Aggression in Children with Conduct Problems and Callous-Unemotional Traits: Social Information Processing and Response to Peer Provocation

Abstract

Callous/unemotional traits (CU) moderate children's conduct problems (CP) in numerous domains, including social functioning. The present study examined whether CU traits also moderate the aggressiveness of children's social information processing (SIP) and responses to varying intensities of peer provocation. Sixty elementary school-age children (46 males) were grouped into those without CP or CU (controls, n = 32), those with CP but not CU (CP-only; n = 14), and those with both CP and CU (CPCU, n = 14). Participants completed a task that measured two aspects of SIP (response generation and hostile attribution bias) and a computerized reaction time task (CRTT) that measured behavior, affect, and communication before and after provocation under instrumental and hostile aggressive conditions. Children with CPCU generated more aggressive responses than controls on measures of SIP. On the CRTT, all children exhibited reactive aggression following high provocation, but only children with CPCU exhibited proactive aggression, and reactive aggression following low provocation; no differences in affect were found. In a series of exploratory analyses, CPCU children communicated antisocially, while CP-only communicated prosocially. Finally, children with CPCU did not seem to hold a grudge following the final instance of provocation, instead gradually returning to baseline like their non-CU peers. These distinct social cognitive and behavioral profiles hint at different etiologies of CP and CPCU, underscoring the variability of aggression in these populations.

Attributional and attentional bias in children with conduct problems and callous-unemotional traits: a case–control study

“…As both children with CP-CU as well as children with CP-only show increased levels of reactive aggression [33] our findings of a tendency for a higher hostile attribution bias in both of these groups fit the results of a meta-analysis, showing that reactive aggression is associated with higher levels of the hostile attribution bias [14]. Nonetheless, our findings contradict the previous finding of a stronger hostile attribution bias in CP-only compared to CP-CU children [31], the findings of a higher hostile attribution bias in CP-CU compared to CP-only children [32] and the findings of no group differences at all [15]. Our study overcame several shortcomings of these previous studies.…”

“…However, studies, which directly investigated the hostile attribution bias in children with CP and CU-traits, produced inconsistent results. Frick et al [31] reported an increased hostile attribution bias in boys with CP-only compared to all other groups, Cima et al [32] observed an increased hostile attribution bias in CP-CU boys compared to CP-only boys, and Helseth et al did not find any group differences [15]. As Cima et al [32] only investigated boys, Frick [31] only observed group differences in the male portion of their study sample and Helseth et al [15] did not observe any group differences in their mixed gender sample, gender might be a potential confounding factor and explain the discrepancies between these results.…”

“…The authors propose that a failure to regularly process either of these steps may lead to aggressive behavior. Even though, the literature has shown that children with CP show irregularities in all five steps [13][14][15][16], the vast majority of papers focuses on the encoding aspects of step one [17][18][19][20] and less so on the attentional aspects. However, there exists some evidence, which indicates that children with CP with and without CUtraits might, in fact, show differences in the attentional aspects of social information processing.…”

Gender differences in aggression: The role of displaying facial emotional cues in a competitive situation

“…We included these initial three fully unprovoked trials to examine participants responses prior and after the onset of provocation. Having trials in which participants have not yet received a noise blast from the opponent can provide an important baseline measure of aggression (e.g., Helseth, Waschbusch, King & Willoughby, ). On the remaining trials, some constraints were programmed to manipulate the number and levels of noise participants received in a randomized order.…”

Anxiety and Callous-Unemotional Traits: Physiological and Behavioral Responses to Others' Distress

“…It is possible that the increased attention to distress cues noted among CU youth experiencing anxiety represents a sensitivity to negative emotional cues in general, similar to the attentional biases towards negative-and threat-related cues (Mogg & Bradley, 2005;Reid et al, 2006), and bias towards interpreting ambiguous information negatively (Taghavi et al, 2000) documented among anxious children. While CU traits have not previously been associated with a hostile attribution bias (HAB; Dodge, Price, Bachorowski, & Newman, 1990;Frick et al, 2003a;Helseth, Waschbusch, King, & Willoughby, 2015), perhaps the combination of cognitive biases associated with anxiety and the callousness of CU traits yields the impulsive, aggressive reactivity documented in these youth (e.g., Fanti et al, 2013;Kahn et al, 2013).…”