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Findings of decreasing age of pubertal onset in girls (e.g., Pediatrics 2009; 123:e932) sharpen the question about whether early puberty has adverse effects on development. These researchers examined social, psychiatric, and criminal outcomes among girls enrolled at age 9, 11, or 13 in the Great Smoky Mountain Study, which oversampled Native Americans to constitute 25% of the study population.
Participants were scored for externalizing behaviors on the Child Behavior Checklist. The top 25% of scorers and a random sample of children with lower scores underwent comprehensive assessments, which generally occurred annually until age 16 and at ages 19 and 21. Early puberty was defined as Tanner stage IV by age 12 for those not yet pubertal at the…