pended and/or expelled, begin to fail academically,
and eventually develop adversarial relationships with
the school system. By the time they enter high school,
these children have had a lifetime of training and
preparation for delinquent behavior in adolescence
and quickly find peers who reinforce their patterns of
behavior. In fact, one of the strongest findings is that
delinquent children associate with and commit many
of their offenses in the company of delinquent peers.
Other vicious cycles can be found in the homes of
most EOP youth. Power-assertive discipline strategies
are more likely to be used, which in turn reinforce ag-
gressive habits. Moreover, groundbreaking work by
Gerald Patterson in 1982 showed that parents of EOP
youth tend to use parenting strategies marked by an
escalation of conflict, which also reinforces aggressive
behaviors.
The Adolescence-Limited Pattern
In 1993, Terrie Moffitt showed that youth follow
not one but at least two distinct developmental path-
ways to adolescent delinquency and antisocial behav-
ior. Contrasting with the EOP group is what Moffitt
termed the adolescence-limited (AL) pattern. As the
name implies, these youth show no notable signs of
problem behavior until adolescence, when they begin
to engage in high levels of delinquent and other anti-
social behavior similar to the EOP group. AL youth,
however, begin to cease their delinquent behavior to-
ward the end of adolescence, and many of these youth
cease to engage in such behavior entirely by their
mid-twenties. Although the behavior patterns of AL
youth are often indistinguishable from those of the
EOP group, AL delinquent acts are more likely to be
status offenses rather than violent crimes, and the de-
linquent behavior of AL youth tends to be limited to
certain contexts such as the peer social arena.
Adolescence-limited delinquent behavior is an in-
teresting phenomenon because it follows a very dif-
ferent developmental pathway. These youth tend to
(1) come from relatively stable backgrounds; (2) show
normal levels of academic achievement and social
competence; and (3) not have experienced maltreat-
ment. Experts have discovered that these are reason-
ably well-adjusted youth who are motivated to assert
their independence by engaging in what they per-
ceive as ‘‘mature’’ behavior such as alcohol use and
smoking. Because AL delinquent behavior is likely to
cease by young adulthood, some experts have won-
dered whether it may be appropriately considered a
normal part of adolescent ‘‘experimentation.’’ Never-
theless, because of its risky nature, this pattern should
not be dismissed as harmless given the consequences
it may entail, such as pregnancy, criminal prosecu-
tion, and substance addiction.
Future Research into Delinquency
Gaps in scientists’ knowledge about the develop-
ment of delinquency continue to stimulate vigorous
research activity. For example, a large research effort
has focused on the exploration of other patterns of
delinquent behavior given that some studies have
identified some children who begin a pattern of anti-
social behavior at early ages but stop by adolescence.
Because these children are exceptions, however, most
of the research on the development of delinquency
has focused on more typically observed patterns such
as the EOP and AL types. Nevertheless, researchers
continue to work on pinpointing what helps to re-
move children from a delinquent pathway, especially
because efforts to curb and prevent delinquency have
consistently met with disappointing results. Other re-
searchers in this field have turned their lens to female
delinquency. This new emphasis is important because
the preponderance of the research has focused on
male delinquency because of its staggeringly higher
incidence; this has left many questions unanswered
regarding how delinquency develops in females.
Studies addressing these and other important issues
promise new insights into delinquency in the future.See also: SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT; TRUANCY;
VIOLENCEBibliography
McCord, William, and Joan McCord. Origins of Crime: A New Evalu-
ation of the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study. New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1959.
Moffitt, Terrie E. ‘‘Adolescence-Limited and Life-Course-Persis-
tent Antisocial Behavior: A Developmental Taxonomy.’’ Psy-
chological Review 100 (1993):674–701.
Patterson, Gerald R. A Social Learning Approach to Family Interven-
tion: Coercive Family Processes. Eugene, OR: Castalia, 1982.
Benjamin Aguilar
Byron EgelandDEVELOPMENT
Development is the process of change over time as a
result of the interaction between environmental and
genetic forces. It involves progressive, cumulative
changes in structure, function, behavior, or organiza-
tion. For example, development can refer to change
in physical size or shape, mental function, perceptual
capacity, or behavior.
Development involves changes that persist over
time, rather that those that are temporary or situa-
tion-specific. It commonly refers to progressive
change toward more complex levels of functioning.
For humans, the term often refers to children’s grow-
ing physical and mental capacities that allow them toDEVELOPMENT 119