Hostname: page-component-5d84bcc8dc-59lmv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-09-07T08:34:42.897Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The familial basis of facial emotion recognition deficits in adolescents with conduct disorder and their unaffected relatives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2015

K. Sully ,
E. J. S. Sonuga-Barke  and
G. Fairchild
K. Sully
Affiliation:
Academic Unit of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
E. J. S. Sonuga-Barke
Affiliation:
Academic Unit of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK Department of Experimental, Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
G. Fairchild*
Affiliation:
Academic Unit of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
*
* Address for correspondence: G. Fairchild, PhD, Academic Unit of Psychology, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK. (Email: g.f.fairchild@soton.ac.uk)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Background

There is accumulating evidence of impairments in facial emotion recognition in adolescents with conduct disorder (CD). However, the majority of studies in this area have only been able to demonstrate an association, rather than a causal link, between emotion recognition deficits and CD. To move closer towards understanding the causal pathways linking emotion recognition problems with CD, we studied emotion recognition in the unaffected first-degree relatives of CD probands, as well as those with a diagnosis of CD.

Method

Using a family-based design, we investigated facial emotion recognition in probands with CD (n = 43), their unaffected relatives (n = 21), and healthy controls (n = 38). We used the Emotion Hexagon task, an alternative forced-choice task using morphed facial expressions depicting the six primary emotions, to assess facial emotion recognition accuracy.

Results

Relative to controls, the CD group showed impaired recognition of anger, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise (all p < 0.005). Similar to probands with CD, unaffected relatives showed deficits in anger and happiness recognition relative to controls (all p < 0.008), with a trend toward a deficit in fear recognition. There were no significant differences in performance between the CD probands and the unaffected relatives following correction for multiple comparisons.

Conclusions

These results suggest that facial emotion recognition deficits are present in adolescents who are at increased familial risk for developing antisocial behaviour, as well as those who have already developed CD. Consequently, impaired emotion recognition appears to be a viable familial risk marker or candidate endophenotype for CD.

Keywords

Antisocial behaviourcallous-unemotional traitsconduct disorderemotion recognitionendophenotypefamily designsocial cognition

Information

Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 45 , Issue 9 , July 2015 , pp. 1965 - 1975
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

