The link between hyperactive girls and troubled adults
The probability that young girls will finish school with poor grades, take up smoking and eventually acquire an abusive partner intensifies if they are hyperactive, according to a new study. Researchers from the University College London (UCL) and the University of Montreal (UdM) teamed up for a study that not only evaluated the consequences of aggressive and hyperactive behaviour in girls, but that showed a link between these behaviours in young girls trigger a medley of future problems. The study's findings were recently published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry. The researchers from UCL, UdM, Canada's McGill University, Laval University and Quebec University, the US' Carnegie Mellon University and the France-based INSERM, followed the lives of 881 Canadian girls between the ages of 6 and 21. The main objective was to establish the connection between aggressive and hyperactive behaviour in childhood. The researchers found that 1 in 10 girls showed high levels of hyperactive behaviour. Similarly, 1 in 10 showed high levels of hyperactive and physically aggressive behaviour. The team also found that the behaviour of most girls calmed down by the time they turned 12. 'Our study suggests that girls showing chronic hyperactivity and physical aggression in childhood should be targeted by intensive prevention programmes in elementary school, because they are more likely to have serious adjustment problems later in life,' explains Dr Nathalie Fontaine of the Department of Psychology at UCL. 'Programmes targeting only physical aggression may be missing a significant proportion of at-risk girls. In fact, our results suggest that targeting hyperactive behaviour will include the vast majority of aggressive girls.' Hyperactive girls, according to the research, were 'squirmy, fidgety or restless'. Girls that displayed physical aggression were capable of kicking, hitting and bullying, among other things. On the one hand, hyperactive or physically aggressive girls are at a higher risk of developing adjustment problems in adulthood, and are low achievers in education. On the other hand, only girls that are both hyperactive and physically aggressive are at risk of a range of issues, such as psychological and physical aggression towards their partner and welfare dependency. 'However, not all hyperactive and physically aggressive girls grow up to have serious adjustment problems. In our study, we found that about 25% of the girls with behavioural problems did not have adjustment problems in adulthood, while more than a quarter developed at least three adjustment problems,' says Dr Fontaine. More research is required, she says, so that researchers 'understand the factors that prevent or trigger the development of such problems'. The UCL researcher adds: 'Other risk factors more specific to girls, such as social and relational aggression (for example rumour spreading, peer group exclusion) also need to be considered in future investigations.'
Countries
Canada, United Kingdom