Perceptions of parenting, social cognition and delinquency

Research has firmly established that family functioning plays an important role in the social and behavioural development of young people (for reviews see Farrington, 1996; Patterson et al., 1992). These reviews consistently show three aspects of parenting to be crucial: appropriate discipline, supe rvision, and warmth of parent-child bonds. However, until recently there wa s less research into the mechanisms that mediated this relationship. This p aper proposes that the effect of early experiences on later adjustment are mediated by cognitive processes such as social information processing. Cric k and Dodge (1994) proposed a six-stage model of social information process ing, describing how information about the social world is perceived and pro cessed, and how this is influenced by the individual's memories and past ex perience. Research has shown certain patterns of processing and cognitive d istortions to be associated with antisocial and delinquent behaviour in chi ldren and adolescents, and that these are established at a fairly young age . This paper suggests that early socialization experiences play an importan t role in the acquisition of cognitive distortions. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.