Role of cognition in mediating parental knowledge and support as precipitants of early adolescent delinquency escalation: partial replication and extension
| Date | 20 November 2024 |
| Pages | 17-33 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JCRPP-02-2024-0010 |
| Published date | 20 November 2024 |
| Author | Glenn D. Walters |
Role of cognition in mediating parental
knowledge and support as precipitants of
early adolescent delinquency escalation:
partial replication and extension
Glenn D. Walters
Abstract
Purpose –The purposeof this study was to determine whether cognitive factorsmediate the relationship
betweenparental knowledge/support and delinquencyescalation.
Design/methodology/approach –Using data from early adolescent youth enrolled in the Gang
Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) study, two analyses were performed. The first analysis cross-
lagged parental knowledge and cognitive impulsivity as predictors of del inquency escalation and the second
analysis cross-lagged parental support and moral neutralization as predictor s of delinquency escalation.
Findings –In both analyses, the indirecteffect of a change in parenting on delinquency escalationvia a
change in cognition attained significance, whereas the indirect effect of a change in cognition on
delinquencyescalation via a change in parenting did not.In neither case did the direct effect of parenting
on delinquencyachieve significance.
Research limitations/implications –This study was limited, however, by exclusive reliance on self-
report measures to assessall variables in this study and the use of explicit rather than implicit measures
of cognitiveimpulsivity and moral neutralization.
Practical implications –The practical implications of these resultsare that they point to ways in which
improvedparenting can lead to crimedeceleration; reducedcognitive impulsivity andmoral neutralization
can leadto crime deceleration.
Social implications –These results imply that social variables like parental knowledge and support
stimulate a change in cognition as part of the process by which delinquency escalates during early
adolescence.
Originality/value –The unique contribution this study makes to the field is that it highlights the role
antisocial cognition plays in mediating between social factors and delinquency as part of the crime
accelerationprocess that often occurs in early adolescence.
Keywords Delinquency, Assessment, Parental knowledge, Parental support, Cognitive impulsivity,
Moral neutralization
Paper type Research paper
It is imperative that we identify the mechanisms and processes responsible for
behaviors like crime and delinquency. Forif we can explain the mechanisms, we are in
a position to prevent and effectively treat these problems. Although we are still a long
way from fully understanding the evolution of crime and delinquency, criminologists have
collected clues over the years. Two of these clues are that crime generates a recognizable
age pattern and that some variables come before other variables in chained sequences
culminating in delinquency and crime. The first clue derives from the age-crime curve
(Farrington, 1986) which finds crime escalating in late childhood/early adolescence,
peaking in mid-to late-adolescence and then de-escalating, often to thepoint of desistance,
Glenn D. Walters is based
at Kutztown University of
Pennsylvania, Kutztown,
Pennsylvania, USA.
Received 29 February 2024
Revised 21 October 2024
Accepted 28 October 2024
The author received no funding
for this paper and has no
conflicts of interest to report.
DOI 10.1108/JCRPP-02-2024-0010 VOL. 11 NO. 1 2025, pp. 17-33, ©Emerald Publishing Limited,ISSN 2056-3841 jJOU RNAL OF CRIMINOLOGICAL RESEARCH, POLICY AND PRACTICE jPAGE 17
in early adulthood (Le Blanc, 2002). The second clue is that crime genesis is a function of
multiple variables and that some of these variables precede other variables in the cascade
of events that give rise to crime and delinquency (Walters, 2022). These two clues were the
foundation for the current investigation into the role of parenting and cognition in
delinquency escalation duringearly adolescence.
Variable sequences
From a developmental or longitudinal standpoint, variables exist in sequence (Greenberg,
2010). Adopting this approach with Agnew’s (1992) general strain theory of crime,
Hoffmann and Cerbone (1999) determined that experiencing a relatively large number of
stressful life events in early adolescence contributed to significant delinquent growth, to the
point where a greater number of stressful lifeevents, whether transitional (e.g., moving from
junior high school to high school) or mundane (e.g., changing residences, sibling’s illness),
led to delinquency escalation. Looking further into this issue, we can see that the latent trait
or propensity model of delinquency development (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990;Rowe
et al., 1990) and the criminal careers model (Blumstein et al., 1986;Loeber and Le Blanc,
1990) each have something to contribute to our understanding of variable sequences,
particularly when they concern areas of commonality and continuity in crime and criminal
careers (Osgood and Rowe, 1994). It is also important to consider whether these
sequences are unidirectional or bidirectional. Thornberry (1987), for instance,has proposed
that many such sequences are, in fact, reciprocal, whereas Walters (2022) maintains that
criminological relationships tend to be unidirectional in the short-term but then often
become bidirectional in the long-run. In an attempt to shed further light on these issues, we
turn to crime-relevant socialand cognitive factors.
Social factors
Parents, peers, neighborhoodsand society in general are just a few of the social factors that
contribute to delinquency. One of the more extensively studiedsocial factors in research on
delinquency is parenting, which can be broken down into parental control and support.
Hoeve and colleagues (2009,2012) have conducted several meta-analyses, the results of
which indicate that the positive aspects of parental control (e.g., parental monitoring, which
will be referred to as parental knowledge from this point forward) are associated with lower
levels of delinquency, whereas the negative aspects of parental support (e.g., parental
rejection, poor attachment) predict higher levels of delinquency. There isalso evidence that
the relationship between parentingand delinquency is reciprocal, to where delinquency has
as much impact on parenting as parenting has on delinquency. In one such study, Lee
et al. (2020) found that authoritative parenting and child delinquency entered into a
reciprocal relationship such that high levels of authoritative parenting predicted decreased
levels of delinquency and high levels of child delinquency predicted decreased levels of
authoritative parenting. Broader sociological factors like poverty and inadequate housing
(Maxwell et al., 2023) and other more narrow social influences like peer delinquency
(Merdovi
cet al.,2024) may have a moderating effect on the parenting-delinquency
relationship given the decreased impact of parenting on child behavior as peer influence
grows over the course of adolescence (Firmin, 2017). A question these studies do not
answer is whether the parenting-delinquency relationship is mediated by other variables,
which is our next topic of discussion.
Cognitive factors
Walters (2022) maintains that cognitive factors are as important as social factors in
explaining crime but that they tend to mediate the social variable-delinquency relationship
rather than the other way around. The two dimensions of cognition emphasized in Walters’
PAGE 18 jJOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGICAL RESEARCH, POLICY AND PRACTICE jVOL. 11 NO. 1 2025
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