A comparison of two different approaches to characterizing the heterogeneity within antisocial behavior: age-of-onset versus behavioral sub-types.

There are two common approaches to sub-typing the well-documented heterogeneity within antisocial behavior: age-of-onset (i.e., child-onset versus adolescent-onset; see Moffitt, 1993) and behavioral (i.e., physical aggression versus nonaggressive rule-breaking). These approaches appear to be intimately connected, such that aggression is particularly characteristic of child-onset antisocial behavior whereas rule-breaking is largely specific to adolescent-onset antisocial behavior (see Moffitt, 2003). Even so, it remains unclear which approach, if either, substantively drives these different manifestations of antisocial behavior. We examined this question in a sample of 1,726 adults in treatment for alcoholism, evaluating the two approaches in regards to their prediction of anger and alcohol dependency. Although age-of-onset predicted both outcomes when analyzed alone, these associations fully dissipated once we controlled for aggression and rule-breaking. Such findings suggest that the behavioral sub-types may prove to be a stronger predictor of antisocial behavior outcomes than is age-of-onset.