Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T19:38:25.710Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Is adolescence-onset antisocial behavior developmentally normative?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2010

Glenn I. Roisman*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Kathryn C. Monahan
Affiliation:
University of Washington
Susan B. Campbell
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
Laurence Steinberg
Affiliation:
Temple University
Elizabeth Cauffman
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Glenn I. Roisman, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 603 East Daniel Street, Champaign, IL 61820; E-mail: [email protected].

Abstract

Largely because of the influence of Moffitt's useful distinction between adolescence-limited and life-course persistent antisocial behavior, it has become increasingly common to view problem behavior that makes its first appearance in adolescence as developmentally normative. This study prospectively examined the lives of individuals in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development whose patterns of antisocial behavior varied with respect to age of onset and stability from kindergarten through age 15. Consistent with past research, early-onset, persistently deviant youth experienced more contextual adversity and evinced higher levels of intraindividual disadvantages than their peers from infancy through midadolescence. However, relative to youth who never showed significantly elevated antisocial behavior through age 15, children who showed antisocial behavior primarily in adolescence also were more disadvantaged from infancy forward, as were youth who only demonstrated significant externalizing problems in childhood. Findings generally replicated across sex and did not vary as a function of whether antisocial behavior groups were defined using T-scores normed within sex or identified using an empirically driven grouping method applied to raw data.

