Background:The possible causes of greater depression among adolescent girls were investigated by examining variation in the influence of genetic and environmental risk factors among 182 prepubertal female, 237 prepubertal male, 314 pubertal female, and 171 pubertal male twin pairs from the Virginia Twin Study of Adolescent Behavioral Development.
Inattention rather than hyperactivity during elementary school significantly predicts long-term educational attainment. Children with attention problems, regardless of hyperactivity, need preventive intervention early in their development.
Context: Neurocognitive mechanisms have long been hypothesized to influence developmental trajectories of antisocial behavior. However, studies examining this association tend to aggregate a variety of problem behaviors that may be differently affected by neurocognitive deficits.Objective: To describe the developmental trajectories of physical violence and theft from adolescence to adulthood, their associations, and the neurocognitive characteristics of individuals following different patterns of trajectory association.Design: Accelerated cohort-sequential, longitudinal design.Setting: Rutgers Health and Human Development Project.Participants: Six hundred ninety-eight men.Main Outcome Measures: Self-reports of physical violence (ages 12-24 years) and theft (ages 12-31 years) were collected across 5 waves. Neurocognitive performance was assessed with executive function and verbal IQ tests between late adolescence and early adulthood.
Results:The majority (55%) of subjects showed an increased frequency of theft during the study period, while only a minority (13%) evinced an increasing frequency of physical violence. Executive function and verbal IQ performance were negatively related to high frequency of physical violence but positively related to high frequency of theft.Conclusions: Developmental trajectories of physical violence and theft during adolescence and early adulthood are different and differently related to neurocognitive functioning. Global indexes of antisocial behavior mask the development of antisocial behavior subtypes and putative causal mechanisms.
Future studies should take into account the shortcomings highlighted in this review. Such studies are needed to improve the understanding and prevention of the development of antisocial behavior in females.
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