This is an area of active research. First of all, "delinquent behaviors" are quite varied. If we restrict the discussion to hostile aggression, as the papers of Adrian Raine and colleagues, Richard Tremblay and colleagues, Avshalom Caspi and Terry Moffitt, and Daniel Pine and Gail Wasserman or in the animal literature, Carmen Sandi and colleagues, Paul Plotsky, Dario Maestropieri and others have shown, there are certain associated biological factors that may or may not be "causal" but clearly in interaction with environmental factors augment the risk. For example, low reactivity of stress physiology both in the autonomic and HPA-axis systems, presence of the low-activity MAO-A polymorphism in certain populations (currently being questioned as may be more complex finding) in interaction with exposure to child physical abuse. We are studying this question longitudinally also and perhaps will be able to give a better answer within the next few years.

Also, look up work by people like Bonny Oliver, Ted Barker and Barbara Maughan looking at longitudinal trajectories of different childhood groups. The other major area of research is in co-occurring callous-unemotional traits, a developmental precursor to psychopathy. Check work by Paul Frick and Essi Viding amongst others.

Excellent suggestions by Daniel Schechter and Sajid Humayun. Adrian Raine, Richard Tremblay, Caspi and Moffitt, and Dan Pine have extensive studies on the precursors of delinquency. You also mention that you are interested in developmental precursors. You might look at work by Jennifer Pfeifer and colleagues (see 2011). They suggest that children (entering adolescence) conform to their friends' risky behaviour because they are sensitive to the facial emotional expressions of their friends. So, they might conform to their friends' behavioural expectations, and during adolescence, children learn to regulate and resist peer influence. This seems to be an interesting developmental factor, which might explain peer influence in delinquency. Also, there is work from Paul Frick's lab (Silverthorn and colleagues), suggesting that girls' delinquency (accompanied by psychopathic-like traits) is delayed until adolescence, when developmental factors such as puberty and associating with boys come into play. Another researcher to look at is Candice Odgers, who also looks at longitudinal trajectories.

Thank you all of your responses and keeping the conversation going - I have read through most of the research but question in particular what explains "first" as in the very first delinquent behaviour in terms of psychopathology i.e. nature and severity of the behaviour. In other words what can explain the very first delinquent behaviour over and above factors from micro-systems (e.g. family and/or environment). What accounts for this very first delinquent behaviour within a developmental trajectory. Will continue this conversation - again thanks again for your responses - I will re-read all your posts again.

As Daniel Schechter states above, it's difficult to define. Do you count conduct problems, antisocial behaviour, aggression, risky decision making, or something else as the first instance of delinquency? I applaud you for trying to examine this very difficult topic. It would seem that taking research from many different fields might lead you to finding a good definition.

Dear Dr Luna Centifanti, you are very correct - we are trying to operationalize a definition delinquent in terms of psychopathology indicators (e.g. in terms of the severity of the behavior) rather than nature of behaviors in mere anti-social behaviours, disruptive or conduct problems (i.e. not temperament related in terms of difficult behaviour) in line with Moffit. I must say a big thank you for your input as I had no idea that there was this kind of community. While Biological Factors can explain casual I am also wanting to know the orientation toward and meaning associated to behaviour in its execution – for example: how do, where do children know how to torture someone at an early age and can we provide an answer from a developmental perspective – early exposure is one quick response. Thanks again Dr Centifanti

Dr J-F F, have you looked at Dale Hay's work? Her 2003 paper in Child Development is really interesting and speaks to the use of force by toddlers. Richard Tremblay is also influential in this work. You know, I think biological factors are always important though the interaction with environmental factors is what interests me the most. Have you seen the work by Laura Scaramella and Rand Conger, using adoptive- and birth-family variables? They measured personality measures from both sets of parents and parenting measures! It's very exciting (I helped set up the study in a very miniscule way and I'm fascinated by the long-awaited results).

Dear Dr Luna Centifanti, yes have begann to look at these works. You are correct about the biological factors and interaction with environmental factors. Do let me know if you want to replicate your studies here in Australia (UTAS). Will read through the literature suggested and work them. Thanks agian

I found this article to be quite helpful in understanding students that I was testing at the middle school level (reading, math, science tests etc)

"Why do many psychiatric disorders emerge during adolescence?"

