Cognitive flexibility (CF) may be particularly important during adolescence, a period marked by exposure to increasingly diverse environments. Although parenting behaviors have been linked to adolescent CF, less is known about whether these associations are consistent across different contextual settings. Furthermore, most existing research has relied on predominantly White samples, limiting the generalizability of findings to diverse populations. The present study addresses these gaps by recruiting Black parent-adolescent dyads to examine the following: (a) whether parent-reported monitoring is associated with adolescent CF, assessed using the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test; (b) whether neighborhood crime rates (derived from census data) and parent-perceived cohesion are associated with adolescent CF; and (c) whether the association between monitoring and adolescent CF differs across contexts of neighborhood cohesion and crime rates. Greater parental monitoring (r = .35), greater neighborhood cohesion (r = .24), and lower crime rates (r = -.11) were each associated with greater adolescent CF. Moreover, the positive association between parental monitoring and adolescent CF was significantly moderated by perceived neighborhood cohesion (β = .12, p = .019); the interaction with neighborhood crime rates was of a similar magnitude, but not significant (β = -.10, p = .115). The strongest association between parental monitoring and adolescent CF was in neighborhoods characterized by higher perceived cohesion. These findings suggest that benevolent neighborhood contexts may amplify the beneficial effects of parental monitoring on adolescent CF. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Zhou et al. (Thu,) studied this question.