Less imitation of arbitrary actions is a specific developmental precursor to callous-unemotional traits in early childhood.
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ABSTRACT: Objective
Callous-unemotional (CU) traits in early childhood explain heterogeneity within conduct problems and are associated with higher risk for later diagnoses of childhood disruptive behavior disorders and antisocial behavior in adulthood. Emerging research implicates impairments in affiliative processes in the etiology of CU traits. The current study tests whether the imitation of intentional actions with no functional significance -a behavior that supports the acquisition of social conventions and affiliative bonds, is a specific developmental precursor to CU traits in early childhood.Methods
Data came from a longitudinal twin study of 628 children (Age 2: 47% females; Age 3: 44.9% females) with observations of arbitrary (i.e., nonfunctional actions) and instrumental (i.e., functional actions) imitation and parent reports of CU traits and oppositional defiant (ODD) behaviors at ages 2 and 3.Results
Lower arbitrary imitation at age 2, but not instrumental imitation, was related to increases in CU traits from ages 2 to 3 (β = -.10, p = .02).Conclusions
These findings establish early social and affiliative processes in the etiology of CU traits, highlighting that novel personalized treatment and intervention strategies for CU traits may benefit from targeting these processes to help reduce CU traits and risk for persistent conduct problems in children.
SUBMITTER: Wagner NJ
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7335314 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:BackgroundChildren with callous-unemotional (CU) traits, a proposed precursor to adult psychopathy, are characterized by impaired emotion recognition, reduced responsiveness to others' distress, and a lack of guilt or empathy. Reduced attention to faces, and more specifically to the eye region, has been proposed to underlie these difficulties, although this has never been tested longitudinally from infancy. Attention to faces occurs within the context of dyadic caregiver interactions, and early environment including parenting characteristics has been associated with CU traits. The present study tested whether infants' preferential tracking of a face with direct gaze and levels of maternal sensitivity predict later CU traits.MethodsData were analyzed from a stratified random sample of 213 participants drawn from a population-based sample of 1233 first-time mothers. Infants' preferential face tracking at 5 weeks and maternal sensitivity at 29 weeks were entered into a weighted linear regression as predictors of CU traits at 2.5 years.ResultsControlling for a range of confounders (e.g., deprivation), lower preferential face tracking predicted higher CU traits (p = .001). Higher maternal sensitivity predicted lower CU traits in girls (p = .009), but not boys. No significant interaction between face tracking and maternal sensitivity was found.ConclusionsThis is the first study to show that attention to social features during infancy as well as early sensitive parenting predict the subsequent development of CU traits. Identifying such early atypicalities offers the potential for developing parent-mediated interventions in children at risk for developing CU traits.
| S-EPMC4510143 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThis study examined the genetic and environmental influences underlying baseline level and developmental course of callous-unemotional (CU) traits across childhood and adolescence.MethodsThe data on 8,958 twin pairs (3,108 MZ twin pairs and 5,850 DZ twin pairs) from the Twins Early Development Study were analysed. CU traits were assessed at ages 7, 9, 12 and 16 by mothers and analysed using a biometric latent growth model.ResultsIndividual differences in the baseline level of CU traits were highly heritable (76.5%), while the heritability of the developmental course of CU traits was moderate (43.6%). The genetic influences on baseline level and developmental course of CU traits were mostly nonoverlapping. Nonshared environment made a modest contribution to the baseline level of CU traits (21.7%). Nonshared environmental influences on the developmental course of CU traits were moderate (43.2%), with nearly half of them being the same as those influencing the baseline level and just over half being specific. Shared environmental effects did not contribute to systematic change across childhood and adolescence but were rather age-specific.ConclusionsOur findings demonstrate that rather than only being conceptualized as factors of stability, genes also play a dynamic role in explaining systematic change in CU traits. Genetic effects for the initial risk and subsequent development of CU traits are not the same. In addition to genetic factors, nonshared environmental influences play an important role in explaining why some children will increase or maintain their CU traits over time, whereas other will desist. New genetic and environmental influences with age suggest that repeated, age-tailored interventions may be required throughout development to make a lasting difference in the presentation of CU traits and associated outcomes.
