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8 - Life-Course Persistent and Adolescence-Limited Antisocial Males: Longitudinal Followup to Adulthood

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2009

By
Terrie E. Moffitt  and
Avshalom Caspi
Edited by
David M. Stoff  and
Elizabeth J. Susman
Terrie E. Moffitt
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison Institute of Psychiatry, London
Avshalom Caspi
Affiliation:
University of Otago, New Zealand
David M. Stoff
Affiliation:
National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland
Elizabeth J. Susman
Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University
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Summary

This chapter tests and refines a developmental taxonomy of antisocial behavior, which proposed two primary hypothetical prototypes: life-course persistent offenders whose antisocial behavior begins in childhood and continues worsening thereafter, versus adolescence-limited offenders whose antisocial behavior begins in adolescence and desists in young adulthood (Moffitt, 1993). Two of our previous reports have described clinically defined groups of childhood-onset and adolescence-onset antisocial youths in the Dunedin birth cohort during childhood (Moffitt & Caspi, 2001) and at age 18 (Moffitt, Caspi, Dickson, Silva, & Stanton, 1996). Recently we followed up the cohort at age 26, and here we describe how the two groups of males fared in adulthood. In so doing we test a hypothesis critical to the theory: that childhood-onset, but not adolescent-onset, antisocial behavior is associated in adulthood with antisocial personality, violence, and continued serious antisocial behavior that expands into maladjustment in work life and victimization of partners and children (Moffitt, 1993).

THE TWO PROTOTYPES AND THEIR PREDICTED ADULT OUTCOMES

According to the theory, life-course persistent antisocials are few, persistent, and pathological. Adolescence-limited antisocials are common, relatively temporary, and near normative. The developmental typology hypothesized that childhood-onset versus adolescent-onset conduct problems have different etiologies. In addition, the typology differed from other developmental crime theories by predicting different outcome pathways for the two types across the adult life-course (Caspi & Moffitt, 1995; Moffitt, 1993, 1994, 1997).

Type
Chapter
Information
Developmental Psychobiology of Aggression , pp. 161 - 186
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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