A growing body of research has examined callous–unemotional (CU) traits among samples of antisocial youth. Debate surrounds the malleability of CU traits and their responsiveness to parenting and ...parent-focused interventions. This review examines evidence from studies that have investigated various relationships between parenting, CU traits, and antisocial behavior (AB). Studies were categorized according to five distinct research questions each addressing associations among parenting, CU traits, and AB in a different way. The results suggest that dimensions of parenting are prospectively related to changes in CU traits. Subgroups of youth with both high levels of CU traits and AB also appear to have experienced negative parenting practices. However, negative parenting is not consistently related to AB in cross-sectional studies for youth with high levels of CU traits. At the same time, parenting-focused interventions appear effective in reducing the level of AB and CU traits in youth. The findings and implications for future studies are critically discussed as they pose challenges for current etiological theories of AB.
•Dimensions of parenting predict CU traits in prospective longitudinal studies.•CU traits are responsive to parenting in parent-focused interventions for AB.•The construct of 'CU traits' as unresponsive to parenting needs revisiting.•Future studies need better measurement approaches to assess CU traits and parenting.•Greater precision is needed in study design to assess associations.
Callous-unemotional (CU) traits increase risk for children to develop severe childhood aggression and conduct disorder. CU traits are typically described as highly heritable, and debate continues ...about whether the parenting environment matters in their etiology. Strong genetically informed designs are needed to test for the presence of environmental links between parenting practices and CU traits. Our objective was to determine whether parental harshness and parental warmth were related to children's aggression or CU traits when accounting for genetically mediated effects.
We examined 227 monozygotic twin pairs (454 children) drawn from population-based and at-risk samples of twin families, leading to oversampling of twins living in poverty. We computed multi-informant difference scores combining mother and father reports of their harshness and warmth toward each twin, and differences in mother reports of each twin's aggression and CU traits.
Twin differences in parental harshness were related to differences in both aggression and CU traits, such that the twin who received harsher parenting had higher aggression and more CU traits. Differences in parental warmth were uniquely related to differences in CU traits, such that the twin receiving warmer parenting evidenced lower CU traits. These effects were not moderated by child sex, age, or family income, with the exception that the relationship between differential parental harshness and differential child aggression was stronger among low-income families.
Parenting is related to child CU traits and aggression, over and above genetically mediated effects, with low parental warmth being a unique environmental correlate of CU traits.
The Nature and Nurture of Callous-Unemotional Traits Hyde, Luke W.; Dotterer, Hailey L.
Current directions in psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society,
12/2022, Volume:
31, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Callous-unemotional (CU) traits, a risk factor for psychopathy, delineate youths with relatively low empathy and guilt, and identify youths with high risk for chronic and severe antisocial behavior ...(e.g., rule breaking, aggression). We describe work identifying nature and nurture influences on the development of CU traits. Additionally, we clarify the relationship between CU traits and psychopathy, highlight potential misinterpretations of findings on influences of “nature” versus “nurture,” and discuss treatment implications.
Antisocial behavior is harmful, financially costly to society, and hard to treat. Callous-unemotional (CU) traits, which predict greater risk for antisocial behavior, are defined in theoretical and ...diagnostic models as representing low empathy, guilt, and prosociality. However, no meta-analytic reviews have systematically integrated the findings of studies that have reported associations between measures of CU traits and empathy, guilt, or prosociality, or potential moderators of these associations, including gender, age, severity of antisocial behavior, and informant (i.e., self or other reports of measures). To address this gap in the literature, we conducted three separate meta-analyses exploring the association between CU traits and empathy, guilt, and prosociality. In follow-up analyses, we explored associations between CU traits and affective versus cognitive empathy. The results revealed statistically significant and moderate-to-large negative associations between measures of CU traits and empathy (ρ = −.57), guilt (ρ = −.40), and prosociality (ρ = −.66). The negative association between CU traits and cognitive empathy was stronger when the informant was a parent or teacher rather than the child, and in younger children. CU traits were also more strongly related to cognitive empathy than affective empathy when the informant was a parent or teacher rather than the child, and in younger children. The findings establish that CU traits are moderately-to-strongly correlated with the presence of callous (low empathy), uncaring (low prosociality), and remorseless (low guilt) behaviors.
•Callous-unemotional (CU) traits predict risk for severe antisocial behavior.•We need better understanding of the core correlates of CU traits.•Higher CU traits were correlated with lower empathy, prosociality, and guilt.•Effect sizes were in the moderate-to-large range across 59 studies.•Effects mostly did not differ based on sex, age, or severity of antisocial behavior.
Antisocial behavior is costly and harmful to families, communities, and society. With roots in early childhood, antisocial behavior puts children at risk for poor physical and mental health outcomes ...across development. Callous–unemotional (CU) traits identify a subgroup of youth with particularly severe and stable antisocial behavior. Although much literature has examined CU traits in late childhood and adolescence, researchers are beginning to elucidate the developmental origins of CU traits. In this article, we review research examining the measurement and correlates of CU behaviors in early childhood, along with evidence that these early behaviors predict later measures of CU traits. We then describe research highlighting the role that parents play in the development of CU behaviors in early childhood. Finally, we outline translational implications and ethical considerations for studying CU behaviors and consider the use of the term CU traits in young children.
