Elsevier

Journal of Adolescence

Volume 84, October 2020, Pages 45-55
Journal of Adolescence

Early pubertal maturation and externalizing behaviors: Examination of peer delinquency as mediator and cognitive flexibility as a moderator

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2020.07.008Get rights and content

Abstract

Introduction

While peer delinquency is a known mediator between early pubertal timing and externalizing behaviors, little is known about factors that could protect against the adverse influence of peer delinquency. This study assesses the possible moderating role of cognitive flexibility, which is one index of executive functioning that facilitates flexible and adaptive responses to challenging situations. We assessed the interactive influence of peer delinquency and cognitive flexibility in the association between pubertal maturation and externalizing behaviors in boys and girls.

Method

Participants were 220 adolescents (111 boys) from the United States, between the ages of 11 and 16 years (M = 13.2, SD = 1.53) who participated in the Adolescent Emotion Study (AES).

Results

Findings from the cross-sectional path modeling analyses provided evidence for the mediating role of peer delinquency for boys and girls, indicating that early maturing adolescents tend to affiliate with delinquent peers, which in turn exacerbates externalizing problems. Additionally, the moderating role of cognitive flexibility was also demonstrated for both boys and girls. Region of significance tests revealed that relatively well-developed cognitive flexibility skills could protect against the adverse influences of peer delinquency, whereas lower levels could exacerbate those negative influences.

Conclusion

These findings suggest that involvement with deviant peers increases vulnerability for both early maturing boys and girls. Additionally, cognitive flexibility was an important moderating factor for adolescents, such that youths with less developed skills would be at a higher risk for psychopathology, whereas those with better development could be protected.

Section snippets

Early pubertal maturation and externalizing behaviors: examination of peer delinquency as a mediator and cognitive flexibility as a moderator

A sizable body of work suggests that externalizing behaviors intensify during adolescence (Moffitt, 2003; Steinberg, 2007), thus warranting increased attention to the factors contributing to this upward trend. Research to date has recognized the role of pubertal maturation (Klopack, Simons, & Simons, 2018; Negriff & Susman, 2011), especially early timing of maturation. Early maturation has consistently been linked to elevated levels of externalizing behaviors (Beltz, Corley, Bricker, Wadsworth,

Participants

Participants included 220 adolescents (111 boys, 109 girls), aged between 11 and 16 years at recruitment (M = 13.2, SD = 1.53), who participated in the Adolescent Emotion Study (AES). AES aims to investigate the role of emotion in the development of psychopathology in adolescence (Klimes-Dougan, Hastings, Granger, Usher, & Zahn-Waxler, 2001). The ethnicity of adolescents was 70.4% Caucasian, 16.2% African-American, 1.9% Hispanic, 2.8% Asian-American, and 8.8% mixed race or other. The current

Descriptive statistics

Bivariate correlations, means, and standard deviations of the study variables for boys and girls are presented on Table 1. As shown in Table 1, there was a significant positive association between early pubertal timing and peer delinquency in girls, but not boys. Pubertal timing was also positively associated with externalizing behaviors in girls, but not boys. Additionally, peer delinquency was positively correlated with externalizing behaviors in both boys and girls; however, no significant

Discussion

The central aim of the current investigation was to delineate the complex underlying effects of pubertal timing on externalizing behaviors by incorporating the transactions between social (i.e., peer delinquency) and cognitive (i.e., cognitive flexibility) factors. Specifically, building on prior work (Haynie, 2003; Rudolph, 2014), we were interested in testing whether peer delinquency would be an important mediating component for predicting externalizing behaviors in early maturing boys and

Acknowledgements

This study is part of a larger study titled the Role of Emotion in the Development of Psychopathology (97-M-0116) supported by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Mental Health. We thank all the adolescents and their parents who participated in this study. We also extend our gratitude to Dr. Keith F. Widaman for his feedback and help with statistical analyses. Lastly, we are also thankful to Jorge Monroy for his contribution on the earlier versions of this manuscript.

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