On the other hand, individual differences in disinhibition may explain why some adolescents start to use alcohol and drugs at a young age and then develop substance use disorders, whereas others do not. A series of longitudinal studies have demonstrated that increased disinhibition during childhood is a risk-factor for substance abuse in later life (30–32). One study examined the developmental trajectory of behavioral control and demonstrated that children with lower levels and who exhibited slower development (of behavioral control) were more likely to report alcohol-related problems at later time points (33). Other studies have investigated “neurobehavioral disinhibition,” a latent variable derived from questionnaire measures and observer reports of executive cognitive functioning and disruptive behavior and have found that disinhibition at age 12 predicts later substance use behaviors (31, 32). Using a cross lagged model, Fernie et al. (34) demonstrated that disinhibition predicted alcohol use 6 months later in British schoolchildren, although they found no evidence for alcohol-induced impairments in inhibitory control. Furthermore, in adults, disinhibition in heavy drinkers has been shown to predict severity of alcohol dependence at 4 years
