Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-rbxfs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-07T20:24:44.529Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Are impairments in emotion recognition a core feature of callous–unemotional traits? Testing the primary versus secondary variants model in children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2017

Mark R. Dadds ,
Eva R. Kimonis ,
Olivia Schollar-Root ,
Caroline Moul  and
David J. Hawes
Mark R. Dadds*
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
Eva R. Kimonis
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales
Olivia Schollar-Root
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
Caroline Moul
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
David J. Hawes
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Mark R. Dadds, School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia; E-mail: mark.dadds@sydney.edu.au.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The role of environmental adversity in the development of high callous–unemotional (CU) traits in children is controversial. Evidence speaks to the traits being largely independent of adversity; however, recent data shows that those with high CU traits and high adversity and/or high anxiety might differ in important ways from those with no such history. We tested this using emotion recognition (ER) skills. We tested whether maltreatment history and anxiety levels moderated the relationship between level of CU traits and ER skills in N = 364 children with behavioral problems who were 3 to 16 years old. As hypothesised, in the full sample, the relationship between CU traits and ER differed according to maltreatment history, such that CU traits were associated with poorer recognition for those with zero or negligible history of maltreatment. This moderation of the CU-ER relationship by maltreatment was inconsistent across subgroups, however, and for the cohort utilizing youth self-report of maltreatment, high CU traits were associated with poor ER in those with lower anxiety levels. Maltreatment history and/or anxiety levels can identify different emotional impairments associated with high CU traits, and the impairments might be characteristic of “primary” high CU traits defined as occurring independently of maltreatment and/or high anxiety.

Information

Type
Regular Articles
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 67 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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

Footnotes

This research was partly supported by grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council and Australian Research Council, Australia. We are grateful to Royal Far West for support of the research and to the families who participated.

