Kindergarten Disruptive Behaviors, Protective Factors, and Educational Achievement by Early Adulthood.

This study examined whether 2 aspects of disruptive behaviors (i.e., hyperactivity-inattention and aggressiveness-opposition) observed in kindergarten predict noncompletion of high school by early adulthood. Also investigated was whether other personal characteristics such as anxiety or prosociality as well as parent child-rearing attitudes and teacher management style exert a compensatory or protective role with respect to these predictive links. A community sample of 4,330 children participated in this study. Results showed that hyperactivity-inattention made a stronger contribution to predicting noncompletion of high school than did aggressiveness-opposition. However, prosociality and 2 parental child-rearing aspects (i.e., pleasure and discipline) played a compensatory role in this process. Theoretical and preventive implications of these results are stressed in the discussion.