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Age-Graded Salience of Exposure to Violence as Predictive of Dual Systems Model Development: Examining Direct Victimization vs. Witnessed Violence

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Abstract

The dual systems model is a developmental cognitive framework found to have utility for explaining engagement in antisocial behavior. Centered on differential development of sensation-seeking and impulse control, the theory has risen to prominence. Despite this, there is limited understanding of how exposure to violence may drive development in these outcomes. Specifically, knowledge is limited in terms of how different forms of exposure to violence (direct victimization, witnessed violence) may influence development of these constructs differently and whether the age at which exposure occurs matters in this regard. The present study utilized the Pathways to Desistance data to examine these relationships. Mixed effects modeling was used to analyze the data. Findings indicated that both direct victimization and witnessed violence predicted change in both dual systems constructs. However, the salience of witnessed violence for predicting sensation-seeking declined in a linear manner as participants got older. Implications are discussed.

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Notes

  1. There may also be some additional methodological limitations here pertaining to the operationalization of exposure to violence. The highlighted study included a lifetime measure of exposure to violence types prior to baseline which differed from measurement in discrete observation periods employed for the remainder of the study period. The present study omits these baseline measures of exposure to violence types because of this issue.

  2. These variables do not measure exposures to violence that occurred prior to baseline. This is because these baseline measurements assess lifetime exposures to violence, whereas the other exposure to violence measures just assess exposures that occurred during the prior observation periods. This makes them non-equivalent in terms of how they are actually measuring exposure to violence. As such, only exposures to violence during waves 2–11 observation periods are examined as predictors. Sensitivity analyses re-examined effects with the baseline measures of exposure to violence included as results were analogous to those observed in the main analyses also, indicating the robustness of findings.

  3. The following types of direct victimization were assessed to determine their presence/absence at each wave: have you been chased where you thought you might be seriously hurt? Have you been beaten up, mugged, or seriously threatened by another person? Have you been raped, had someone attempt to rape you, or been sexually attacked in some other way? Have you been attacked with a weapon, like a knife, box cutter, or bat? Have you been shot at? Have you been shot? These same items are used to assess presence/absence of witnessed violence during each observation period, but ask participants if they witnessed them occurring to someone else. A final measure which asks participants “have you seen someone else get killed as a result of violence, like being shot, stabbed, or beaten to death?” is also used to measure witnessed violence.

  4. The magnitude of the direct effect of witnessed violence on impulse control increased ten-fold upon inclusion of the interaction terms. This is because Stata assumes a linear relationship between variables of interest and inclusion of the interaction term results in assumption of the effects of witnessed violence when age is equal to 0. So, Stata assumes that this is a logical linear effect that the impact of witnessed violence increases linearly as age decreases even though there are no participants aged 0 years old in the model. For this reason, this main effect, and all other main effects in each Model 2 should be interpreted with caution.

  5. Ages 14, 25, and 26 were omitted from the marginal effects display because of small Ns at these ages.

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Wojciechowski, T. Age-Graded Salience of Exposure to Violence as Predictive of Dual Systems Model Development: Examining Direct Victimization vs. Witnessed Violence. J Dev Life Course Criminology 8, 275–297 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40865-022-00196-w

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