The current findings align with empirically supported prevention protocols, such as life skills training (Botvin et al. 1990), and with comprehensive treatment protocols for adolescents using alcohol and marijuana (Dennis et al. 2004; Waldron and Brody 2010). Furthermore, fostering effortful control in early adolescence may enhance the effects of other prevention programs, including those that teach refusal skills (see review by Lemstra et al. 2010). Given how central self-regulation is to several forms of psychopathology and problem behavior (Lengua 2002), the need is clear for future translational research to design and examine interventions that address attention processes as delineated in the effortful control construct (Dishion et al. 2012). Mindfulness-based interventions that are currently being developed and tested on adults could also be used with adolescents, especially when intervening before exposure to substances, with the hope of preventing multiple forms of psychopathology and escalation of problem behaviors that undermine adult development.
