Mediating the Verbal Ability-Conduct Problems Relationship with Child Empathy and Self-Control

This study was performed in an effort to determine whether poor inhibitory control, operationalized as weak verbal skills, contributes to early antisocial behavior by impeding a child's ability to empathize with others and exercise control over their behavior. A model was tested whereby child empathy and self-control were conceptualized as mediators of a putative relationship between low verbal ability and future conduct problems. A mediation analysis was performed in which the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), a measure of auditory comprehension skills, receptive vocabulary, and verbal ability, served as the independent variable in this study, child-reported symptoms of conduct disorder and oppositional defiant disorder constituted the dependent variable, and child empathy and self-control functioned as mediators. Participants were 3,706 youth (1,862 boys, 1,795 girls) from the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Children (LSAC). A path analysis performed on these data revealed that while the indirect effect of PPVT on problems via self-control was significant neither the indirect effect of PPVT on conduct problems via empathy nor the direct effect of PPVT on conduct problems proved significant. These results suggest that weak inhibitory control in the form of low verbal ability may contribute to future conduct problems by interfering with the child's ability to exercise adequate behavioral control over their actions.