A number of limitations of the current investigation should be noted. The current research would have been enhanced by knowledge of the developmental trajectories of maltreated and nonmaltreated children prior to the initial wave of assessment at ages 7 to 9. The maltreated children in this sample had experienced abuse and/or neglect earlier in childhood prior to recruitment. A burgeoning body of research (Cicchetti & Lynch, 1995; Cicchetti & Valentino, 2006) has articulated the processes through which child maltreatment threatens the competent resolution of developmental tasks across the earlier years of life, and these compromised adaptations are likely to be represented in the behavior problems and poor social competence observed in the early elementary school years. This knowledge would allow for a more refined delineation of earlier developmental liabilities in emotion regulation, attachment organization, autonomous self development, and representational capacities that unfold into behavioral disturbances in the childhood years (Sroufe, 1990) and subsequently contribute to adolescent substance abuse problems (Masten et al., 2009).
