3-233 - Risky Exposures: The Interplay of Community Violence and Maladjusted Peers in Developmental Outcomes

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

A difficult reality of life in many urban environments is the occurrence of community violence. In the most highly impacted neighborhoods, adolescents will have frequent opportunities to witness or be victimized by extreme acts of violence. Initially, research examining the implications of these very stressful experiences for young people’s development emphasized the immediate implications for behavioral and psychological adjustment. More recently, evidence has emerged that community violence exposure can determine adjustment outcomes through a pernicious influence on affiliations with peers. The proposed symposium will bring together a series of prospective studies that provide new evidence regarding reciprocal associations between community violence exposure and friendships with maladjusted peers.

The first paper will examine relations between community violence exposure and academic disengagement among adolescents’ friends. The authors will describe a mediational model with neighborhood violence shaping academic environments and subsequent attributes of friends. Building on the theme of affiliative patterns and classroom performance as inter-related processes, the second paper will examine multi-wave transactions linking witnessed violence to academic goals, classroom performance, and affiliation with delinquent peers. The third paper will continue this focus on the role of delinquent peers by viewing peer associations as both a predictor and outcome of violence exposure. The final paper presents an innovative use of latent class analysis to assess overlap between community violence exposure and profiles of delinquency in peer networks. Taken together, these four papers will shed light on the potential mechanisms through which violence exposure can exact an enduring toll on social development.

Sub Unit

• Developmental Psychopathology

Chair

• David Schwartz, USC

Individual Presentations

• Exposure to Violence in the Community Predicts Friendships with Academically Disengaged Peers during Middle Adolescence - Presenting Author: David Schwartz, USC; Brynn M Kelly, IWK Health Centre; Luiza Vianna Mali, University of Southern California; Mylien T Duong, University of Washington Medical Center

• Exposure to Community Violence and Deviant Peer Affiliations: Influences on Adolescent Achievement through Goal Orientation - Presenting Author: Wendy Kliewer, Virginia Commonwealth University; David W Sosnowski, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Violence Exposure, Delinquency, and Deviant Peers: Reciprocal Relationships Across Adolescence - Presenting Author: Sylvie Mrug, University of Alabama at Birmingham; Michael Windle, Emory

• A Latent Class Analysis of Community Violence Exposure and Delinquency in the Peer Network among African American Adolescents - Presenting Author: Amanda N Burnside, Loyola University Chicago; Noni K. Gaylord-Harden, Loyola University Chicago; Suzanna So, Loyola University Chicago; Dexter R. Voisin, University of Chicago