The present study examined the association of paternal alcoholism with early adolescent boys' school adjustment and substance use, and its moderation by paternal absence, controlling for parents' socioeconomic resources. A community sample of 653 urban, low socioeconomic status (SES) families from Montreal, Canada, was assessed and information…

Background: The juvenile justice system's interventions are expected to help reduce recidivism. However, previous studies suggest that official processing in juvenile court fails to reduce adolescents' criminal behavior in the following year. Longer term effects have not yet been investigated with a rigorous method. This study used propensity…

Background: The present study uses data from a community sample of 779 low-SES boys to investigate whether intervention by the juvenile justice system is determined, at least in part, by particular individual, familial and social conditions, and whether intervention by the juvenile courts during adolescence increases involvement in adult crime.…

Differences in developmental trajectories of physical violence, vandalism, theft, and alcohol-drug use from ages 10 to 15 were studied. For females and for males, three trajectories of theft and of alcohol-drug use increased from 10 years to 15 years, while only the high trajectory of vandalism increased from ten to 14. All trajectories of…

The goal of the present study was to examine whether controlling parenting contributes to the problem of physical aggression. Developmental trajectories of children's physical aggression were modeled from yearly teachers' ratings, from ages 6 to 12. Multinomial logistic regressions (N = 1,508) served to identify risk factors that distinguish…

Trajectories of prosocial behavior and physical aggression between 6 and 12 years of age were identified for a sample (N=1,025) of males. The trajectories were then used to predict school dropout and physical violence at age 17. Using a group-based semi-parametric method, two trajectories of prosociality (low and moderate declining) and three…

Objectives: To longitudinally describe prosocial behaviour development from childhood to adolescence, using multiple informants within Canadian and Italian samples. Method: Participants in Study 1 were 1037 boys from low socioeconomic status (SES) areas in Montreal, Canada, for whom yearly teacher and mother reports were obtained between the ages…

Impairments in either "cool" or "hot" processes may represent two pathways to deficient decision-making. Whereas cool processes are associated with cognitive and rational decisions, hot processes are associated with emotional, affective, and visceral processes. In this study, 168 boys were administered a card-playing task at ages 13 and 14 years…

Background: Different developmental courses have been postulated for proactive and reactive aggression. Objective: Investigated the developmental course of proactive and reactive aggression in a large sample of adolescent boys from low socioeconomic areas. Method: A dual group-based joint trajectory method was used to identify distinct…

The objectives of the study were to model the developmental trajectories of physical aggression (PA) from toddlerhood to pre-adolescence and to identify risk factors that distinguish typical (normative) from atypical developmental patterns. Ten cohorts of approximately 1,000 children (n = 10,658) drawn form a nationally representative (Canadian)…

Used semi-parametric mixture model with boys assessed repeatedly from 6 to 15 years to approximate a continuous distribution of developmental trajectories for aggression, opposition, and hyperactivity. Found that a chronic oppositional trajectory, with other trajectories held constant, led to covert delinquency only. A chronic physical aggression…

This 17-year longitudinal study tested whether low peer-perceived acceptance and association with aggressive-disruptive friends during preadolescence predicted students' failure to graduate from secondary school. Participants were 997 Caucasian, French-speaking boys from low-socioeconomic status, urban neighborhoods. The boys were recruited in…

Teachers rated 948 boys from low socioeconomic environments on physical aggression at ages 6, 10, 11, and 12. Classified boys according to stability of fighting over time. Findings showed that developmental pathways of physically aggressive behavior for boys in low socioeconomic environments were related to familial adversity and poor parenting…

Tested the individual characteristics and deviant peer association theoretical models of friends' influence on the development of delinquency in disruptive boys. Found that moderately disruptive boys with aggressive-disturbing friends were more delinquent at age 13 than other subgroups of moderately disruptive boys. Highly disruptive and…

Investigates a prediction model of early withdrawal from school, using a sample of low socio-economic status (SES) boys (n=751), with emphasis on the role of peer-related variables. Reports that power of early disruptiveness and early academic performance predicted dropout; but the effects of these variables depended upon the dropout age. (CMK)