No hard feelings: maternal emotion socialization and callous–unemotional traits in children

Northam, Jaimie C; Fisher, Carri; Burman, Charlotte; Hawes, David J.; Dadds, Mark R.

doi:10.1007/s00787-021-01835-1

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Importantly, poorer parent-child relationships are associated with withdrawal of positive attention and sensitive and responsive parenting behaviors, which are vital components needed to help orientate children to socially appropriate responses to both intra-and interpersonal experiences of emotion (Pasalich et al, 2012). Poorer quality parent-child relationships may lead parents to underestimate the emotional responsiveness (Northam et al, 2021). Strong attachment relationships and high-quality parent-child relationships have been found to protect against harms associated with CU traits (e.g., Kroneman et al, 2011;Pardini et al, 2007;Pasalich et al, 2011;Waller et al, 2014), and that the risk of developing CU traits from low social affiliation is mitigated by warm, sensitive, and responsive parenting behaviors (Perlstein et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

More than a feeling? An expanded investigation of emotional responsiveness in young children with conduct problems and callous-unemotional traits

et al. 2022

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Children with conduct problems and high callous-unemotional (CP+CU) traits are characterized by dampened emotional responding, limiting their ability for affective empathy and impacting the development of prosocial behaviors. However, research documenting this dampening in young children is sparse and findings vary, with attachment-related stimuli hypothesized to ameliorate deficits in emotional responding. Here we test emotional responsiveness across various emotion-eliciting stimuli using multiple measures of emotional responsiveness (behavioral, physiological, self-reported) and attention, in young children aged 2–8 years (M age = 5.37), with CP+CU traits (CP+CU; n = 36), CPs and low CU traits (CP−CU; n = 82) and a community control sample (CC; n = 27). We found no evidence that attachment-related stimulus ameliorated deficits in emotional responding. Rather, at a group level we found a consistent pattern of reduced responding across all independent measures of responsiveness for children with CP+CU compared to the CC group. Few differences were found between CP+CU and CP−CU groups. When independent measures were standardized and included in a regression model predicting to CU trait score, higher CU traits were associated with reduced emotional responding, demonstrating the importance of multimodal measurement of emotional responsiveness when investigating the impact of CU traits in young children.

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