Emotion recognition in girls with conduct problems

Abstract

A deficit in emotion recognition has been suggested to underlie conduct problems. Although several studies have been conducted on this topic so far, most concentrated on male participants. The aim of the current study was to compare recognition of morphed emotional faces in girls with conduct problems (CP) with elevated or low callous-unemotional (CU+ vs. CU-) traits and a matched healthy developing control group (CG). Sixteen girls with CP-CU+, 16 girls with CP-CU- and 32 controls (mean age: 13.23 years, SD=2.33 years) were included. Video clips with morphed faces were presented in two runs to assess emotion recognition. Multivariate analysis of variance with the factors group and run was performed. Girls with CP-CU- needed more time than the CG to encode sad, fearful, and happy faces and they correctly identified sadness less often. Girls with CP-CU+ outperformed the other groups in the identification of fear. Learning effects throughout runs were the same for all groups except that girls with CP-CU- correctly identified fear less often in the second run compared to the first run. Results need to be replicated with comparable tasks, which might result in subgroup-specific therapeutic recommendations.

Empathic skills and theory of mind in female adolescents with conduct disorder

“…8,9 These studies have established that women with CD have a higher deficit of facial acknowledgement of happiness, sadness, and fear -emotions linked to empathic answers and prosocial behavior. Research has also described that these adolescents present slower emotional processing, which limits the decoding of such emotions and generates a delay in the empathic responses needed to understand and affectively bond with the emotional and mental states of others.…”

Research in child and adolescent psychiatry: a multi-disciplinary, many-faceted endeavor

“…Another report from Northern Europe, based on a Finnish register-based regional study, hints that the use of firearms plays a major role in explaining the northern excess in young Finnish male suicide rates [9]. In a German clinical sample, the relationship of callous-unemotional traits with conduct problems in girls has been studied [17]. The significance of traits of ASDs in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been studied in a clinical sample recruited through child psychiatry and pediatric outpatient clinics in the United Kingdom [5].…”

Attention to emotion through a go/no-go task in children with oppositionality and callous–unemotional traits

“…Several experimental tasks have also been used to assess emotional processing, such as computer-presented pictures [35], printed cartoon pictures [14], a morphing task [13] and an emotional dotEmotion in Oppositionality and CU 17 17 probe [38] to cite some examples. Different reporters have mentioned behaviour problems (including mixing ODD and CD symptoms) and callous-unemotional traits, with a predominance of parents and children as reporters, while only a few studies have included teachers' ratings.…”

“…Children with low CU traits have been shown to respond more slowly to fearful eyes than to calm eyes [16] and they also display increased amygdala reactivity. Other studies have concluded that they are also less accurate in labelling fear [14] and they need more time to identify sadness, fear and happiness [13]. Conversely, there are also inconsistencies in the results on emotion recognition in children with conduct problems without CU traits.…”

“…Varying results have been reported in clinical samples of children between the ages of 7 and 18. In children with combined high CU traits and conduct problems fear recognition ability ranges from no deficit [9] through impairment [10,11,12] to a better identification of fear [13,14]. There have also been divergent results regarding sadness, ranging from less accuracy in identifying sad facial expressions [10,14,15] to no deficit [9].…”