Part I Developmental Courses of Antisocial Behaviors
Chapter 1 Environmental, Genetic, and Epigenetic Influences on the Developmental Origins of Aggression and Other Disruptive Behaviors Richard E. Tremblay This chapter summarizes evidence indicating that: (a) developmental trajectories of disruptive behaviors (DB) from early childhood to adulthood are the consequence of genetic and environmental endowment; (b) the early environment is created by the parents’ own developmental history and has a major impact on DB through its impact on gene expression and brain development; (c) mothers appear to have the greatest impact on early gene expression; (d) as children grow older the larger environment (e.g., peers) has an impact on DB, partly through gene expression. I conclude that the genetic and environmental effects on DB development probably also have numerous other negative effects, such as mood disorders, obesity, allergies, asthma, substance use, school achievement, unemployment. Thus, preventive interventions during pregnancy and infancy should have long term impacts on numerous physical and mental health problems as well as social integration.
Introduction
The aim of this chapter is, first to summarize the relatively few studies on risk factors associated with early chronic trajectories of aggression and other disruptive behavior, and second to discuss the putative early causal mechanisms based on a wider range of recent animal and human studies.
To put these two aims in perspective I first summarize the present state of knowledge on developmental trajectories of aggressive and other disruptive behaviors (DB) (see Tremblay, 2010). Longitudinal studies from early childhood on the two overt …
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