Dataset Information

Callous-Unemotional Traits as an Intervention Target and Moderator of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy-Emotion Development Treatment for Preschool Depression and Conduct Problems.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits-characterized by low empathy, prosociality, and guilt-predict severe and persistent conduct problems. Although some interventions for conduct problems have been less effective in children with high levels of CU traits, studies have not examined whether CU traits interfere with treatment for other childhood disorders. Moreover, few treatments have demonstrated efficacy in decreasing CU traits themselves in early childhood. This study examined whether Parent-Child Interaction Therapy-Emotion Development (PCIT-ED), a novel PCIT adaptation that promotes emotional competence with demonstrated efficacy in treating preschool-onset major depressive disorder and oppositional defiant disorder, was also effective in treating these disorders in children displaying higher levels of CU traits. The study also examined whether PCIT-ED treatment produced significant and sustained decreases in CU traits.

Method

This study examined 3- to 5-year-olds (N = 114) with preschool-onset major depressive disorder who completed the PCIT-ED trial. Children were randomly assigned to either immediate PCIT-ED treatment (n = 64) or a waitlist control condition (n = 50) in which they received the active treatment after 18 weeks. Psychiatric diagnoses and severity and CU traits in children were assessed at baseline, immediately after treatment, and 18 weeks after treatment completion.

Results

Compared with the waitlist, PCIT-ED effectively reduced major depressive disorder and oppositional defiant disorder in preschoolers, regardless of initial levels of CU traits. Moreover, CU traits decreased from before to after treatment, and this treatment effect was sustained 18 weeks after treatment.

Conclusion

Results support that novel interventions that enhance emotional development display significant promise in treating CU traits-behaviors that left untreated predict severe conduct problems, criminality, and substance use.

Clinical trial registration information

A Randomized Controlled Trial of PCIT-ED for Preschool Depression; https://clinicaltrials.gov; NCT02076425.

SUBMITTER: Donohue MR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8689660 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundChildren who are frequently aggressive or lack empathy show various deficits in their social information processing. Several findings suggest that children with conduct problems (CP) show a tendency to interpret ambiguous situations as hostile (hostile attribution bias) and have difficulties to disengage from negative stimuli (attentional bias). The role that additional callous-unemotional traits (CU-traits) play in these biases is yet unclear. Investigating both attentional and attributional aspects of social information processing in children can help us to understand where anomalies in the processing pathway occur and whether the biases are associated with CP and CU-traits separately or in an interactive manner.MethodsWe compared three groups of children: (a) 25 children with CP and low levels of CU-traits (b) 25 children with CP and elevated levels of CU-traits (c) 50 gender (68% male), age (8-17 years) and intelligence score-matched typically developing children, on a pictorial emotional stroop task and a hostile attribution bias task.ResultsIn contrast to our predictions, there were no significant group differences regarding attentional biases or hostile attribution biases. Boys with CP and high levels of CU-traits showed a significantly higher hostile attribution bias compared to girls with CP and high levels of CU-traits. The attention bias to angry stimuli significantly correlated with the hostile attribution bias. Compared to the control group the CP group with low levels of CU-traits showed a significantly stronger association between the attention bias to angry stimuli and the hostile attribution bias.ConclusionsThe current study provides evidence that boys with CP and high levels of CU-traits interpret ambiguous situations as more hostile than girls do. Our results further provide indications that the interaction of attentional and attributional biases in children with CP might contribute to their increased aggressive behavior.

Project description:The ability to empathise relies in part on using one's own affective experience to simulate the affective experience of others. This process is supported by a number of brain areas including the anterior insula (AI), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and the amygdala. Children with conduct problems (CP), and in particular those with high levels of callous-unemotional traits (CP/HCU) present with less empathy than their peers. They also show reduced neural response in areas supporting empathic processing when viewing other people in distress. The current study focused on identifying brain areas co-activated during affective introspection of: i) One's own emotions ('Own emotion'); ii) Others' emotions ('Other emotion'); and iii) One's feelings about others' emotions ('Feel for other') during fearful vs neutral scenarios in typically developing boys (TD; n = 31), boys with CP/HCU (n = 31), and boys with CP and low levels of CU (CP/LCU; n = 33). The conjunction analysis across conditions within the TD group revealed significant clusters of activation in the AI, ACC/mPFC, and occipital cortex. Conjunction analyses across conditions in the CP/HCU and CP/LCU groups did not identify these areas as significantly activated. However, follow-up analyses were not able to confirm statistically significant differences between groups across the whole network, and Bayes-factor analyses did not provide substantial support for either the null or alternate hypotheses. Post-hoc comparisons indicated that the lack of conjunction effects in the CP/HCU group may reflect reduced affective introspection in the 'Other emotion' and 'Feel for other' conditions, and by reduced affective introspection in the 'Own emotion' condition in the CP/LCU group. These findings provide limited and ultimately equivocal evidence for altered affective introspection regarding others in CP/HCU, and altered affective introspection for own emotions in CP/LCU, and highlight the need for further research to systematically investigate the precise nature of empathy deficits in children with CP.