Longitudinal association between callous-unemotional traits and friendship quality among adjudicated adolescents

INTRODUCTION

Youth with callous-unemotional (CU) traits show severe and chronic forms of antisocial behavior, as well as deficits in socioaffiliative processes, such as empathy, guilt, and prosocial behavior. Adolescence represents a critical developmental window when these socioaffiliative processes can help to deepen the strength of supportive peer friendships. However, few studies have explored the relationship between CU traits and friendship quality during adolescence. In the current study, we used data from the Pathways to Desistance dataset to examine reciprocal and longitudinal associations between CU traits and friendship quality at three assessment points separated by 6 months each during adolescence.

METHODS

The sample included adolescents who had interacted with the justice system (age at baseline, M = 16.04, SD = 1.14; N = 1354; 13.6% female). CU traits were assessed using the callousness scale of the self-reported Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory and friendship quality using a scale adapted from the Quality of Relationships Inventory. Models accounted for co-occurring aggression, impulsive-irresponsible traits, grandiose-manipulative traits, age, gender, location, and race.

RESULTS

At every assessment point, CU traits were uniquely related to lower friendship quality. Moreover, we found evidence for reciprocal effects between the first two assessment points, such that CU traits were related to decreases in friendship quality over time, while lower friendship quality simultaneously predicted increases in CU traits across the same period.

CONCLUSIONS

Interventions for CU traits could benefit from including specific modules that target the social processes associated with adaptive and successful friendships, including empathic listening and other-orientated thinking.

Emotion versus cognition: differential pathways to theory of mind for children with high versus low callous-unemotional traits

BACKGROUND

Theory of mind (ToM) serves as a foundation for developing social cognition. Developmental theory suggests that early emotion understanding supports the development of ToM, but few studies have tested this question within longitudinal designs. Additionally, children with callous-unemotional (CU) traits directly challenge this theory as they appear to develop intact ToM despite deficits in emotion understanding. Inhibitory control is proposed as one possible compensatory mechanism for ToM development in children with high CU traits.

METHODS

We examined emotion understanding and inhibitory control at age 3 as predictors of ToM at age 6 and tested whether these pathways were different in children with high versus low levels of CU traits. Multimethod data included observations of child emotion understanding and inhibitory control and parent reports of CU traits drawn from a prospective, longitudinal study (N = 240, 48% female).

RESULTS

Consistent with our hypothesis, emotion understanding at age 3 significantly predicted ToM at age 6 only for children with low CU traits. Although there was a significant interaction between inhibitory control and CU traits in relation to later ToM, the simple slopes were not significant.

CONCLUSIONS

We find prospective longitudinal evidence that emotion understanding is a developmental precursor of ToM. However, this pathway was not evident in children with high CU traits. Future research is needed to further explore potential mechanisms by which children with CU traits develop ToM with a potential focus on higher-order cognitive skills.

Helping the One You Hurt: Toddlers' Rudimentary Guilt, Shame, and Prosocial Behavior After Harming Another

This study explored the role of guilt and shame in early prosocial behavior by extending previous findings that guilt- and shame-like responses can be distinguished in toddlers and, for the first time, examining their associations with helping. Toddlers (n = 32; Mage  = 28.9 months) were led to believe they broke an adult's toy, after which they exhibited either a guilt-like response that included frequently confessing their behavior and trying to repair the toy; or a shame-like response that included frequently avoiding the adult and seldom confessing or attempting to repair the toy. In subsequent prosocial tasks, children showing a guilt-like response helped an adult in emotional distress significantly faster and more frequently than did children showing a shame-like response.

Individual differences in toddlers' social understanding and prosocial behavior: disposition or socialization?

We examined how individual differences in social understanding contribute to variability in early-appearing prosocial behavior. Moreover, potential sources of variability in social understanding were explored and examined as additional possible predictors of prosocial behavior. Using a multi-method approach with both observed and parent-report measures, 325 children aged 18-30 months were administered measures of social understanding (e.g., use of emotion words; self-understanding), prosocial behavior (in separate tasks measuring instrumental helping, empathic helping, and sharing, as well as parent-reported prosociality at home), temperament (fearfulness, shyness, and social fear), and parental socialization of prosocial behavior in the family. Individual differences in social understanding predicted variability in empathic helping and parent-reported prosociality, but not instrumental helping or sharing. Parental socialization of prosocial behavior was positively associated with toddlers' social understanding, prosocial behavior at home, and instrumental helping in the lab, and negatively associated with sharing (possibly reflecting parents' increased efforts to encourage children who were less likely to share). Further, socialization moderated the association between social understanding and prosocial behavior, such that social understanding was less predictive of prosocial behavior among children whose parents took a more active role in socializing their prosociality. None of the dimensions of temperament was associated with either social understanding or prosocial behavior. Parental socialization of prosocial behavior is thus an important source of variability in children's early prosociality, acting in concert with early differences in social understanding, with different patterns of influence for different subtypes of prosocial behavior.