This study’s limitations would be useful to consider in future work. First, our study did not consider comorbid conduct problems. It is possible that a shared association with other problem behaviors (e.g., a tendency for rule violation) inflated the association between effortful control and substance use. Second, it would be useful to consider the role of parenting practices, such as monitoring and limit setting, as moderators of exposure to substance use by peers and for their potential relationship to effortful control. Finally, limitations in our data did not allow us to investigate any potential transactional effects between effortful control and other key constructs. Better understanding the reciprocal relationship between the development of self-regulatory processes and environmental risk factors may represent an important direction of future work in this area.
