Perceived sleep quality predicts aggressive offending in adolescence and young adulthood.

BACKGROUND: There are profound consequences when developing youth do not get adequate sleep. Adolescents who experience poor sleep may be more likely to engage in offending behavior. While there is a documented association between the number of hours youth sleep and their likelihood of offending, it is unclear how youths' perceptions of their sleep quality contribute to offending. Further, scholars have yet to rigorously examine the relation between sleep problems and offending in young adulthood, a developmental stage, which is both critical for desistance and in which sleep may play an important role. METHODS: Using a sample of 1,216 justice-involved male youth, this study uses within-individual longitudinal methods (fixed-effects Poisson regression models) to examine the relation between changes in perceptions of sleep quality and changes in offending behavior from ages 13 to 24. RESULTS: Increases in sleep problems are associated with increases in offending, particularly aggressive/person-related offenses, for both adolescents and young adults. This holds true even after controlling for time-varying anxiety, substance use, and violence exposure. CONCLUSIONS: Improving sleep quality may be critical for reducing aggressive behavior in at-risk adolescents and young adults. Interventions that address sleep quality, and not just quantity, may be particularly beneficial.

A Mixed-Methods Approach to Refining and Measuring the Construct of Positive Risk-Taking in Adolescence.

Adolescence is a peak period for risk-taking, but research has largely overlooked positive manifestations of adolescent risk-taking due to ambiguity regarding operationalization and measurement of positive risk-taking. We address this limitation using a mixed-methods approach. We elicited free responses from contemporary college students (N = 74, Mage  = 20.1 years) describing a time they took a risk. Qualitative analysis informed the construction of a self-report positive risk-taking scale, which was administered to a population-based sample of adolescents (N = 1,249, Mage  = 16 years) for quantitative validation and examination of associations with normative and impulsive personality. Sensation seeking predicted negative and positive risk-taking, whereas extraversion and openness were predominantly related to positive risk-taking. Results provide promising evidence for a valid measure of adolescents' engagement in positive risks.

The interactive effects of peers and alcohol on functional brain connectivity in young adults.

Alcohol and peer influence are known to have independent effects on risky decision making. We investigated combined influences of peers and alcohol on functional brain connectivity and behavior. Young adults underwent fMRI while completing response inhibition (Go/No-Go) and risky driving (Stoplight) tasks. Intoxicated participants made more mistakes on Go/No-Go, and showed diminished connectivity between the anterior insular cortex (AIC) and regions implicated in executive function (e.g., dorsal anterior cingulate). During the Stoplight game, peer observation was associated with increased connectivity between the AIC and regions implicated in social cognition (e.g., ventromedial prefrontal cortex). Alcohol and peers also exerted interactive influences, such that some connectivity changes only occurred when participants were observed by peers and under the influence of alcohol. These findings suggest that brain systems underlying decision making function differently under the combined influence of alcohol and peers, and highlight mechanisms through which this combination of factors is particularly risky for youth.

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.

Family rearing antecedents of pubertal timing.

Two general evolutionary hypotheses were tested on 756 White children (397 girls) studied longitudinally: (1) rearing experiences would predict pubertal timing; and (2) children would prove differentially susceptible to rearing. Analysis of pubertal measurements, including some based on repeated physical assessments, showed that mothering and fathering, earlier and later in childhood, predicted pubertal development, but only for girls, with negative parenting appearing most influential; maternal harsh control predicted earlier menarche. Rearing effects varied by infant negative emotionality, proving stronger (and opposite) for girls who in infancy were lower rather than higher in negativity. Maternal menarche, controlled in all analyses, was a stronger predictor than rearing. Findings are discussed in terms of theory development, genetic and nutritional influences, and sample restrictions.