A New Measure to Assess Psychopathic Personality in Children: The Child Problematic Traits Inventory

Abstract

Understanding the development of psychopathic personality from childhood to adulthood is crucial for understanding the development and stability of severe and long-lasting conduct problems and criminal behavior. This paper describes the development of a new teacher rated instrument to assess psychopathic personality from age three to 12, the Child Problematic Traits Inventory (CPTI). The reliability and validity of the CPTI was tested in a Swedish general population sample of 2,056 3- to 5-year-olds (mean age = 3.86; SD = .86; 53 % boys). The CPTI items loaded distinctively on three theoretically proposed factors: a Grandiose-Deceitful Factor, a Callous-Unemotional factor, and an Impulsive-Need for Stimulation factor. The three CPTI factors showed reliability in internal consistency and external validity, in terms of expected correlations with theoretically relevant constructs (e.g., fearlessness). The interaction between the three CPTI factors was a stronger predictor of concurrent conduct problems than any of the three individual CPTI factors, showing that it is important to assess all three factors of the psychopathic personality construct in early childhood. In conclusion, the CPTI seems to reliably and validly assess a constellation of traits that is similar to psychopathic personality as manifested in adolescence and adulthood.

The Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory-Short Version in Spanish Adolescents—Factor Structure, Reliability, and Relation with Aggression, Bullying, and Cyber Bullying

“…The available evidence about this interaction effect between the three psychopathic traits is scarce. In a recent study on children, Colins et al (2014) found that the interaction of the three psychopathy dimensions (i.e., high levels on all three dimensions) was, regression wise, a stronger predictor of concurrent conduct problems than the psychopathic dimensions alone. This suggests that the use of all dimensions may be a more appropriate way of analyzing psychopathic personality in youths, and similarly, a more accurate way to predict conduct problems and perhaps also aggression and bullying.…”

Dissociable relations between amygdala subregional networks and psychopathy trait dimensions in conduct‐disordered juvenile offenders

“…The developmental trajectory of psychopathy seemingly begins early in life and includes the presence of nascent psychopathic traits in conduct‐disordered juveniles [Anderson and Kiehl, 2014; Colins et al, 2014; Frick and Viding, 2009; Lynam et al, 2007]. These youngsters with psychopathic tendencies showcase a disproportionate amount of violent and antisocial acts, respond less favorably to treatment, and as such place a substantial economic and emotional burden on society [Anderson and Kiehl, 2014; Corrado et al, 2015; Frick and Viding, 2009; Salekin et al, 2010].…”

“…Most of these studies additionally examined psychopathy as a categorical or unidimensional construct, overlooking its behaviorally and neuronally separable trait assemblies [Carre et al, 2013; Cohn et al, 2014, 2015; Philippi et al, 2015; Sadeh and Verona, 2008; Seara‐Cardoso and Viding, 2014]. For instance, while affective and interpersonal traits of psychopathy relate to blunted affective reactivity within emotion processing neurocircuitries (e.g., insula, amygdala, striatum), the opposite seems to account for behavioral psychopathic tendencies [Blair, 2013a; Buckholtz et al, 2010; Carre et al, 2013; Cohn et al, 2014, 2015b2014; Seara‐Cardoso and Viding, 2014]. Moreover, though amygdala subregional defects are suggested in psychopathy [Moul et al, 2012], the functionality and connectivity of different amygdala subnuclei is typically disregarded in neurocircuit‐level analyses of psychopathic personality.…”

Development of Psychopathy from Childhood

“…The all of CPTI factors was a stronger predictor for showing that psychopathic personality construct in early childhood. In conclusion, the CPTI seems to be reliably and validly assessment tool for psychopathic traits in adolescence and adulthood [145].…”