Concurrent and longitudinal links between children's own and their nominated best friends' antisocial and prosocial behavior were studied in a normative sample of 3-5-year-olds (N = 203). Moderating effects of age and gender were also explored. Subscales of the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) were used to obtain teacher ratings of…

Objective: This study aimed to identify the pathways through which a preventive intervention targeting young low-SES disruptive boys could result in lower crime involvement during adulthood. Method: The preventive intervention was implemented when the children were between 7 and 9 years and included three components (i.e. social skills, parental…

Background: Knowledge on the onset and the development of antisocial behavior in females is limited, because most of the research in this domain is based on males. Methods: We critically reviewed 46 empirical studies that examined developmental trajectories of antisocial behavior in females, notably to help determine whether or not an…

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…

Based on a sample of 406 seven-year-old twins, this study examined whether exposure to friends' social or physical aggression, respectively, moderates the effect of heritability on children's own social and physical aggression. Univariate analyses showed that children's own social and physical aggression were significantly explained by genetic…

A longitudinal and multilevel approach is used to examine the relationship between antisocial behavior during adolescence and high school social climate. The data are taken from a longitudinal study of 1,233 boys and girls who attended 217 public and private high schools. Students' disruptive behaviors were assessed yearly from 6 to 12 years of…

It has been proposed that aggressive behavior may result from unrealistically positive self-evaluations that are disputed by others (Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996). The present three studies tested this proposition concurrently and longitudinally for the domain of self-perceived social competence (SPSC) in 3-6th grade children on two…

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…

Using a prospective design spanning 17 years, the authors studied in a sample of 231 boys and girls the predictive links of verbal abuse by the teacher during childhood to high-school graduation and behavioral and emotional problems in young adulthood, as well as the putative mediating role of individuals' generalized and domain-specific…