Attention to emotion through a go/no-go task in children with oppositionality and callous–unemotional traits

Attentional Orientation Patterns toward Emotional Faces and Temperamental Correlates of Preschool Oppositional Defiant Problems: The Moderating Role of Callous-Unemotional Traits and Anxiety Symptoms

“…The scarce literature on attention to angry faces in children with non-clinical levels of ODD problems and CU traits makes it difficult to link our results with previous data. However, these previous results also report divergent findings, that range from attentional avoidance (see Hodsoll et al, 2014 , who found that boys aged 8–16 with clinical levels of conduct problems and high levels of CU showed reduced attentional capture by angry faces) to attentional orientation toward angry faces (see Ezpeleta et al, 2017b , who showed that children with high but non-clinical levels of CU traits and ODD-related problems oriented their attention to angry faces to the same degree as children with low CU traits and low ODD-related problems, during an emotional version of the Go/No-Go task). Moreover, data on emotional face recognition proved that CU traits with conduct problems have also been associated with better accuracy in identifying angry faces (Wolf and Centifanti, 2014 ).…”

“…Less sensitivity to others' distress as indexed by attentional avoidance of fearful faces has been suggested to facilitate a lack of inhibition of aggressive behaviors. This interpretation is based on studies with typically developing individuals, showing that they tend to interpret fear and sadness in others as aversive; thus, when an aggressive act is carried out and an expression of fear or sadness observed, this act is perceived to be aversive and it is inhibited, via classical conditioning (Blair et al, 2001 ; Ezpeleta et al, 2017b ). However, our findings on angry faces have revealed contradictory results as to whether CU traits and ODD-related problems are associated (or not) with attentional avoidance.…”

“…Moreover, adoptive mother's positive parenting moderated the fearlessness to CU pathway. The few studies that employed more fine-grained measures of temperament, including also regulatory aspects, along with reactivity (e.g., Gartstein et al, 2012 ; Ezpeleta et al, 2017a ), showed that children with CU traits plus ODD symptoms have deficits in self-regulation, specifically in attentional control, while those with CU traits, anxiety and ODD have significantly higher levels of negative affectivity (see Ezpeleta et al, 2017b ). Moreover, Gartstein et al ( 2012 ), in a longitudinal study that covered early childhood (from infancy till preschool period), found that higher levels of both surgency and negative emotionality predicted preschoolers' higher levels of externalizing problems, while higher levels of effortful control were linked to lower levels of externalizing difficulties.…”

Role of Callous and Unemotional (CU) Traits on the Development of Youth with Behavioral Disorders: A Systematic Review

“…Table S1 in Supplementary Materials provides an overview of the 52 studies published from 2015 to 2020, included in the review for analysis. Among the 52 studies, most authors reported results on more than one dimension of the model, e.g., [ 69 , 70 ], 47 reported effects on mental health, e.g., [ 71 , 72 , 73 ] or on neurobiological features, e.g., [ 69 , 74 , 75 ], 22 on social contexts, e.g., [ 36 , 76 ], eight on social adjustment, e.g., [ 77 , 78 ], 10 on social roles and social interactions, e.g., [ 79 , 80 ] and 19 on executive functions or cognition, e.g., [ 81 , 82 ]. The majority (k = 17) were carried out in the USA, e.g., [ 83 , 84 ], two in Canada [ 70 , 85 ], two in Australia, two in Israel, the one in Europe (Spain, Germany, Netherlands, etc.).…”

“…Summary of results—cognitive dimension. References [ 7 , 21 , 36 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 , 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 , 84 , 85 , 86 , 87 , 88 , 94 , 96 , 99 , 101 , 104 , 105 , 106 , 107 , 108 , 109 , 110 , 111 , 112 , 113 , 114 , 115 , 116 , 117 , 118 , 119 , 120 , 121 , 122 , 123 , 124 , 125 , 126 , 127 , 128 ] are cited in the Supplementary Materials.…”