Measuring impulsivity and examining its relationship to delinquency.
Abstract
A multimethod, multisource assessment of impulsivity was conducted in a sample of more than 400 boys who were members of a longitudinal study of the development of antisocial behavior. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of the 11 different impulsivity measures revealed two impulsivity factors: Cognitive and Behavioral. Cognitive and behavioral impulsivity had similar correlations with socioeconomic status. Cognitive impulsivity was more strongly related to IQ than was behavioral impulsivity. Behavioral impulsivity was more strongly related to delinquency at ages 10 and 12-13 than was cognitive impulsivity. Consistent with theoretical prediction, our results also indicate that behavioral impulsivity was especially related to serious delinquency that is stable over time.
Cites (4)
- Studies of interference in serial verbal reactionsStroop, J. R. · 1935 · Journal of Experimental Psychology
- Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior: a developmental taxonomyMoffitt, Terrie E. · 1993 · Psychological Review
- A Systematic Method for Clinical Description and Classification of Personality Variants: A ProposalCloninger, C. Robert · 1987 · Archives of General Psychiatry
- Neuropsychological studies of the frontal lobes.Stuss, Donald T., Benson, D. Frank · 1984 · Psychological Bulletin
Cited by (56)
- Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior: a developmental taxonomyMoffitt, Terrie E. · 1993 · Psychological Review
- Behavioral inhibition, sustained attention, and executive functions: Constructing a unifying theory of ADHD.Barkley, Russell A. · 1997 · Psychological Bulletin
- A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safetyMoffitt, Terrie E., Arseneault, Louise, Belsky, Daniel, Dickson, Nigel, Hancox, Robert J., Harrington, HonaLee, Houts, Renate, Poulton, Richie, Roberts, Brent W., Ross, Stephen et al. · 2011 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Executive functions and developmental psychopathology.Pennington, Bruce F., Ozonoff, Sally · 1996 · Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
- Self-discipline outdoes IQ in predicting academic performance of adolescents.Duckworth, Angela L., Seligman, Martin E.P. · 2005 · Psychological Science
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Measuring impulsivity and examining its relationship to delinquency. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037//0021-843x.103.2.192
- The paper
- White, J. L., Moffitt, T. E., Caspi, A., & Bartusch, D. J. (1994). Measuring impulsivity and examining its relationship to delinquency. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037//0021-843x.103.2.192
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.