| S-EPMC8432158 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundCallous-unemotional (CU) traits are associated with chronic and escalating trajectories of antisocial behavior. Extant etiologic studies suggest that heritability estimates for CU traits vary substantially, while also pointing to an environmental association between parenting and CU traits.MethodsWe used twin modeling to estimate additive genetic (A), shared environmental (C), and nonshared environmental (E) influences on CU traits, measured with the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU) and its subscales. Our sample included 600 twin pairs (age 6-11, 230 monozygotic) from neighborhoods with above-average levels of family poverty, a risk factor for antisocial behavior. We examined the extent to which correlations between parenting, measured via parent and child report on the Parental Environment Questionnaire, and CU traits reflected genetic versus environmental factors. Then, we tested whether parenting moderated the heritability of CU traits.ResultsIn the context of lower-income neighborhoods, CU traits were moderately to highly heritable (A = 54%) with similar moderate-to-high nonshared environmental influences (E = 46%). Bivariate models revealed that associations between CU traits and warm parenting were genetic (rA = .22) and environmental (rE = .19) in origin, whereas associations between CU traits and harsh parenting were largely genetic in origin (rA = .70). The heritability of CU traits decreased with increasing parental warmth and decreasing harshness.ConclusionsCallous-unemotional traits are both genetic and environmental in origin during middle childhood, but genetic influences are moderated by parenting quality. Parenting may be an important target for interventions, particularly among youth with greater genetic risk.
| S-EPMC10049759 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Callous-unemotional (CU) traits (i.e., callousness, low empathy, shallow affect) have been conceptualized as a downward extension of the interpersonal and affective components of adult psychopathy and are associated with stable and severe antisocial behavior. Research suggests that CU traits are moderately heritable, but also influenced by environmental factors, particularly parenting. We examined associations among mother and father psychopathic traits, parenting practices, and offspring CU traits in a community sample of 550 adolescent twins (Mean age = 13.99 years; SD 2.37; 56.4% male), incorporating multiple informants (mothers, fathers, child). Parental interpersonal-affective psychopathic traits were associated with adolescent CU traits and negative parenting (increased harshness, reduced warmth). Moreover, increased parental harshness and reduced warmth partially explained associations between parental interpersonal-affective traits and adolescent CU traits. There was also a significant direct effect specifically between mother interpersonal-affective traits and adolescent CU traits. Finally, using a twin difference design, we confirmed that adolescent CU traits were significantly impacted by non-shared environmental parenting influences (increased harshness, reduced warmth). These results suggest that mother and father interpersonal-affective traits appear to impact parenting practices and serve as risk factors for adolescent CU traits. However, many of the findings did not replicate when using cross-informant reports and were only present within single informant models, highlighting a role for shared informant variance as well. The results suggest the importance of accounting for parent personality in the development of effective parenting interventions for CU traits.
| S-EPMC8455443 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundCallous-unemotional (CU) traits, a youth antisocial phenotype, are hypothesized to associate with aberrant connectivity (dis-integration) across the salience (SAL), default mode (DMN), and frontoparietal (FPN) networks. However, CU traits have a heterogeneous presentation and previous research has not modeled individual heterogeneity in resting-state connectivity amongst adolescents with CU traits. The present study models individual-specific network maps and examines topological features of individual and subgroup maps in relation to CU traits.MethodsParticipants aged 13-17 (n = 84, male = 55%, female = 45%) completed resting-state functional connectivity and the inventory of callous-unemotional traits as part of the Nathan Klein Rockland study. A sparse network approach (GIMME) was used to derive individual-level and subgroup maps of all participants. We then examined heterogeneous network features, including positive and negative connection density, associated with CU traits.ResultsHigher rates of CU traits increased probability of inclusion in one subgroup, which had the highest mean level of CU traits. Analysis of network features reveals less density (positive and negative) within the FPN and greater density between DMN-FPN associated with CU traits.DiscussionFindings indicate heterogeneous person-specific connections and some subgroup connections amongst adolescents associate with CU traits. Higher CU traits associate with lower density in the FPN, which has been associated with attention and inhibition, and higher density between the DMN-FPN, which have been linked with cognitive control, social working memory, and empathy. Our findings suggest less efficiency in FPN function which, when considered mechanistically, could result in difficulty suppressing DMN when task positive networks are engaged. This is an area for further exploration but could explain cognitive and socio-affective impairments in CU traits.
| S-EPMC8604808 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Background: Irritability and callous-unemotional (CU; reduced guilt/empathy) traits vary dimensionally in the typically developing population but may be particularly marked in youth with conduct disorder (CD). While these dimensional traits are positively correlated, they have been associated with divergent forms of dysfunction, particularly with respect to threat processing (i.e., irritability with increased, and CU traits with decreased, threat responsiveness). This suggests that interactions between these two dimensions may be complex at the neurobiological level. However, this issue has received minimal empirical attention. Methods: The study included 105 adolescents (typically developing and cases with CD; N = 59). They were scanned with fMRI during a looming threat task that involved images of threatening and neutral human faces or animals that appeared to be either looming or receding. Results: Significant irritability-by-CU traits-by-Direction-by-Emotion interactions were seen within right thalamus/PAG, left lingual gyrus and right fusiform gyrus; irritability was positively associated with the BOLD response for Looming Threatening vs. Receding Threatening trials, particularly for youth with low CU traits. In contrast, CU traits were negatively associated with the same differential BOLD response but particularly for youth showing higher levels of irritability. Similar findings were seen within left ventral anterior and posterior cingulate cortices, though the addition of the interaction with CU traits was only seen at slightly more lenient thresholds. Conclusions: The results support previous work linking irritability to increased, and CU traits to reduced, threat responsiveness. However, for adolescents with high irritability, if CU traits are also high, the underlying neuropathology appears to relate to reduced, rather than increased, threat responsiveness.
