Timing of Onset and Correlates of Severe Conduct Problems in Adjudicated Girls and Boys

An influential model for explaining the development of conduct disorder (CD) in boys proposed that there are two distinct trajectories through which boys develop CD that differ on the timing of onset, correlates, and outcome. In this study, the applicability of this two trajectory approach to the development of CD in girls was tested. Participants were 72 adolescents (mean = 15.17 years of age; SD = 1.32) who were adjudicated for serious patterns of illegal behavior in a secure detention facility, nearly all of whom (94.4%) met criteria for a diagnosis of CD. Based on a combination of youth self-report and file review, boys in the sample were fairly evenly split between a childhood-onset to their CD symptoms and an adolescent-onset to their symptoms. In contrast, girls more uniformly exhibited an adolescent-onset to their severe antisocial behavior. Despite this later age of onset, the antisocial girls tended to resemble the childhood-onset boys on personality traits such as showing problems of impulse control and showing combination of both a callous and unemotional interpersonal style and poor impulse control. These findings suggest modifications of or alternatives to the two-trajectory model may be needed to explain the development of CD in girls.