BackgroundA propensity to attend to other people's emotions is a necessary condition for human empathy.AimsTo test our hypothesis that psychopathic disorder begins as a failure to attend to the eyes of attachment figures, using a ‘love’ scenario in young children.MethodChildren with oppositional defiant disorder, assessed for callous–unemotional traits, and a control group were observed in a love interaction with mothers. Eye contact and affection were measured for each dyad.ResultsThere was no group difference in affection and eye contact expressed by the mothers. Compared with controls, children with oppositional defiant disorder expressed lower levels of affection back towards their mothers; those with high levels of callous–unemotional traits showed significantly lower levels of affection than the children lacking these traits. As predicted, the former group showed low levels of eye contact toward their mothers. Low eye contact was not correlated with maternal coercive parenting or feelings toward the child, but was correlated with psychopathic fearlessness in their fathers.ConclusionsImpairments in eye contact are characteristic of children with callous–unemotional traits, and these impairments are independent of maternal behaviour.

Background: The existing estimates of there being 250,000 -350,000 children of problem drug users in the UK (ACMD, 2003) and 780,000 -1.3 million children of adults with an alcohol problem (AHRSE, 2004) are extrapolations of treatment data alone or estimates from other countries, hence updated, local and broader estimates are needed.

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University of London, UKFifty-six secondary school students with and without social emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBDs) completed self-report measures of their strengths and difficulties, self-concept and social identity, cognitive attributional style and participated in computer-based tests of risk-taking and impulsivity. Contrary to common understanding, the students with SEBDs made realistic estimations of their difficulties and were as able to make attributions as their peers without SEBDs; though they tended to attribute negative events internally significantly more often than did students without SEBDs. No differences were found between the two groups in terms of risktaking as measured on a computer-based test. Implications of these findings for identification of and working with students with SEBDs are considered.