| S-EPMC8635046 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Recent neuroimaging studies have suggested divergent relationships between antisocial behavior (AB) and callous-unemotional (CU) traits and amygdala reactivity to fearful and angry facial expressions in adolescents. However, little work has examined if these findings extend to dimensional measures of behavior in ethnically diverse, non-clinical samples, or if participant sex, ethnicity, pubertal stage, and age moderate associations. We examined links between amygdala reactivity and dimensions of AB and CU traits in 220 Hispanic and non-Hispanic Caucasian adolescents (age 11-15; 49.5% female; 38.2% Hispanic), half of whom had a family history for depression and thus were at relatively elevated risk for late starting, emotionally dysregulated AB. We found that AB was significantly related to increased right amygdala reactivity to angry facial expressions independent of sex, ethnicity, pubertal stage, age, and familial risk status for depression. CU traits were not related to fear- or anger-related amygdala reactivity. The present study further demonstrates that AB is related to increased amygdala reactivity to interpersonal threat cues in adolescents, and that this relationship generalizes across sex, ethnicity, pubertal stage, age, and familial risk status for depression.
| S-EPMC5429212 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundCallous-unemotional (CU) traits represent the affective features of psychopathy used to delineate youth at high risk for externalizing pathology. The genetic etiology CU traits is not currently well-understood.MethodsThe current review surveyed the literature for studies on the genetic underpinnings of CU traits and integrated information from 39 genetic studies.ResultsThe results from 24 studies with quantitative data suggest that the heritability for CU traits is likely between 36-67%. A majority of the 16 molecular genetic studies focused on candidate genes in the serotonin and oxytocin systems with results that have not been well replicated. Although two genome-wide association studies have been conducted, no genome-wide significant loci have been discovered.DiscussionThere is some evidence to suggest that the serotonin and oxytocin systems may play a role in CU traits; however, there is currently not enough evidence to implicate specific genetic mechanisms. The authors encourage researchers to continue to apply the most up-to-date and relevant methodology, specifically collaborations and consortiums using genome-wide and polygenic methods.
| S-EPMC6756755 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundA Callous-Unemotional trait specifier (termed 'Limited Prosocial Emotions') was added to the diagnosis of conduct disorder in DSM-5. The Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU) is a comprehensive measure of these traits assessing three distinct, yet correlated dimensions--Callousness, Uncaring, and Unemotional--all thought to reflect the general Callous-Unemotional construct. The present study was the first to examine the degree to which the aetiology of these dimensions is shared v. independent.MethodParent-reported ICU data from 5092 16-year-old twin pairs from the Twins Early Development Study were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis. Multivariate genetic modelling was applied to the best-fitting structure.ResultsA general-specific structure, retaining a general factor and two uncorrelated specific factors (Callousness-Uncaring, Unemotional), provided the best fit to the data. The general factor was substantially heritable (h2 = 0.58, 95% CI 0.51-0.65). Unusually, shared environmental influences were also important in accounting for this general factor (c2 = 0.26, 95% CI 0.22-0.31), in addition to non-shared environmental influences. The Unemotional dimension appeared phenotypically and genetically distinct as shown by the substantial loadings of unemotional items on a separate dimension and a low genetic correlation between Unemotional and Callousness-Uncaring.ConclusionsA general factor, indicative of a shared phenotypic structure across the dimensions of the ICU was under substantial common genetic and more modest shared environment influences. Our findings also suggest that the relevance of the Unemotional dimension as part of a comprehensive assessment of CU traits should be investigated further.
| S-EPMC4682480 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Callous-unemotional (CU) traits comprise the core symptoms of psychopathy, yet no study has estimated the heritability of CU traits in a community sample of children using an instrument designed solely to assess CU traits. The current study uses data from 339 twin pairs aged 9-14 to examine the reliability and heritability of the parent-report Inventory of Callous-unemotional Traits (ICU) at two assessments approximately 3 weeks apart. Time-specific measurement error was taken into account to obtain a more accurate estimate of the heritability reflecting the latent liability to CU traits. Test-retest reliability was 0.84 and heritability at visit 1 was 39%. The heritability of the latent liability to CU traits was 47%. This latent liability contributed 79% of the variance in ICU score at visit 1 and visit 2. This is the first study to account for measurement error while examining the heritability of CU traits, furthering our understanding of psychopathy in children.
| S-EPMC5305430 | biostudies-literature