APA (1994). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edn. American Psychiatric Association: Washington, DC.Google Scholar
APA (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edn. American Psychiatric Publishing: Arlington, VA.Google Scholar
Andershed, H, Kerr, M, Stattin, H, Levander, S (2002). Psychopathic traits in non-referred youths: A new assessment tool. In Psychopaths: Current International Perspectives (ed. Blaauw, E. and Sheridan, L.), pp. 131–158. Elsevier: The Hague.Google Scholar
Baker, K (2013). Conduct disorder in children and adolescents. Paediatrics and Child Health 1, 24–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron-Cohen, S, Wheelwright, S, Skinner, R, Martin, J, Clubley, E (2001). The autism-spectrum quotient: evidence from asperger syndrome/high-functioning autism, males and females, scientists and mathematicians. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 31, 5–17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Benton, AL, Hamsher, KDS, Varney, N, Spreen, O (1983). Contributions to Neuropsychological Assessment: A Clinical Manual. Oxford University Press: New York.Google Scholar
Best, M, Williams, JM, Coccaro, EF (2002). Evidence for a dysfunctional prefrontal circuit in patients with an impulsive aggressive disorder. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 11, 8448–8453.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blair, RJ (1995). A cognitive developmental approach to morality: investigating the psychopath. Cognition 57, 1–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blair, RJ (2003). Facial expressions, their communicatory functions and neurocognitive substrates. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B 358, 561–572.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blair, RJ, Colledge, E, Murray, L, Mitchell, DG (2001). A selective impairment in the processing of sad and fearful expressions in children with psychopathic tendencies. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 29, 491–498.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blazei, RW, Iacono, WG, McGue, MM (2008). Father-child transmission of antisocial behavior: the moderating role of father's presence in the home. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 47, 406–415.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bowen, KL, Morgan, J, Moore, SC, van Goozen, SH (2013). Young offenders’ emotion recognition dysfunction across emotion intensities: explaining variation using psychopathic traits, conduct disorder and offense severity. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment 36, 60–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calder, A, Young, A, Rowland, D, Perrett, D, Hodges, J, Etcoff, J (1996). Facial emotion recognition after bilateral amygdala damage: differentially severe impairment of fear. Cognitive Neuropsychology 13, 699–745.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chronaki, G, Benikos, N, Fairchild, G, Sonuga-Barke, EJ (2014). Atypical neural responses to vocal anger in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Published online: 13 August 2013. doi:10.1111/jcpp.12312.Google ScholarPubMed
Cohen, J (1988). Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edn. Erlbaum: Hillsdale, NJ.Google Scholar
Collin, L, Bindra, J, Raju, M, Gillberg, C, Minnis, H (2013). Facial emotion recognition in child psychiatry: a systematic review. Research in Developmental Disabilities 34, 1505–1520.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crick, NR, Dodge, KA (1994). A review and reformulation of social information-processing mechanisms in children's social adjustment. Psychological Bulletin 115, 74–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawel, A, O'Kearney, R, McKone, E, Palermo, R (2012). Not just fear and sadness: meta-analytic evidence of pervasive emotion recognition deficits for facial and vocal expressions in psychopathy. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 36, 2288–2304.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Del Gaizo, AL, Falkenbach, DM (2008). Primary and secondary psychopathic- traits and their relationship to perception and experience of emotion. Personality and Individual Differences 45, 206–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ekman, P, Friesen, WV (1975). Pictures of Facial Affect. Consulting Psychologists Press: Palo Alto, CA.Google Scholar
Fairchild, G, van Goozen, SH, Calder, AJ, Stollery, SJ, Goodyer, IM (2009). Deficits in facial expression recognition in male adolescents with early-onset or adolescence-onset conduct disorder. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 50, 627–636.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fairchild, G, Hagan, CC, Passamonti, L, Walsh, ND, Goodyer, IM, Calder, AJ (2014). Atypical neural responses during face processing in female adolescents with conduct disorder. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 53, 677–687.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fairchild, G, Stobbe, Y, van Goozen, SH, Calder, AJ, Goodyer, IM (2010). Facial expression recognition, fear conditioning, and startle modulation in female subjects with conduct disorder. Biological Psychiatry 68, 272–279.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frick, P (2012). Developmental pathways to conduct disorder: implications for future directions in research, assessment, and treatment. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology 41, 378–389.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Glenn, AL, Raine, A (2014). Neurocriminology: implications for the punishment, prediction, and prevention of criminal behavior. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 15, 54–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaiser, MD, Hudac, CM, Shultz, S, Lee, SM, Cheung, C, Berken, AM, Deen, B, Pitskel, NB, Sugrue, DR, Voos, AC, Saulnier, CA, Ventola, P, Wolf, JM, Klin, A, Vander Wyk, BC, Pelphrey, KA (2010). Neural signatures of autism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 107, 21223–21228.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kaufman, J, Birmaher, B, Brent, D, Rao, U, Flynn, C, Moreci, P, Williamson, D, Ryan, N (1997). Schedule for affective disorders and schizophrenia for School-Age Children-Present and Lifetime Version (K-SADS-PL): initial reliability and validity data. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 36, 980–988.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kimonis, ER, Frick, PJ, Fazekas, H, Loney, BR (2006). Psychopathic traits, aggression, and the processing of emotional stimuli in non-referred children. Behavioral Sciences & the Law 24, 21–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Losh, M, Adolphs, R, Poe, MD, Couture, S, Penn, D, Baranek, GT, Piven, J (2009). Neuropsychological profile of autism and the broad autism phenotype. Archives of General Psychiatry 66, 518–526.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marsh, AA, Blair, RJ (2008). Deficits in facial affect recognition among antisocial populations: a meta-analysis. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 32, 454–465.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Odgers, CL, Caspi, A, Broadbent, JM, Dickson, N, Hancox, RJ, Harrington, H, Poulton, R, Sears, MR, Thomson, WM, Moffitt, TE (2007). Prediction of differential adult health burden by conduct problem subtypes in males. Archives of General Psychiatry 64, 476–484.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Passamonti, L, Fairchild, G, Goodyer, IM, Hurford, G, Hagan, CC, Rowe, JB, Calder, AJ (2010). Neural abnormalities in early-onset and adolescence-onset conduct disorder. Archives of General Psychiatry 67, 729–738.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rommelse, NN, Altink, ME, Oosterlaan, J, Buschgens, CJ, Buitelaar, J, Sergeant, JA (2008). Support for an independent familial segregation of executive and intelligence endophenotypes in ADHD families. Psychological Medicine 38, 1595–1606.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosenthal, R, Rubin, DB (2003). R equivalent: a simple effect size indicator. Psychological Methods 8, 492–496.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rutter, M (2007). Gene-environment interdependence. Developmental Science 10, 12–18.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rutter, M, Silberg, J (2002). Gene-environment interplay in relation to emotional and behavioral disturbance. Annual Review of Psychology 53, 463–490.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Skeem, JL, Cauffman, E (2003). Views of the downward extension: comparing the youth version of the psychopathy checklist with the youth psychopathic traits inventory. Behavioral Sciences & the Law 21, 737–770.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wechsler, D (1999). Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI). Harcourt: San Antonio, TX.Google Scholar
Wilmer, JB, Germaine, L, Chabris, CF, Chatterjee, G, Williams, M, Loken, E, Nakayama, K, Duchaine, B (2010). Human face recognition ability is specific and highly heritable. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 107, 5238–5241.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Woodworth, M, Waschbusch, D (2008). Emotional processing in children with conduct disorder and callous/unemotional traits. Child: Care, Health and Development 34, 234–244.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Supplementary material: File

Sully supplementary material

Figure S1

Download Sully supplementary material(File)
File 148.1 KB
Supplementary material: File

Sully supplementary material

Figure S2

Download Sully supplementary material(File)
File 147.6 KB