence and victimization during adolescence conveys unique risk for suppressed development of self-regulation.

Will Not Want: Self-Control Rather than Motivation Explains the Female Advantage in Report Card Grades.

Girls earn better grades than boys, but the mechanism explaining this gender difference is not well understood. We examined the relative importance of self-control and motivation in explaining the female advantage in grades. In Study 1, we surveyed middle school teachers and found they judged girls to be higher in both school motivation and self-control. In Studies 2 and 3-using self-reported motivation and teacher- and/or parent-reported self-control, and quarterly and final grades obtained from school records-we find that self-control, but not school motivation, helps to explain the gender gap in academic performance. In these studies, girls appeared to be more self-controlled than boys, but-contrary to teacher judgments in Study 1-did not appear to be more motivated to do well in school.

Callous-unemotional traits and adolescents' role in group crime.

The current study examined the association of callous-unemotional (CU) traits with group offending (i.e., committing a crime with others; gang involvement) and with the role that the offender may play in a group offense (e.g., being the leader). This analysis was conducted in an ethnically and racially diverse sample (N = 1,216) of justice-involved adolescents (ages 13 to 17) from 3 different sites. CU traits were associated with a greater likelihood of the adolescent offending in groups and being in a gang. Importantly, both associations remained significant after controlling for the adolescent's age, level of intelligence, race and ethnicity, and level of impulse control. The association of CU traits with gang membership also remained significant after controlling for the adolescent's history of delinquent behavior. Further, CU traits were associated with several measures of taking a leadership role in group crimes. CU traits were also associated with greater levels of planning in the group offense for which the adolescent was arrested, although this was moderated by the adolescent's race and was not found in Black youth. These results highlight the importance of CU traits for understanding the group process involved in delinquent acts committed by adolescents. They also underscore the importance of enhancing the effectiveness of treatments for these traits in order to reduce juvenile delinquency.

Sex differences in the developmental trajectories of impulse control and sensation-seeking from early adolescence to early adulthood.

It has been proposed that high rates of risk-taking in adolescence are partly attributable to patterns of neurobiological development that promote an increase in sensation-seeking tendencies at a time when impulse control is still developing. It is not known, however, whether this pattern is the same for males and females. The present study investigates sex differences in the developmental trajectories of self-reported impulse control and sensation-seeking between the ages of 10 and 25 using longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 Child and Young Adult Survey (N = 8,270; 49% female; 33% Black, 22% Hispanic, 45% Non-Black, Non-Hispanic). Prior work has found that, consistent with the dual-systems model of adolescent neurobiological development, sensation-seeking rises and falls across this age span, whereas impulse control increases into the 20s. In the present study, we find that this same general pattern holds for both males and females, but with some key differences. As expected, males exhibit higher levels of sensation-seeking and lower levels of impulse control than females. Differences also emerged in the shapes of the developmental trajectories. Females reach peak levels of sensation-seeking earlier than males (consistent with the idea that sensation-seeking is linked to pubertal development) and decline in sensation-seeking more rapidly thereafter. Also, males increase in impulse control more gradually than females. Consequently, sex differences in both impulse control and sensation-seeking increase with age. The findings suggest that the window of heightened vulnerability to risk-taking during adolescence may be greater in magnitude and more protracted for males than for females.

Survivor mission: Do those who survive have a drive to thrive at work?

Are helping professionals who have experienced the same types of struggles as their clients more engaged at work? In the current investigation, we examine this question in samples of police detectives (with and without a history of violent victimization) and mental health workers (with and without a history of mental illness). Our results indicate that police detectives who have experienced violent victimization and mental health professionals who have experienced the same mental illness as their clients do indeed exhibit greater work engagement than their colleagues who lack these parallel life experiences. The link between a professional's firsthand experience of his/her client's hardships and work engagement appears to be partially explained by higher levels of grit among police detectives and by a greater sense of life-narrative continuity among mental health professionals.

The grit effect: predicting retention in the military, the workplace, school and marriage.

Remaining committed to goals is necessary (albeit not sufficient) to attaining them, but very little is known about domain-general individual differences that contribute to sustained goal commitment. The current investigation examines the association between grit, defined as passion and perseverance for long-term goals, other individual difference variables, and retention in four different contexts: the military, workplace sales, high school, and marriage. Grit predicted retention over and beyond established context-specific predictors of retention (e.g., intelligence, physical aptitude, Big Five personality traits, job tenure) and demographic variables in each setting. Grittier soldiers were more likely to complete an Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) selection course, grittier sales employees were more likely to keep their jobs, grittier students were more likely to graduate from high school, and grittier men were more likely to stay married. The relative predictive validity of grit compared to other traditional predictors of retention is examined in each of the four studies. These findings suggest that in addition to domain-specific influences, there may be domain-general individual differences which influence commitment to diverse life goals over time.

Deciding in the dark: age differences in intuitive risk judgment.

Elevated levels of risky behavior in adolescence may signal developmental change in unconscious appraisal of risk. Yet, prior research examining adolescent risk judgment has used tasks that elicit conscious deliberation. The present study, in contrast, attempts to characterize age differences in (less conscious) intuitive impressions of risk. Participants (N = 282; ages 10-30) were presented with depictions of a range of risky and nonrisky activities. They were given 2.5 s to rate each activity on a continuous scale ranging from "bad idea" (low-risk favorability) to "good idea" (high-risk favorability). A curvilinear pattern was found, such that favorability ratings increased across adolescence and peaked around age 20. These results pose a challenge to developmental models that view early adolescence as the period of greatest predisposition toward risk taking; however, they are fairly consistent with age patterns for actual risk taking, at least with respect to crime, binge drinking, and unwanted pregnancy.

