The adolescent Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI) and its child version (YPI-CV) are sound but lengthy instruments for measuring psychopathic traits in youths. The current study develops psychometrically strong short versions of these instruments. Samples used for item reduction were community samples of adolescents (n = 2105, age 16–19, 49% boys) and children (n = 360, age 9–12, 52% boys). Stepwise parallel reduction using principal components analyses and content-related arguments resulted in two highly similar short instruments of 18 items each. In both versions, near identical and theoretically comprehensible three factor structures were demonstrated, which were crossvalidated in independent samples (CFI = .97 and .97; RMSEA = .044 and .038, respectively). Results were similar for boys and girls. The short instruments were reliable (Cronbach’s αs of .85 and .83) and covered all core characteristics of the psychopathic personality construct. The short versions showed a high convergence with the original long instruments (r = .95 and .93, respectively) and similar correlations to external criterion measures of conduct problems. Therefore, the abbreviated versions are practical and valid alternatives for the original YPIs when administration time is limited.

Diagnostic accuracy of the 6CIT was high. As the 6CIT is not sensitive to educational level, does not require advanced language skills, only takes a few minutes to administer and is very easy to use, it appears to be a suitable screening instrument for cognitive impairment in older patients in the general hospital.

Theory of mind was assessed in 32 adults with HFA, 29 adults with Asperger syndrome and 32 neurotypical adults. The HFA and Asperger syndrome groups were impaired in performance of the Strange stories test and the Faux-pas test and reported more theory of mind problems than the neurotypical adults. The three groups did not differ in performance of the Eyes test. Furthermore, correlations between the Eyes test and the three other theory of mind tests were low or absent. Therefore one can question the ability of the Eyes test to measure theory of mind. Of all theory of mind tests used, the self-report questionnaire had the largest discriminating power in differentiating the two disorder groups from the neurotypical group.

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