Background: Aggression is an important risk factor for delinquency and crime in adolescents. Previous studies have indicated that childhood maltreatment plays an important role in the development of aggression. However, whether the effect could be mediated by other factors is still unknown. Evidence suggests that callous-unemotional (CU) traits and self-control may be candidate mediators in the relationship between childhood maltreatment and aggression. Methods: A total of 585 male juvenile delinquents from China were recruited for the present study. We measured self-reported childhood maltreatment, CU traits, self-control, and aggression with the short form of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ-SF), the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU), the Self-Control Scale (SCS), and the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ), respectively. Furthermore, we constructed multiple mediation models to investigate the mediating effects of CU traits and self-control on the relationship between childhood maltreatment and aggression. Childhood maltreatment and aggression were entered into the model as the independent and dependent variables, respectively, and CU traits and self-control were treated as the mediating variables. In addition, the moderating role of self-control in the relationship between childhood maltreatment and aggression was tested by constructing a moderation model. Results: Correlation analysis showed significant positive correlations among childhood maltreatment, CU traits, and aggression (all r values > 0.31, P values < 0.01), and self-control was negatively correlated with these three factors (all r values < −0.32, P values < 0.01). Mediation analyses showed that the relationship between childhood maltreatment and aggression was completely and sequentially mediated by the factors of CU traits and self-control (indirect effect = 0.31, P < 0.001). In addition, the relationship between childhood maltreatment and aggression could also be completely mediated by CU traits (indirect effect = 0.24, P < 0.001) and self-control (indirect effect = 0.26, P < 0.001) separately. Conclusion: Our results indicate that, in a sample of male juvenile delinquents in China, the relationship between childhood maltreatment and adolescent aggression was found to be mediated by CU traits and self-control, which may shed light on the development of aggression among male juvenile delinquents.

Inhibitory control dysfunction was considered a universal characteristic of violent offenders. The aim of this study was to examine differences in inhibitory control between two subtypes of violent youth; those displaying predominantly impulsive and those presenting predominantly premeditated aggression (PM). Forty-four juvenile offenders, defined on the basis of the Procedures for the Classification of Aggressive/Violent Acts (Stanford and Barratt, 2001) participated (N = 23: impulsive; N = 21 premeditated). A visual Go/NoGo task was used to compare behavioral responses and event-related potentials (ERPs) between groups. The task contained two letters (W and M), W was the Go stimulus and M the NoGo stimulus. The impulsive youth showed a significantly greater decrease in N2 latency for Go relative to NoGo trials than the premeditated aggressive youth. The differentiation in N2 amplitude between Go and NoGo (N2d) was negatively correlated with impulsivity of aggression. Both groups showed no significant central NoGo P3. Our findings suggest that impulsive violent youth show stronger prepotent responses and impaired conflict monitoring during early inhibitory control processing relative to premeditated aggressive youth. Both impulsive and premeditated violent youth may show impaired response inhibition at the late processing stage of inhibitory control.