Juvenile delinquency and cognitive function in adulthood: Differentiating violent and nonviolent behaviors and exploring multiple mechanisms

Juvenile delinquency has significant impacts on physical and mental health in adulthood, yet longitudinal research investigating cognitive consequences of delinquent behavior is limited. This study investigates potential pathways linking adolescent delinquent behavior to memory performance in adulthood, with particular attention to proximal psychosocial and behavioral mediators. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and employing school fixed-effects models, we examine the association between juvenile delinquency and memory performance in adulthood. We distinguish between nonviolent and violent delinquent behaviors to investigate differential associations. Moreover, we conduct multivariate bootstrapped mediation analyses with several mechanism variables, including disciplinary action, substance use, psychological factors, sleep behaviors, and social support. The association between juvenile delinquency and memory performance in adulthood was confounded by individual and family-level characteristics. Differentiating between violent and nonviolent behaviors, violent delinquency was negatively associated with memory performance, even after adjusting for individual and family characteristics as well as school fixed effects. Mediation analyses indicated that disciplinary action, psychological factors, and social support mediated the association between violent delinquency and memory performance. Depressive symptoms (25.7%) and suspension (17.7%) emerged as the most salient mediating factors, followed by perceived care from teachers (8.6%). Our findings further demonstrate that these early psychosocial and behavioral disruptions may impair memory performance in adulthood by undermining educational attainment. The results of this study suggest that engagement in violent behaviors during adolescence is longitudinally associated with worse memory performance in adulthood. We also provide evidence on the potential pathways through which violent delinquency can impact future memory performance, prompting considerations for more effective intervention strategies for delinquent youth.