What makes the difference? A cross-generation comparison of biological and psychosocial factors differentiating subgroups of children with conduct problems and callous-unemotional traits
Developmental and Educational Psychology
Final Report Abstract
Callous-unemotional traits (CU traits) are personality traits in children characterized by a lack of remorse, lack of empathy, and indifference to their own performance, as well as shallow affect. They are particularly considered in the context of conduct disorder, as the DSM-5 captures them with the specifier "(...) with limited prosocial emotions". Children with conduct problems and elevated CU traits respond worse to common interventions and show a more severe and more negative pathway of antisocial and delinquent behavior compared to children with social-behavioral problems without elevated CU-traits. However, CU-traits do not only occur in a psychopathological context; approximately 2.9% of all children exhibit high CU traits that are not associated with conduct problems or other mental illnesses. However, the majority of studies focus on CU traits in a sample of children with conduct problems. In contrast, the current study additionally included children with elevated CU traits who did not have conduct problems. Here, it was found that children who do not have conduct problems, but have elevated CU-traits, show significantly more behavioral problems (hyperactivity, problems with peers, emotional problems) than children without conduct problems and without CU- traits. Relatedly, the quality of life of children without conduct problems and without CU traits was rated higher than quality of life of children with conduct problems. Interestingly, children who did not have conduct problems but had high CU-traits did not differ from the groups with conduct problems in terms of life satisfaction. The longitudinal study of children with either high CU-traits or low CU-traits in our project makes it possible for the first time to identify different developmental trajectories in children with high CU- traits. The results of our study indicate that children with high CU-traits differ significantly from children without CU-traits in terms of their quality of life and the expression of psychopathology over the course of 15 months. The research project was successful despite some unpredictable developments in the course of the project that significantly complicated our recruitment and survey phases (for example, a cyberattack and an associated network shutdown of the University or the Covid-19-pandemic and the associated restrictions on University operations) successfully collect a sample that experience has shown to be difficult to motivate to engage in scientific studies at all. However, because this was accompanied by several project delays, some data from the project are currently still being processed, analyzed, and published.
