This application for a competing continuation of the Child Development Project (CDP) aims to test an empirical model of how chronic antisocial behavior develops in a longitudinal study of 585 boys and girls who have been followed annually since preschool and who will turn age 26 during the next five years. The CDP has been federally funded continuously since 1987 with cumulative attrition of less than I percent per year. The sample is diverse in background (17% African-American; 26% born in lowest SES groups; 3 geographic sites of Nashville, TN; Knoxville, TN; and Bloomington, IN) and varied in outcomes at the current age of 21 (36% treated for psychiatric disorders; 21% arrested; 37% suspended from school). 57 CDP publications support a transactional systems model of antisocial development that integrates biological and sociocultural context factors, child and adolescent life events, and acquired cognitive-emotional response patterns as mediators. Discoveries from the CDP include the first prospective demonstration that long-term adverse outcomes accrue from early physical maltreatment in a community sample and that social information processing patterns mediate these effects. Data will be collected annually for the next five years from participants, peers, romantic partners, offspring, observers, and archival records, toward the goal of assessing participants' level of participation, antisocial behavior, and competent prosocial behavior in relationships with other adults (peers, parents, authorities), romantic partners, and offspring. Major innovative aims are to: 1) test the interpersonal relationship domain-specificity of antisocial behavior and cognitive-emotional processes in young adulthood; 2) identify predictors of antisocial behavior in these three domains and to test hypotheses of an additive model, an interactive model, a life-experiences mediational model, a reciprocal-influence model, and a domain-specific model; 3) test the hypothesis that acquired, domain-specific social information-processing patterns mediate the effect of life experiences on antisocial outcomes; 4) test the generalizability of models across gender, ethnic, and cultural groups; 5) test the intergenerational transmission of behavior and cognitive-emotional processes; and 6) contribute to prevention practice and public policy by analyzing data in a way that addresses policy questions. This research will contribute both to basic theories of antisocial development and to prevention science and public policy.
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