Child and adolescent maltreatment as a mediator of continuity in callous-unemotional traits and low self-control

Mediators fall into several different categories—social cognitive, perceptual, affective, and most recently, experiential. The purpose of the current investigation was to determine whether a putative experiential mediator (child and adolescent maltreatment) was capable of mediating temporal continuity in two variables that have traditionally been viewed as stable predictors of delinquency—namely, callous-unemotional (CU) traits and low self-control. Based on the assumption that CU traits and low self-control are significantly more predictive of delinquency than maltreatment, it was hypothesized that the past CU–future CU and past low self-control–future low self-control relationships would be mediated by child and adolescent maltreatment. This assumption and hypothesis were tested by prospectively cross-correlating maltreatment, CU traits, low self-control, and delinquency in 2034 children from the second cohort of the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW II). Results indicated that CU traits and low self-control outperformed maltreatment in predicting delinquency, whereas maltreatment mediated the past low self-control–future low self-control relationship but not the past CU–future CU relationship. Further analysis revealed that the two pathways were significantly different from one another and that of the four individual paths examined, only the path running from CU traits to maltreatment failed to achieve significance. Hence, while child and adolescent maltreatment places a child at risk for low self-control and CU traits, only low self-control increased a child's odds of future maltreatment. These results have implications for both theory (reciprocal effects) and practice (delinquency prevention).