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Thursday, April 29, 2010

A Comparison of Two Different Approaches to Characterizing the Heterogeneity Within Antisocial Behavior: Age-of-Onset versus Behavioral Sub-Types



There are two common approaches to sub-typing the well-documented heterogeneity within antisocial behavior: age-of-onset (i.e., child-onset versus adolescent-onset; see Moffitt, 1993) and behavioral (i.e., physical aggression versus nonaggressive rule-breaking).

These approaches appear to be intimately connected, such that aggression is particularly characteristic of child-onset antisocial behavior whereas rule-breaking is largely specific to adolescent-onset antisocial behavior (see Moffitt, 2003). Even so, it remains unclear which approach, if either, substantively drives these different manifestations of antisocial behavior.

We examined this question in a sample of 1,726 adults in treatment for alcoholism, evaluating the two approaches in regards to their prediction of anger and alcohol dependency.

Although age-of-onset predicted both outcomes when analyzed alone, these associations fully dissipated once we controlled for aggression and rule-breaking.

Such findings suggest that the behavioral sub-types may prove to be a stronger predictor of antisocial behavior outcomes than is age-of-onset.


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Request Reprint E-Mail: burts@msu.edu.


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