Early Childhood Trajectories of Conduct Problems and Callous-Unemotional Traits: The Role of Fearlessness and Psychopathic Personality Dimensions

Abstract

Children with early onset of conduct problems (CP) are at risk for long lasting psychosocial problems, especially if CP co-occurs with callous-unemotional (CU) traits. Joint trajectories of CP and CU traits during early childhood were identified using data from the SOFIA study, following 2031 children longitudinally from ages 3-5 to 5-7 years. The results showed that children exhibiting stable high CP and CU traits were characterized by high levels of fearlessness, and psychopathic traits, including grandiose-deceitfulness, and impulsivity, need for stimulation. Children with decreasing or increasing CP and CU traits were characterized by decreases and increases respectively in their levels of fearlessness and psychopathic traits. Children high on CP and low on CU traits exhibited lower levels of these dimensions. Thus, stability and change of fearlessness and psychopathic traits are associated with stability and change in CP and CU traits, making these temperamental and personality traits promising target candidates for early intervention.

Multidimensionality of Youth Psychopathic Traits: Validation and Future Directions

“…Repeated measures designs are recognized for their diverse advantages including improved statistical power, temporal ordering to infer causal mechanisms, and the ability to chart (and predict) trajectories of traits and groups of individuals (Krull et al 2016;Kraemer et al 2001). Future studies may benefit from being more Bagnostic^with respect to discerning groups based on psychopathic traitsemploying, latent profile, latent class, or latent trajectory analyses from psychopathic trait data are a logical extension compared to purely empirical derivations (e.g., .5 SD cut-off)see Klingzell et al (2016) and Wall et al (2016) for recent examples. Although repeated measures designs afford quantitative advantages, the literature on youth psychopathic traits should not rely exclusively with statistical approaches to validation (e.g., prediction of criteria).…”

Early Callous-Unemotional Behavior, Theory-of-Mind, and a Fearful/Inhibited Temperament Predict Externalizing Problems in Middle and Late Childhood

“…A handful of recent studies has pointed to the importance of examining other child features, such as fearlessness or behavioral inhibition, along with CU behavior in order to understand the heterogeneity in developmental pathways to conduct problems (Fanti, Panayiotou, Lazarou, Michael, & Georgiou, 2015; Kingzell, Fanti, Colins, Frogner, Andershed, & Andershed, 2015). Broadly, theory and some empirical evidence suggest that disruptions in affective development may play a role in the development of severe antisocial problems in high-CU children (Frick & Viding, 2009).…”

Neural Correlates of Empathy in Boys With Early Onset Conduct Disorder

“…Thus, this task draws on evaluating someone's emotion, taking the self-perspective, and focusing on own evoked emotions. We investigated a clinical sample of early-onset conduct disorder (i.e., presence of at least one characteristic CD behavior prior to age 10, according to DSM-5), known to show severe antisocial behavior and high levels of callous-unemotional traits (33). We were particularly interested in neural activation of the amygdala, given its pivotal role in affective empathy processing and the history of studies indicating dysfunction in CD.…”