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NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS PREDICTING PERSISTENT MALE DELINQUENCY *
Author(s) -
MOFFITT TERRIE E.,
LYNAM DONALD R.,
SILVA PHIL A.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
criminology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.467
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1745-9125
pISSN - 0011-1384
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-9125.1994.tb01155.x
Subject(s) - juvenile delinquency , neuropsychology , psychology , longitudinal study , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , psychiatry , cognition , medicine , pathology
This article reports the first longitudinal evidence that prospective measures of neuropsychological status predict antisocial outcomes. We studied data for a birth cohort of several hundred New Zealand males from age 13 to age 18. Age‐13 neuropsychological scores predicted later delinquency measured via multiple sources: police, courts, and self‐report. Poor neuropsychological scores were associated with early onset of delinquency. The results fit our predictions about two trajectories of delinquent involvement: (1) Poor neuropsychological status predicted specifically male offending that began before age 13 and persisted at high levels thereafter. (2) By contrast, in this sample neuropsychological status was unrelated to delinquency that began in adolescence.