The purpose of this study was to determine whether bullying perpetration in early adolescence is capable of predicting delinquency 1 year later. Nine control variables were included in a regression analysis of the bullying-delinquency relationship in 1,001 schoolchildren (X-bar age = 12.97 years). The nine control variables (age, sex, race, social…

Identifying mediators in variable chains as part of a causal mediation analysis can shed light on issues of causation, assessment, and intervention. However, coefficients and effect sizes in a causal mediation analysis are nearly always small. This can lead those less familiar with the approach to reject the results of causal mediation analysis.…

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…

Psychological inertia, the process by which social-cognitive variables help maintain behavioral patterns over time, has been found to explain crime continuity. The present study sought to determine whether psychological inertia can also be used to explain continuity in bullying behavior. A group of 1,161 youth (567 male) from the Illinois Study of…

The rate at which people process information appears to influence many aspects of cognition across the lifespan. However, many commonly accepted measures of "processing speed" may require goal maintenance, manipulation of information in working memory, and decision-making, blurring the distinction between processing speed and executive…