Risk factors for boy's conduct problems in poor and lower-middle-class neighborhoods.

The joint trajectory analysis version of Nagin's (Group-based modeling of development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005) semiparametric, group-based approach for modeling trajectories was used to assess how boy's trajectories of conduct problems (CP) and neighborhood SES covaried from ages 5 to 12. Participants were recruited from Women, Infants, and Children clinics when they were 18 months old.

Do the predictors of child conduct problems vary by high- and low-levels of socioeconomic and neighborhood risk?

This review seeks to examine whether the existing literature on child conduct problems (CP) supports the notion that certain CP risk factors vary in their importance across disadvantaged and better-off environments. Disadvantaged environments are represented by socioeconomic and/or neighborhood risk (SN risk) in this review. Three types of studies were reviewed: behavioral genetic studies that compare the importance of genetic and environmental influences on CP for youth from poor homes and/or disadvantaged communities versus youth from better-off contexts, studies that examine how SN risk and other CP risk factors interact, and studies that compare the antecedents for CP across levels of SN risk.

The development of family hierarchies and their relation to children's conduct problems.

Despite the intuitive richness of family systems theory, relatively little research has sought to test the validity of constructs theorized to be critical in the development of children's adjustment. One such cornerstone of structural and strategic family therapy is the family hierarchy. The present study investigated both the development of hierarchical structure in families from infancy to late middle childhood and relations between strong hierarchical structure and children's conduct problems.

Anger regulation in disadvantaged preschool boys: strategies, antecedents, and the development of self-control.

Emotion regulation strategies observed during an age 3 1/2 frustration task were examined in relation to (a) angry affect during the frustration task, (b) child and maternal characteristics at age 1 1/2, and (c) indices of self-control at age 6 in a sample of low-income boys (Ns varied between 189 and 310, depending on the assessment). Shifting attention away from sources of frustration and seeking information about situational constraints were associated with decreased anger. Secure attachment and positive maternal control correlated positively with effective regulatory strategy use.