Does mother know best? Adolescent and mother reports of impulsivity and subsequent delinquency.

Although impulsivity is one of the strongest psychological predictors of crime, it is unclear how well impulsivity, measured at a specific moment in adolescence, predicts criminal behavior months or years into the future. The present study investigated how far into the future self-reports and parents' reports of a youth's impulsivity predicted whether he engaged in illegal behavior, whether one reporter's assessment was more predictive than the other's, and whether there is value in obtaining multiple reports. Data were obtained from a 6-year longitudinal study of adjudicated juvenile offenders (n = 701 mother-son dyads). Youth (m = 15.93 years old; sd = 1.14) and their mothers independently reported on adolescents' impulsivity at the initial assessment. We examined the prospective correlation of these measures with illegal behavior, assessed by official records of arrests and youths' self-reports of offending across the 72-month study period. Youths' and mothers' reports of the adolescents' impulsivity were weakly, but significantly, correlated with one another. Furthermore, mothers' ratings of their sons' impulsivity predicted arrest up to 6 years into the future, whereas youths' reports did not significantly predict arrest beyond 30 months. With respect to youths' self-reports of offending, mothers' ratings of impulsivity again predicted farther into the future (as late as 6 years later) than did youths' self-reports of impulsivity, which were not predictive beyond 4 years. However, across the first 4 years, youths' self-reports of impulsivity explained more variance in self-reported offending than did mothers' ratings. The results underscore the endurance of the predictive utility of an assessment of impulsivity and the importance (and accuracy) of parents' reports of developmental constructs, even when their children are adolescents.

Interrogations, confessions, and guilty pleas among serious adolescent offenders.

In the present study, we examined (a) the prevalence and characteristics of youths' true and false admissions (confessions and guilty pleas), (b) youths' interrogation experiences with police and lawyers, and (c) whether youths' interrogation experiences serve as situational risk factors for true and false admissions. We interviewed 193 14- to 17-year-old males (M = 16.4) incarcerated for serious crimes. Over 1/3 of the sample (35.2%) claimed to have made a false admission to legal authorities (17.1% false confession; 18.1% false guilty plea), and 2/3 claimed to have made a true admission (28.5% true confession; 37.3% true guilty plea). The majority of youth said that they had experienced high-pressure interrogations (e.g., threats), especially with police officers. Youth who mentioned experiencing "police refusals" (e.g., of a break to rest) were more likely to report having made both true and false confessions to police, whereas only false confessions were associated with claims of long interrogations (>2 hr) and being questioned in the presence of a friend. The number of self-reported high-pressure lawyer tactics was associated with false, but not true, guilty pleas. Results suggest the importance of conducting specialized trainings for those who interrogate youth, recording interrogations, placing limits on lengthy and manipulative techniques, and exploring alternative procedures for questioning juvenile suspects.

Race, ideology, and the tea party: a longitudinal study.

The Tea Party movement, which rose to prominence in the United States after the election of President Barack Obama, provides an ideal context in which to examine the roles of racial concerns and ideology in politics. A three-wave longitudinal study tracked changes in White Americans' self-identification with the Tea Party, racial concerns (prejudice and racial identification), and ideologies (libertarianism and social conservatism) over nine months. Latent Growth Modeling (LGM) was used to evaluate potential causal relationships between Tea Party identification and these factors. Across time points, racial prejudice was indirectly associated with movement identification through Whites' assertions of national decline. Although initial levels of White identity did not predict change in Tea Party identification, initial levels of Tea Party identification predicted increases in White identity over the study period. Across the three assessments, support for the Tea Party fell among libertarians, but rose among social conservatives. Results are discussed in terms of legitimation theories of prejudice, the "racializing" power of political judgments, and the ideological dynamics of the Tea Party.

Reward-biased risk appraisal and its relation to juvenile versus adult crime.

To what extent is criminal behavior in adolescence attributable to risk appraisal? Using two large cross-sectional samples (N = 929, age range: 10-30 years; and N = 1,357, age range: 12-24 years), we examine whether (a) reward bias in risk appraisal is more prominent in adolescence and (b) the association between risk appraisal and criminal behavior is stronger during adolescence than at other ages. In Study 1, criminal behavior was self-reported; in Study 2, it was defined by involvement with the court. Perceived chances of a negative outcome, seriousness of consequences, and benefits versus costs of various risky activities were assessed to gauge reward bias in risk appraisal. The findings indicate that reward bias is elevated during the adolescence years. Also, risk appraisal bears a stronger relation to self-reported crime in middle adolescence and to official law-breaking behavior in early adolescence than at other ages. The findings are consistent with a dual-systems model of adolescent development and align with recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions addressing juvenile offenders' culpability.

The age-crime curve in adolescence and early adulthood is not due to age differences in economic status.

One of the most consistent findings in developmental criminology is the "age-crime curve"-the observation that criminal behavior increases in adolescence and decreases in adulthood. Recently, Brown and Males (Justice policy J 8:1-30, 2011) conducted an analysis of aggregate arrest, poverty, and population data from California and concluded that the widely-observed adolescent peak in rates of offending is not a consequence of developmental factors, but rather an artifact of age differences in economic status. Youngsters, they argue, offend more than adults because they are poorer than adults. The present study challenges Brown and Males' proposition by analyzing data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY97; N = 8,984; 51% female; 26% Black, 21% Hispanic, 52% non-Black, non-Hispanic; ages 12-18 at Wave 1), which collected measures of criminal behavior and economic status at multiple time points. Consistent with scores of other studies, we find that criminal offending peaks in adolescence, even after controlling for variation in economic status. Our findings both counter Brown and Males' claim that the age-crime curve is illusory and underscore the danger of drawing inferences about individual behavior from analysis of aggregated data.