References

American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.Google Scholar
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.Google Scholar
Armstrong, G. J., & Kelley, S. D. (2008). Early trauma and subsequent antisocial behavior in adults. Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention, 8, 294.Google Scholar
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2006). Information paper: An introduction to Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA). Canberra, Australia: Author.Google Scholar
Barnett, D., Manly, J. T., & Cicchetti, D. (1993). Defining child maltreatment: The interface between policy and research. In Cicchetti, D. & Toth, S. K. (Eds.), Child abuse, child development, and social policy (pp. 7–73). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Bierer, L. M., Yehuda, R., Schmeidler, J., Mitropoulou, V., New, A. S., Silverman, J. M., & Siever, L. J. (2003). Abuse and neglect in childhood: Relationship to personality disorder diagnoses. CNS spectrums, 8, 737–754.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bishop, S. J. (2008). Neural mechanisms underlying selective attention to threat. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1129, 141–152.Google Scholar
Blair, R. J. R., Leibenluft, E., & Pine, D. S. (2014). Conduct disorder and callous–unemotional traits in youth. New England Journal of Medicine, 371, 2207–2216.Google Scholar
Breslau, N., Davis, G. C., Andreski, P., & Peterson, E. (1991). Traumatic events and posttraumatic stress disorder in an urban population of young adults. Archives of General Psychiatry, 48, 216–222.Google Scholar
Campbell, M. A., & Rapee, R. M. (1996). Current issues in the assessment of anxiety in children and adolescents: A developmental perspective. Behaviour Change, 13, 185–193.Google Scholar
Cecil, C. A. M., Lysenko, L. J., Jaffee, S. R., Pingault, J. B., Smith, R. G., Relton, C. L., … Barker, E. D. (2014). Environmental risk, oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) methylation and youth callous-unemotional traits: A 13-year longitudinal study. Molecular Psychiatry, 19, 1071–1077.Google Scholar
Cima, M., Smeets, T., & Jelicic, M. (2008). Self-reported trauma, cortisol levels, and aggression in psychopathic and non-psychopathic prison inmates. Biological Psychology, 78, 75–86.Google Scholar
da Silva Ferreira, G. C., Crippa, J. A., & de Lima Osório, F. (2014). Facial emotion processing and recognition among maltreated children: A systematic literature review. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1460.Google Scholar
Dadds, M. R., Allen, J. L., McGregor, K., Woolgar, M., Viding, E., & Scott, S. (2014). Callous-unemotional traits in children and mechanisms of impaired eye contact during expressions of love: A treatment target? Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 55, 771–780.Google Scholar
Dadds, M. R., Cauchi, A., Wimalaweera, S., Hawes, D. J., & Brennan, J. (2012). Outcomes, moderators and mediators of emotion recognition training for complex conduct problems in children: A randomised controlled trial. Psychiatry Research, 199, 201–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dadds, M. R., El Masry, Y., Wimalaweera, S., & Guastella, A. J. (2008). Reduced eye gaze explains “fear blindness” in childhood psychopathic traits. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 47, 455–463.Google Scholar
Dadds, M. R., Frost, A., Fraser, J., & Hawes, D. J. (2005). Disentangling the underlying dimensions of psychopathy and conduct problems in childhood: A community study. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 73, 400–410.Google Scholar
Dadds, M. R., Hawes, D., & Merz, S. (2004). The UNSW facial emotion task. Unpublished manuscript, University of New South Wales, Sydney.Google Scholar
Dadds, M. R., Perry, Y., Hawes, D. J., Merz, S., Riddell, A. C., Haines, D. J., & Abeygunawardane, A. I. (2006). Attention to the eyes and fear-recognition deficits in child psychopathy. British Journal of Psychiatry, 189, 280–281.Google 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 & Biobehavioral Reviews, 36, 2288–2304.Google Scholar
During, S. M., & McMahon, R. J. (1991). Recognition of emotional facial expressions by abusive mothers and their children. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 20, 132–139.Google Scholar
Frick, P. J., & Hare, R. D. (2001). Antisocial process screening device: APSD. Toronto: Multi-Health Systems.Google Scholar
Gibbons, R. D., Hedeker, D., & DuToit, S. (2010). Advances in analysis of longitudinal data. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 6, 79–107.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goodman, R. (1997). The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: A research note. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38, 581–586.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Graham, N., Kimonis, E. R., Wasserman, A. L., & Kline, S. M. (2012). Associations among childhood abuse and psychopathy facets in male sexual offenders. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 3, 66.Google Scholar
Harmer, C. J., & Cowen, P. J. (2013). ‘It's the way that you look at it’—A cognitive neuropsychological account of SSRI action in depression. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 368(1615), 20120407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harms, M., Martin, A., & Wallace, G. (2010). Facial emotion recognition in autism spectrum disorders: A review of behavioral and neuroimaging studies. Neuropsychology Review, 20, 290–322.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hawes, D. J., Dadds, M. R., Frost, A., & Hasking, P. (2011). Do childhood callous-unemotional traits drive change in parenting practices? Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 40, 507–518.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hornor, G. (2012). Emotional maltreatment. Journal of Pediatric Health Care, 26, 436–442.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Horwitz, A. V., Widom, C. S., McLaughlin, J., & White, H. R. (2001). The impact of childhood abuse and neglect on adult mental health: A prospective study. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 184–201.Google Scholar
