Callous-Unemotional Behavior and Early-Childhood Onset of Behavior Problems: The Role of Parental Harshness and Warmth

Abstract

Objective Youth with callous unemotional (CU) behavior are at risk of developing more severe forms of aggressive and antisocial behavior. Previous cross-sectional studies suggest that associations between parenting and conduct problems are less strong when children or adolescents have high levels of CU behavior, implying lower malleability of behavior compared to low-CU children. The current study extends previous findings by examining the moderating role of CU behavior on associations between parenting and behavior problems in a very young sample, both concurrently and longitudinally, and using a variety of measurement methods. Methods Data were collected from a multi-ethnic, high-risk sample at ages 2–4 (N = 364; 49% female). Parent-reported CU behavior was assessed at age 3 using a previously validated measure (Hyde et al., 2013). Parental harshness was coded from observations of parent-child interactions and parental warmth was coded from five-minute speech samples. Results In this large and young sample, CU behavior moderated cross-sectional correlations between parent-reported and observed warmth and child behavior problems. However, in cross-sectional and longitudinal models testing parental harshness, and longitudinal models testing warmth, there was no moderation by CU behavior. Conclusions The findings are in line with recent literature suggesting parental warmth may be important to child behavior problems at high levels of CU behavior. In general, however, the results of this study contrast with much of the extant literature and suggest that in young children, affective aspects of parenting appear to be related to emerging behavior problems, regardless of the presence of early CU behavior.

Toward an Understanding of the Role of the Environment in the Development of Early Callous Behavior

“…In these analyses, we found that observed parental harshness was related to increases in child CU behavior from ages 2–4, over and above earlier behavior problems and relevant covariates (Waller, Gardner, Hyde, et al, 2012). Next, using both self-reported parental warmth and two observed measures of parental warmth (assessed via global coding of parent-child interactions in the family home and coding of parental five-minute speech samples; Waller, Gardner, Dishion et al, 2012), we found that parental warmth and CU behavior were reciprocally related from ages 2–3, even taking into account shared method variance across parental reports of higher behavior problems and their parental warmth at both ages 2 and 3 (Waller, Gardner, et al, 2015; Waller, Gardner et al, 2014). Specifically, early parent-reported CU behavior in toddlers predicted fewer observed displays of parental warmth over time, while lower parental warmth simultaneously and uniquely predicted increases in child CU behavior, controlling for earlier and concurrent behavior problems (Waller, Gardner et al, 2014).…”

“…We focused on observations of positive reinforcement to be consistent with our previous work examining associations between positive affective aspects of parenting (e.g., warmth, praise) and child CU behavior (see Waller, Gardner et al, 2015; Waller, Gardner et al, 2014). Positive reinforcement was assessed at 27-months via microsocial coding of a 3-minute clean-up task, during which parents had to guide the child to put toys away, based on codes derived from the Child Free Play and Compliance Task Coding Manual (Pears & Ayers, 2000).…”

Sensitivity to parenting in adolescents with callous/unemotional traits: Observational and experimental findings.

“…For example, CU traits have been reliably associated with caregiving experiences (Pardini, Lochman, & Powell, 2007;Waller et al, 2012); furthermore, not all studies find that the associations between parenting and child behavioral adjustment are moderated by CU, e.g. (Waller et al, 2014), or that CU traits moderate treatment response to intervention (Kolko & Pardini, 2010). More notable contrary findings include the observation that caregiving quality predicts CU stability (P. J.…”

Indirect Effects of the Fast Track Intervention on Conduct Disorder Symptoms and Callous-Unemotional Traits: Distinct Pathways Involving Discipline and Warmth

“…Overall, developmental theories have identified parents’ harsh discipline and warmth as key factors involved in the development and prevention of conduct problems and other antisocial-related outcomes. Although some prior studies have found significant associations between these parenting dimensions in early and middle childhood (e.g., Kroneman, Hipwell, Loeber, Koot, & Pardini, 2011; Waller et al, 2015a), there is reason to believe that they may have non-overlapping influences on developmental outcomes.…”