Anxiety, inhibition, and conduct disorder in children: I. Relations to social impairment.

Jeffrey A. Gray has proposed a model in which conduct disorder (CD) is viewed as the result of both excessive activity of a behavioral activation system that mediates appetitive and aggressive behavior and deficient activity of a behavioral inhibition system that mediates both anxiety and the inhibition of behavior in the presence of cues signalling impending punishment or frustration. The relation of anxiety to antisocial behavior was examined in 177 clinic-referred boys, aged 7 to 12 years, 68 of whom met DSM-III-R criteria for CD. As predicted by Gray's model, boys with CD and comorbid anxiety disorder were markedly less impaired than boys with CD alone.