Type
Regular Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achenbach, T. M. (1991a). Manual for the Youth Self-Report and 1991 profile. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont, Department of Psychiatry.Google Scholar
Achenbach, T. M. (1991b). Manual for the Child Behavior Checklist/4–18 and 1991 profile. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont, Department of Psychiatry.Google Scholar
Achenbach, T. M. (1991c). Integrative guide for the 1991 CBCL/4–18, YSR, and TRF profiles. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont, Department of Psychiatry.Google Scholar
Achenbach, T. M. (1997). Manual for the Young Adult Self-Report and Young Adult Behavior Checklist. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont, Department of Psychiatry.Google Scholar
Achenbach, T. M., & Edelbrock, C. (1986). Manual for the Teacher's Report Form and Teacher Version of the Child Behavior Profile. Burlington, VT: University of Vermont, Department of Psychiatry.Google Scholar
Aguilar, B., Sroufe, L. A., Egeland, B., & Carlson, E. (2000). Distinguishing the early-onset/persistent and adolescence-limited antisocial behavior types: From birth to 16 years. Development and Psychopathology, 12, 109132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, J. P., Hall, F. D., Insabella, G. M., Land, D. J., Marsh, P. A., & Porter, M. R. (2003). Supportive behavior task coding manual. Unpublished manuscript, University of Virginia, Charlottesville.Google Scholar
Allen, J. P., Hauser, S. T., Bell, K. L., McElhaney, K. B., & Tate, D. C. (1996). Autonomy and Relatedness Coding System manual, version 2.14. Unpublished manuscript, University of Virginia, Charlottesville.Google Scholar
Bayley, N. (1991). Bayley Scales of Infant Development: Standardization version (2nd ed.). New York: Psychological Corporation.Google Scholar
Benjamini, Y., & Hochberg, Y. (1995). Controlling the false discovery rate: A practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 57, 289300.Google Scholar
Blumstein, A., & Cohen, J. (1987). Characterizing criminal careers. Science, 237, 985991.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bracken, B. A. (1984). Bracken Basic Concept Scale. San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.Google Scholar
Cohen, J. (1992). A power primer. Psychological Bulletin, 112, 155159.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carey, W. B., & McDevitt, S. C. (1978). Revision of the Infant Temperament Questionnaire. Pediatrics, 61, 735739.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dishion, T. J., Shaw, D. S., Connell, A., Gardner, F., Weaver, C., & Wilson, M. (2008). The Family check-up with high-risk indigent families: Preventing problem behavior by increasing parents' positive behavior support in early childhood. Child Development, 79, 13951414.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dodge, K. A., & Pettit, G. S. (2003). A biopsychosocial model of the development of chronic conduct problems in adolescence. Developmental Psychology, 39, 349371.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Farrington, D. P. (1986). Age and crime. In Tonry, M. & Morris, N. (Eds.), Crime and justice: An annual review of research (Vol. 7, pp. 189250). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gardner, F., Connell, A., Trentacosta, C. J., Shaw, D. S., Dishion, T. J., & Wilson, M. N. (2009). Moderators of outcome in a brief family-centered intervention for preventing early problem behavior. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 77, 543553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, B., Nagin, D., & Roeder, K. (2001). A SAS procedure based on mixture models for estimating developmental trajectories. Sociological Methods and Research, 29, 374393.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moffitt, T. E. (1993). Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior: A developmental taxonomy. Psychological Review, 100, 674701.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moffitt, T. E., & Caspi, A. (2001). Childhood predictors differentiate life course-persistent and adolescence-limited antisocial pathways among males and females. Development and Psychopathology, 13, 355375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moffitt, T. E., Caspi, A., Dickson, N., Silva, P. A., & Stanton, W. (1996). Childhood-onset versus adolescence-onset antisocial conduct in males: Natural history from age 3 to 18. Development and Psychopathology, 8, 399424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moffitt, T. E., Caspi, A., Harrington, H. L., & Milne, B. J. (2002). Males on the life-course persistent and adolescence-limited antisocial pathways: Follow-up at age 26. Development and Psychopathology, 14, 179207.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nagin, D. S. (2005). Group-based modeling of development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagin, D. S., & Land, K. C. (1993). Age, criminal careers, and population heterogeneity: Specification and estimation of a nonparametric, mixed Poisson model. Criminology, 31, 327362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagin, D. S., & Tremblay, R. E. (2001). Analyzing developmental trajectories of distinct but related behaviors: A group-based method. Psychological Methods, 6, 1834.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (2001). Nonmaternal care and family factors in early development: An overview of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 22, 457492.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Odgers, C. L., Moffitt, T. E., Broadbent, J. M., Dickson, N., Hancox, R. J., Harrington, H., et al. (2008). Female and male antisocial trajectories: From childhood origins to adult outcomes. Development and Psychopathology, 20, 673716.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Owen, M. T., Klausli, J. K., Aultman, C., Brown, G., Little, I., & Milling, L. (2006). The NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development age 15 parent–adolescent coding system. Unpublished manuscript, University of Texas at Dallas.Google Scholar
Owen, M. T., Klausli, J. K., & Murrey, M. (2000). The NICHD Study of Early Child Care Parent–Child Interaction Scales: Middle childhood. Unpublished manuscript, University of Texas at Dallas.Google Scholar
Piquero, A. R. (2007). Taking stock of developmental trajectories on criminal activity over the life course. In Liberman, A. M. (Ed.), The long view of crime: A synthesis of longitudinal research (pp. 2378). New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Roisman, G. I., Aguilar, B., & Egeland, B. (2004). Antisocial behavior in the transition to adulthood: The independent and interactive roles of developmental history and emerging developmental tasks. Development and Psychopathology, 16, 857871.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shaw, D. S., Connell, A., Dishion, T. J., Wilson, M. N., & Gardner, F. (2009). Improvements in maternal depression as a mediator of intervention effects on early childhood problem behavior. Development and Psychopathology, 21, 417439.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van Dulmen, M. H. M., Goncy, E., Vest, A., & Flannery, D. J. (2009). Group based trajectory modeling of externalizing behavior problems from childhood through adulthood: Exploring discrepancies in the empirical findings. In Savage, J. (Ed.), The development of persistent criminality. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, V. S., Jones, L. V., & Tukey, J.W. (1999). Controlling error in multiple comparisons, with examples from state-to-state differences in educational achievement. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 24, 4269.CrossRefGoogle Scholar