Journal
DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE
Volume 15, Issue 1, Pages 150-163Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2011.01115.x
Keywords
-
Funding
- NIAAA NIH HHS [T32 AA007471, 5T32-AA07471] Funding Source: Medline
- NICHD NIH HHS [5-R24-HD042849, R24 HD042849, R24 HD042849-10] Funding Source: Medline
- EUNICE KENNEDY SHRIVER NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF CHILD HEALTH & HUMAN DEVELOPMENT [R24HD042849] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
- NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON ALCOHOL ABUSE AND ALCOHOLISM [T32AA007471] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Sensation seeking is associated with an increased propensity for delinquency, and emerging research on personality change suggests that mean levels of sensation seeking increase substantially from childhood to adolescence. The current study tested whether individual differences in the rate of change of sensation seeking predicted within-person change in delinquent behavior and whether genetically influenced differences in rate of personality change accounted for this association. Sensation seeking and delinquent behavior were assessed biennially between ages 1011 and 1617 in a nationally representative sample of 7675 youths from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth: Children and Young Adults (CNLSY). Analyses using latent growth curve modeling found that within-person change in sensation seeking was significantly and positively correlated with within-person change in delinquency from childhood to adolescence. Furthermore, behavioral genetic analyses of a subset of 2562 sibling pairs indicated that there were substantial genetic influences on both initial levels of sensation seeking and change in sensation seeking during early adolescence, with over 80% of individual differences in change due to genetic factors. Finally, these genetically driven increases in sensation seeking were most important for predicting increases in delinquency, whereas environmental paths between sensation seeking and delinquency were not significant. These results suggest that developmental changes in delinquent behaviors during adolescence are driven by a genetically governed process of personality change.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available