Tomáš Paus, Matcheri Keshavan and Jay N. Gild

Abstract | The peak age of onset for many psychiatric disorders is adolescence; the processes in the brain that underlie these behavioural changes have been the subject of recent investigations. Do structural changes in the cerebral cortex reflect synaptic pruning? Are increases in white-matter volume driven by myelination? Is the adolescent brain more or less sensitive to reward? Finding answers to these questions might enable us to further our understanding of mental health during adolescence."

In this kind of work one must specify what is meant by "delinquent behavior" because it varies in different locations ; community standards are important to understand "you know it when you see it" becomes a local norm. When the state codifies particular behaviors we need careful operational definitions and expert opinion (m.d. , psychologist, etc. as well as criminal justice type opinions which may vary).

Richard Tremblay helped pioneer this area, and his review article from 2010 (in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry) summarizes some of it. That said, there are serious concerns about the validity of trajectories with non-normal data, which is likely the norm for these problems. See the work of Bauer & Curran, 2003, e.g.)

The work of Larry Steinberg is very relevant. And given your interest in the origins of delinquent behavior, I would suggest that you read the work of those who examine the biological and dispositional factors associated with emotional reactivity and regulation AND parent/peer responses to displays of dysregulated behavior. I can provide citations if need be. Another important and relevant area is social information processing. The work of Dodge and colleagues is highly relevant.

A sincere thanks to all of you I am going through all your suggested resources. Another aspect I am exploring – rather than a retrospective framework – can we predict pre-pubescent delinquent based in terms of developmental trajectory and not (psycho-social factors e.g. maltreatment, truma, abuse and neglect) in line with Moffit’s work –is there a particular age that is more salient to predict pre-pubescent delinquent behavior i.e not adolescence

are you saying that you want to apply "delinquent" or "antisocial" or some term to the youngest of children? I believe these to be legalistic terms and they come from the criminal justice field so that is why they don't get applied til much later . As far as the youngest of children we have temperament (EASI) as a general yardstick.... the behavior you mentioned was "torture". Are there other terms that you qualify as "delinquent" that you wanted to study? measuring personality traits in the very youngest is difficult and the nomenclature gets confused. Conduct disorders show up in school age children and are you asking if these are biological? It is difficult to separate a child's behaviors from the reward systems and those are usually socially mediated which is something that you seem to want to separate out from your study. Perhaps I am not really understanding the exactness of your question. Perhaps if I knew the nature of the population that would help: clinic? adjudicated? the issue of the referral etc.

Thank you for your response - pre-pubescent delinquent behavior in general population is our focus - pre-pubescent children are of non-criminal age - so we are looking at behaviour that is perhaps two or three SD away from the norm (irrespective what the behaviour is) and hence what explain this first behaviour - as you can read above we have many explanations with some great work being already done ...you are correct that "....difficult and the nomenclature gets confused.." - thanks again for your post

I was wondering if there is another term than delinquent for the younger children?

I understand what you are saying when you describe 1 or 2 SD away from the mean but it depends on what trait or behavior is being described. Personality traits such as the Big 5 (Costa McCrae) attempt to gaher this kind of information in a cross-cultural manner but then to apply a word like "delinquent" or "deviant" we still have only differences without a value judgment. In a general public school population (ages pre-k through about 18) I would have a list of behaviors to look for but my list would be slightly different if I were looking at infancy through age 6 and I wouldn't use the term delinquent on any of these. If it would be of use to your research, Boston Children's hospital trained nurses and teachers what to look for in terms of cognitive and physical dimensions; it took 2 years to get inter-rater reliability from the two groups and we used fairly reliable instruments (behavior descriptors from the physician's published record) in order to specify what we were looking for. That is what I meant by nomenclature. I would like to know the overall purpose of the study and that would help me define the questions. Then I would want to know if you are working with a clinic population (in other words a sub-set of the larger population ) or a "public" school general population because that would lead me in a direction to pick an instrument that is reliable and valid that would include indicators and behaviors to look for so that the nomenclature could be specified. That would be top-down or bottom-up approach? Another way is to collect the indicators from a panel (of experts) and then gather those behavior indicators/traits and validate them through a standards setting process. There are methods to do the panel approach such as Delphi; or Angoff approach etc. where you get some expert opinions and experts confer on what the eventual result of the "listing" would be. If you use a panel approach to build the descriptors (indicators or behaviors) then you need to validate that otherwise it is just opinions of a random group. Perhaps if I read something from your agency that was already published that would give me an indication of the future research you want to do? But the overall purpose and populations you are working with would also provide some clues.