Kahn, R. E., Frick, P. J., Youngstrom, E. A., Kogos Youngstrom, J., Feeny, N. C., & Findling, R. L. (2013). Distinguishing primary and secondary variants of callous-unemotional traits among adolescents in a clinic-referred sample. Psychological Assessment, 25, 966–978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karpman, B. (1941). On the need of separating psychopathy into two distinct clinical types: The symptomatic and the idiopathic. Journal of Criminal Psychopathology, 3, 112–137.Google Scholar
Kimonis, E. R., Cross, B., Howard, A., & Donoghue, K. (2013). Maternal care, maltreatment and callous-unemotional traits among urban male juvenile offenders. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 42, 165–177.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kimonis, E. R., Fanti, K. A., Anastassiou-Hadjicharalambous, X., Mertan, B., Goulter, N., & Katsimicha, E. (2015). Can callous-unemotional traits be reliably measured in preschoolers? Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. Advance online publication. doi:10.1007/s10802-015-0075-y Google Scholar
Kimonis, E. R., Frick, P. J., Cauffman, E., Goldweber, A., & Skeem, J. (2012). Primary and secondary variants of juvenile psychopathy differ in emotional processing. Development and Psychopathology, 24, 1091–1103.Google Scholar
Kimonis, E. R., Skeem, J., Cauffman, E., & Dmitrieva, J. (2011). Are secondary variants of “juvenile psychopathy” more reactively violent and less psychosocially mature than primary variants? Law & Human Behavior, 35, 381–391.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Koivisto, H., & Haapasalo, J. (1996). Childhood maltreatment and adulthood psychopathy in light of file-based assessments among mental state examinees. Studies on Crime and Crime Prevention, 5, 91–104.Google Scholar
Koizumi, M., & Takagishi, H. (2014). The relationship between child maltreatment and emotion recognition. PLOS ONE, 9, e86093.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lahey, B. B. (2014). What we need to know about callous-unemotional traits: Comment on Frick, Ray, Thornton, and Kahn (2014). Psychological Bulletin, 140, 58–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lang, S., Klinteberg, B., & Alm, P. (2002). Adult psychopathy and violent behavior in males with early neglect and abuse. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 412, 93–100.Google Scholar
Leist, T., & Dadds, M. R. (2009). Adolescents' ability to read different emotional faces relates to their history of maltreatment and type of psychopathology. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 14, 237–250.Google Scholar
Marsh, A. A., & Blair, R. J. (2008). Deficits in facial affect recognition among antisocial populations: A meta-analysis. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 32, 454–465.Google Scholar
Masten, C. L., Guyer, A. E., Hodgdon, H. B., McClure, E. B., Charney, D. S., Ernst, M., … Monk, C. S. (2008). Recognition of facial emotions among maltreated children with high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder. Child Abuse and Neglect, 32, 139–153.Google Scholar
O'Connor, B. P. (1998). All-in-one programs for exploring interactions in moderated multiple regression. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 58, 833–837.Google Scholar
Pardini, D. A., Lochman, J. E., & Powell, N. (2007). The development of callous-unemotional traits and antisocial behavior in children: Are there shared and/or unique predictors? Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 36, 319–333.Google Scholar
Pasalich, D. S., Dadds, M. R., Hawes, D. J., & Brennan, J. (2011). Do callous-unemotional traits moderate the relative importance of parental coercion versus warmth in child conduct problems? An observational study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 52, 1308–1315.Google Scholar
Pollak, S. D., Cicchetti, D., Hornung, K., & Reed, A. (2000). Recognizing emotion in faces: Developmental effects of child abuse and neglect. Developmental Psychology, 36, 679–688.Google Scholar
Pollak, S. D., & Sinha, P. (2002). Effects of early experience on children's recognition of facial displays of emotion. Developmental Psychology, 38, 784.Google Scholar
Silverstein, S. M., Berten, S., Olson, P., Paul, R., Williams, L. M., Cooper, N., & Gordon, E. (2007). Development and validation of a world-wide-web-based neurocognitive assessment battery: WebNeuro. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 940–949.Google Scholar
Viding, E., Blair, R. J. R., Moffitt, T. E., & Plomin, R. (2005). Evidence for substantial genetic risk for psychopathy in 7-year-olds. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 46, 592–597.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Viding, E., Jones, A. P., Paul, J. F., Moffitt, T. E., & Plomin, R. (2008). Heritability of antisocial behaviour at 9: Do callous-unemotional traits matter? Developmental Science, 11, 17–22.Google Scholar
Waller, R., Gardner, F., & Hyde, L. W. (2013). What are the associations between parenting, callous–unemotional traits, and antisocial behavior in youth? A systematic review of evidence. Clinical Psychology Review, 33, 593–608.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weiler, B. L., & Widom, C. S. (1996). Psychopathy and violent behaviour in abused and neglected young adults. Criminal Behavior and Mental Health, 6, 253–271.Google Scholar
Wootton, J. M., Frick, P. J., Shelton, K. K., & Silverthorn, P. (1997). Ineffective parenting and childhood conduct problems: The moderating role of callous-unemotional traits. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 65, 301–308.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yiend, J. (2010). The effects of emotion on attention: A review of attentional processing of emotional information. Cognition and Emotion, 24, 3–47.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Dadds supplementary material

Dadds supplementary material 1

Download Dadds supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 371.2 KB