Girl’s Perceived Pubertal Timing and Deviant Peer Processes Predicting Marijuana Use Initiation: The Moderating Role of Impulsivity

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Topic - Developmental Psychopathology

Abstract

Pubertal development reflects a significant change in a young person’s life and one that can increase the liability of substance use. Some youth may experience difficulty during this transitional state, in particular those who may perceive a greater degree of mismatch between their pubertal maturation and chronological age (i.e., perceived pubertal timing [PPT]). Adolescents who perceive themselves to be more physically developed than their same-age, same-sex peers may begin to orient towards older, more deviant peers (Stattin & Magnusson, 1990). According to the peer-socialization hypothesis (Catalano et al., 1996), adolescents who affiliate with deviant peers may adapt to the group norm and engage in risky behaviors such as substance use. Prior research has commonly found that the association between PPT and deviant peer affiliation is moderated by certain contexts such as parental monitoring (Westling et al., 2008). We aim to extend prior work by examining if the association is moderated by impulsivity as a personality factor that develops over the course of adolescence. Early-maturing adolescents who are also more impulsive may be rejected by conventional peer groups and more likely to affiliate with deviant peers than early-maturing adolescents who are less impulsive. We hypothesized that PPT would be positively associated with deviant peer affiliation, which in turn would be related to earlier marijuana use initiation. We also hypothesized that the association between PPT and deviant peers would only be significant at high levels of impulsivity. Lastly, we examined the effect of gender on these relationships.

In this longitudinal study, 342 adolescents ages 10–12 years (265 with a family history of substance use disorder, 77 without) and their parents were recruited from the community. Participants completed a baseline assessment and follow-up assessments every six months. The measures used include impulsivity (30-item Barratt Impulsiveness Scale), PPT (one item from Pubertal Development Scale) at age 13, deviant peer affiliation (Peer Environment Scale XX items) ages 13–16, and time-to-event for marijuana use initiation ages 13–16. Growth curve models were estimated for the time-varying assessments of deviant peer affiliation and a survival analysis was estimated for the marijuana use initiation. Mediation was considered significant if the 95% bias-corrected confidence interval did not contain zero. Moderation was tested via simple slope analyses. Gender differences were tested via multi-group moderation.

All models were estimated using Mplus v8.1. The model parameters were systemically constrained between females and males balancing model fit and parsimony. See Figures 1–2 for the results for the female and male models, respectively. For girls, pubertal timing was indirectly related to earlier initiation through its positive association with the deviant-peer intercept factor (supporting the primary hypothesis). This indirect pathway was moderated by impulsivity such that PPT was only related to deviant peer affiliation at high levels of impulsivity (+1 SD above the mean). For boys, PPT was not significantly related to deviant peer affiliation. These findings suggest that, for early-maturing girls, reducing impulsive tendencies may prevent affiliation with deviant peers, and in turn marijuana use initiation.

Authors

• Alexander Michael Wasserman, Ohio State University
  Presenting Author

• Italia Herrera, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tara Karns-Wright, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
  Non-Presenting Author

• Charles Mathias, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nathalie Hill-Kapturczak, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tae Joon Moon, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
  Non-Presenting Author

• Donald Dougherty, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
  Non-Presenting Author