quote: "operationalize a definition delinquent in terms of psychopathology indicators (e.g. in terms of the severity of the behavior) rather than nature of behaviors in mere anti-social behaviours, disruptive or conduct problems"

this is where I am getting "hung up" on the questions. Younger children are not defined as delinquent so you are attempting to build a listing with some kind of predictive validity if you are using the term delinquent (at some point in life they will become delinquent and you want to predict that?) I also have difficulty calling a child's developmental behavior "psychopathology".... it would also depend whether I ask parents, or teachers, or nurses, or psychologists etc. Have you examined the many behavior checklists that are published? Are there any that you already use? I just happened to mention the instruments from Boston Children's Hospital but there would be many others that are available ( I happened to show my bias by citing the research from the Boston Children's Hospital which is my previous training. ) If I were to build an instrument from scratch I would start with EASI (temperament first measured in infants) and then add cognitive and language faculties and make them age appropriate to cover a wider span. Do you have access to older instruments like the Deveraux scale? These behaviors are culturally defined and you would want to update whatever previous information is found ; if it takes 20 years for new research to become implemented (or actionable through scaling up) then the case could be made that every scale in use is too old.

I am wondering how familiar you are with using RDoc as a model for your research. The NIMH have launched the Research Domain Criteria project (RDoC) to look for "new ways of classifying psychopathology based on dimensions of observable behavior and neurobiological measures." I highly recommend examining their criteria: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/research-priorities/rdoc/index.shtml

In Canada, developmental psychopathologists are seeing this as the "biological gold standard".

Best of luck.

Dear Dr Jo Ann Iantosca, yes I am very familiar with the above and I am from Canada myself but right now in UTAS - thanks again your post.

Hi

If you dealing with this term You need to be aware that first delinquent behavior is something which might be used as diagnostic criteria only if it is repetitive. So first episode with for eg police involvement is not enough. But if this become repetetive than you can call that delinquent behavior. So first delinquent behavior does not exist without second, third and so on. So you need very clever folow up study design (or good retrospective data) if want to find out predictive variables for delinquent behavior.

I wanted to restate what Kevin said above: " there are serious concerns about the validity of trajectories with non-normal data, which is likely the norm for these problems. " Also, I would like to build on what Tomislav is saying; "delinquent" is a term that implies adjudication and it is applied after the fact. Can you describe the purpose of the data gathering without using Tremblay's term "violent" for 2 year olds or using the term "delinquent"? Can you give 5 other terms instead? My particular bias is from working with children who were formerly called "brain injured" ; we had after the rubella epidemic deaf/blind children in cribs with no adult stimulation. When you have a child who is "1 standard deviation " from the norm on hours of crying, do you also see a parent who cannot tolerate crying? (i.e., shaken baby syndrome.)? There is reciprocal causality that cannot be avoided and is hard to separate out -- what is the infant's temperament and how is it shaped through the caregiver's facility or lack thereof. Again my bias is towards Vygotsky (not Pavlov) and Jerome Bruner and Barry Brazelton and the British school of Guntrip, Winnicott etc as well as the physicians at Boston Children's Hospital who worked with us training nurse practitioners in inner city poverty environments. Now I have to add two anecdotes: (a) professor from California who has written book "The Psychopath Inside" after studying brain scans for years. and (b) U Mass Boston researcher who is studying why children 14 and under should not be prosecuted as "adults" and given adult criminal sentences for their behaviors (even with a severity of violence in the behavior). The consequential validity is significant whenever a research study moves along into the "policy " or "decision makers" hands and the policy gets mediated through the process. (c) my last anecdote: Whitey Bulger is a notorious criminal and it took 20 years to get him into court. In 1943 when he was a teenager courts in Boston were committing "delinquent" boys at high rates (one of every three were committed); however, Whitey was assigned to probation instead of a sentence in a state "juvenile" institution . This is a quote from the book by Dick Lehr: "ruling that Whitey was delinquent -- the official term in juvenile court for guilty -- the judge imposed the most severe punishment possible. "

