01:920:222 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Longitudinal Study, Low Birth Weight, Living Wage
30 Sep 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Developmental or Life Course Theory
• How anti-social criminal behavior develops over the life course
• More access to longitudinal studies
• Inspired more life course theories
• Adolescent-Limiteds and Life Course Persistents
• Terrie Moffitt 1993- psychologist not sociologist
• More popular of developmental life course theories
• Looking at people in New Zealand- following them through infancy to
young adult years
• Most Psychological theory
• Crime involves two types of offenders
• Life course persistent LCP
• Starts antisocial behaviors in childhood
• Delinquency in teen years, may be chronic juvenile offenders- doing the
most serious crimes
• Crime persists into adult years
• Adolescent Limiteds- ALs
• Limit their crime to teen years, age out 17-22
• Discontinuity of anti-social behavior, discontinued at end of teen years
• Minor crimes as teenager
• Integrates biological, psychological, and social variables to explain both
pathways to crime
• Life Course Persistence
• People whose anti-social behavior begins in childhood
• 4- hit and bite others, can’t steal cars, hurt and bully others, act out
• 10- skip school and steal from others
• 16- full out delinquents- selling drugs, stealing cars
• 20- raping, robbing people
• 30- fraud and child abuse
• The underlying antisocial disposition remains the same, its expressions
changes form
• Only thing that changes is the way they express their antisocial disposition
• What causes underlying anti-social disposition of LCP?
• Starts with neuropsychological defects
• Neuro- starts when normal brain development is disrupted- (biological
factors) due to…
• Can occur in prenatal period- Exposure to drugs in womb, poor nutrition,
• Low birth weight, brain injury, exposed to toxins- lead
• Important because they are typically accompanied by or cause
morphological defects
• These disruptions of brain development cause psychological defects-
neuropsychological
• Kids are more likely to be hyper active, have bad temperament, can’t
regulate behaviors, have tantrums all the time, can’t pay attention, are
impulsive and poor at reasoning, reduction in cognitive abilities
• Kid will have problems from childhood on
• Shows in the way they behave
• Have poor problem-solving skills, express themselves poorly in reading and
writing, are inattentive and impulsive, can’t learn math and reading
• All because normal brain development has been disrupted
• Won’t be able to learn basic skills in elementary and preschool
• Causes them to interact badly in social environments and have a hard time
with teachers
• Before they get to school, they evoke harsh and erratic parenting because
they’re difficult to raise
• Low birth weight babies’ parents may find them always crying or irritable,
parents react by becoming irritable themselves, find them to be
demanding, hold unrealistic expectations at how fast they should develop
• Result in dysfunctional parent child relationship that may include abuse or
neglect
• Difficult temperaments in infancy, resist parents’ efforts to control them
and its harder to socialize
• Some parents give up on kids
• Child becomes even more irritable- at odds with everyone, their parents,
teachers, peers