Despite the large number of studies tracing patterns of youth antisocial behavior (AB) during adolescence, few have prospective data on the developmental precursors of AB beginning during infancy. ...Using a cohort of 268 low-income boys first assessed at 18 months, the current study examined predictors of early- and late-starting trajectories of AB assessed during early childhood and early adolescence. Four trajectory groups were identified, including early- and late-starting groups, a low stable group, and a high decreasing group, characterized by multiple risk factors during early childhood and early adolescence. During early childhood, parenting and maternal depression discriminated two AB trajectory groups, an early-starting and a high decreasing group, who would go on to demonstrate a high preponderance of juvenile court involvement (60% to 79%) and elevated rates of clinical depression 13 to 15 years later. The results were discussed in reference to targeting malleable family risk factors during early childhood associated with patterns of AB and mental health disorders during adolescence.
Proposed developmental model of CU behaviors. CU behaviors are conceptualized as emerging from a nexus of (at least) two inherited temperaments: fearlessness and low interpersonal emotional ...sensitivity. Low interpersonal emotional sensitivity represents the inherited phenotype of reduced attention to, orienting to, and recognition of emotion cues in others, explaining aspects of the CU construct related to low affective empathy and prosocial behavior. Fearlessness represents the inherited phenotype of low behavioral inhibition and explains aspects of the CU construct related to uncaring about punishment or behavioral consequences, high approach, and reward dominance. Early CU behaviors predict violence and rule-breaking later in childhood and adolescence, and represent a specific risk factor for psychopathy. Parenting practices, such as low warmth and harshness, interact with these temperament precursors to exacerbate risk for CU behaviors and harmful outcomes across development. Interventions that increase warmth and decrease harshness may be able to diminish this risk, even in those with temperament risk for CU behaviors.▪
•Callous-unemotional (CU) behaviors predict more severe childhood behavior problems.•Parenting practices predict the development of CU behaviors in early childhood.•Inherited traits contribute to CU behaviors via child-context interactions.•We offer a developmental model for CU behaviors beginning in infancy.
Callous-unemotional (CU) behaviors are critical to understanding the development of severe forms of aggression and antisocial behavior. CU behaviors include deficits in empathy and prosocial behavior, as well as reduced interpersonal responsivity to others. We review recent research examining CU behaviors in early childhood and the role that parents play in the development of early CU behaviors. We integrate research on the development of empathy and prosociality with that of CU behaviors to propose a developmental model of early CU behaviors that considers person-by-context interactions.
Socioeconomic disadvantage during childhood is associated with a myriad of negative adult outcomes. One mechanism through which disadvantage undermines positive outcomes may be by disrupting the ...development of self-control. The goal of the present study was to examine pathways from three key indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage – low family income, low maternal education, and neighborhood poverty – to neural and behavioral measures of response inhibition. We utilized data from a representative cohort of 215 twins (ages 7–18 years, 70% male) oversampled for exposure to disadvantage, who participated in the Michigan Twins Neurogenetics Study (MTwiNS), a study within the Michigan State University Twin Registry (MSUTR). Our child-friendly Go/No-Go task activated the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and activation during this task predicted behavioral inhibition performance, extending prior work on adults to youth. Critically, we also found that neighborhood poverty, assessed via geocoding, but not family income or maternal education, was associated with IFG activation, a finding that we replicated in an independent sample of disadvantaged youth. Further, we found that neighborhood poverty predicted response inhibition performance via its effect on IFG activation. These results provide the first mechanistic evidence that disadvantaged contexts may undermine self-control via their effect on the brain. The broader neighborhood, beyond familial contexts, may be critically important for this association, suggesting that contexts beyond the home have profound effects on the developing brain and behaviors critical for future health, wealth, and wellbeing.
•The mechanisms linking socioeconomic disadvantage to poor life outcomes are unclear.•We found neighborhood poverty to be correlated with behavioral response inhibition.•Neighborhood poverty, not income or education, uniquely predicted IFG activity.•IFG activity mediated neighborhood poverty-response inhibition associations.•Where youth live may be critically important to their brain development.
Low empathy is one component of affective impairments defining the antisocial youth phenotype callous-unemotional (CU) traits. Research suggests CU traits may be negatively associated with neural ...networks that are positively associated with cognitive and affective empathy - specifically the default mode (DMN), frontoparietal (FPN), and salience (SAL) networks. Determining which functional network connections are shared between CU traits and empathy could elucidate the extent to which CU traits shares neural substrates with cognitive versus affective empathy. The present study tested whether CU traits and both cognitive and affective empathy share network connections within and between the DMN, FPN, and SAL.
Participants (n = 112, aged 13-17, 43 % female) completed resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and self-reports for CU traits and empathy as part of a Nathan-Kline Institute study.
Analyses revealed inverse associations with shared network connections between CU traits and both cognitive and affective empathy. Specifically, within-DMN connectivity negatively associated with CU traits, but positively associated with cognitive empathy; and between DMN-SAL connectivity positively associated with CU traits, but negatively associated with both cognitive and affective empathy. However, joint models revealed little variance explained by CU traits and empathy overlapped.
The sample was cross-sectional collection with limited participants (n = 112) from the community that may not generalize to incarcerated adolescents.
Results demonstrate CU traits inversely associated with similar connectivity patterns as cognitive and affective empathy though prediction among constructs did not significantly overlap. Further investigation of these connections can inform a mechanistic understanding of empathy impairments in CU traits.
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