I guess I am still asking for definitions that involve nomenclature. I apologize that I cannot read Tremblay's work in the French version and maybe things get lost in the translations? At any rate the response his work often suggests is for nurses to visit homes with infants and preschooolers; we had a program like that in Greater Boston with a "toy program -- not giving out a book but bringing in toy's that help to develop language and cognitive growth (Merle Karne's research) and it was a legitimate way to get into the homes rather than through a "social agency" that implies up front that someone is "defective" or "lacking".

It depends upon the purpose for your tests and the need for a new instrument but I think we already have 50 years of information that should help build programs. If you are looking at fMRI or "brain scans" then that is new and experimental still in hypothetical status and the nomenclature needs to be pinned down with concepts and as you have said an operational definition (the most popular in this local arena for example, would be BRIEF or BASC) but I would hate to pin anyone's future on "executive functions" because it is all hypothetical .. my bias is towards that of Elizabeth Wiig's definition because her specialty has always been language and cognitive development (not behaviors ).

I found Kevin's response so helpful that I am copying the reference citation here:

Psychol Methods. 2003 Sep;8(3):364-8; discussion 384-93.

Mixture or homogeneous? Comment on Bauer and Curran (2003).

Rindskopf D.

Source

Programs in Educational Psychology, City University of New York Graduate Center, New York 10016, USA. [email protected]

Abstract

D. J. Bauer and P. J. Curran (2003) raised some interesting issues with respect to mixture models of growth curves. Many useful lessons can be learned from their work, and more can be learned by extending the inquiry in related directions. These lessons involve the following issues: (a) what a mixture distribution looks like, (b) the meaning of the term homogeneous distribution, (c) the importance of model checking, (d) advantages and disadvantages of using mixtures and similar procedures to approximate complicated distributions, and (e) intrinsic versus nonintrinsic transformability.

Comment on

Distributional assumptions of growth mixture models: implications for overextraction of latent trajectory classes. [Psychol Methods. 2003]

the book referenced above: James Fallon is an award-winning neuroscientist and the Sloan, Fulbright, and National Institute of Health Scholar at the University of California, Irvine.

This quote from the newspapers in Boston MA will help to explain my particular bias in responding to this question: "Since 1996, Massachusetts has had a law on the books that’s one of the harshest in the nation. Unlike nearly every other state in the country, Massachusetts requires a trial in the adult criminal court for anyone who is 14 or older and charged with murder." Nomenclature and definitions become very important in light of policy and state laws especially when a law is determined to be unconstitutional. The better "mouse trap" will build has consequential validity.

Paul Frick , Unversity of New Orleans, has an interesting bibliography that is helpful for understanding older youth

(Psychuno) http://psyc.uno.edu/Frick%20Lab/ICU/ICU%20References%202013.pdf

But the original question asked about "First" not adolescents. I think it would be interesting to compare the recent investigations of autism and when it is "first" recognized by a physician (or parent). Tufts University has done research in this area. But I am still skeptical that there will be a simplistic answer ... complexities are difficult to measure. Many case studies come to mind: one about a deaf individual convicted of murder; he had been through the Northwestern U. speech and language clinics as a child (Helmer Myklebust's clinic et al) . I still call the governors of the different U.S states when they are about to execute a person and the reports indicate developmental trajectories have not been adequate ( developmental disabilities, etc. ) and I started that about 30 years ago with FL when I was active in the Council for Exceptional Children but you can see my political bias is showing again.

This is an excellent point - "....I think it would be interesting to compare the recent investigations of autism and when it is "first" recognized by a physician (or parent). ..." - this conversation is excellent and thank you for all continued contributions.

I'dont know if you are familiar with the work of Peter Fonagy about the development of mentalization and it relation to empathy and violent behavior. Also the work of Richard Tremblay and his team from Montreal and of course the work of Rolf Loeber from Pittsburgh.

Dear Dr Remy Barbe,

Yes, I am familar with these works - they have done quite a bit of work on behaviour.