Behavioral inhibition appears to decrease the risk of later delinquency among boys but social withdrawal does not, according to an article in the AMA’s Archives of General Psychiatry, a theme issue of child psychiatry.
Margaret Kerr, Ph.D., and colleagues from the University of Montreal studied 778 boys considered to be at high risk for delinquent behavior. The boys were from low socioeconomic areas of Montreal. To control for cultural effects, all the boys were sons of white, French-speaking, native born Canadians.
For this study, boys aged 10, 11 and 12 were classified by their classmates on disruptiveness, inhibition and withdrawal. To measure delinquency, the researchers used self-report of behavior prior to assessments at ages 13, 14 and 15. Self-reports at age 15 were used to measure symptoms of depression.
The researchers write: “Disruptive boys who were non inhibited were more likely than chance to become delinquent; disruptive who were inhibited were not… Among non disruptive boys, only non disruptive-inhibited boys were significantly less likely than chance to become delinquent.”
Behavioral inhibition is a tendency to react fearfully to strange people, objects, or situations or to the threat of punishment or non-reward. The researchers found that inhibition seemed to protect both disruptive and non-disruptive boys against delinquency.
Social withdrawal is a non-anxious preference for solitary activity, or a failure to be rewarded by social interaction of the approval of others. The researchers found that boys who are socially withdrawn were not protected from the risk of delinquency. Boys who were both withdrawn and disruptive were at greatest risk for delinquency, or delinquency with depressive symptoms.
They state: “Disruptive-withdrawn boys are likely to become delinquent-depressed … they are, in fact, 3.21 times more at risk than the rest of the sample.”
These researchers also wanted to know if inhibition increases the risk of later depression, even if it protects against delinquency. They found it did not: “Inhibited boys were protected against delinquency, but they were not at an increased risk for later depression, which was a reasonable prediction given that anxiety and shyness are often associated with depression or depressed mood.” Only boys who were disruptive and withdrawn were likely to develop depression, and their depressive symptoms were combined with delinquency.
The researchers urge further study to see whether the same effects can be found in different samples. They point out that some of the most at-risk children in an original sample of 1,037 boys were excluded from this study. Data were missing for 259 boys who were described as more aggressive, more anxious, more inattentive, more oppositional and more hyperactive.
They conclude: “… large samples must be used to make this approach work, and profiles that include variables such as peer, family and cognitive characteristics are needed to improve prediction. In a person-oriented approach, we still need to be able to explain why some people’s outcomes deviate from the general trend.”
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