Psychopathic features across development: Assessing longitudinal invariance among Caucasian and African American youths

Abstract

Objectives-Psychopathy is associated with severe forms of antisocial and violent behavior in adults. There is also a rapidly growing body of research focused on extending features of adult psychopathy downward to youth. To date however, the degree to which these features can be consistently and comparatively assessed at these younger ages, remains unclear. This study addresses this issue by investigating measurement invariance of underlying features of psychopathy across childhood and adolescence in a racially diverse sample of youth. Methods-Three cohorts of youth (n =1517) were assessed annually from childhood to adolescence (ages ~7-16). Underlying features of psychopathy commonly assessed in youth (e.g. lack of guilt, impulsivity) were examined within a longitudinal bi-factor framework using multidimensional item-response theory (IRT) techniques. Differential item functioning was used to assess invariance across development and participant's race (African-American and Caucasian), using two distinct approaches: (1) traditional item-response theory (IRT) methods; and (2) a recently developed Bayesian structural equation modeling (BSEM) approach. Results-Psychopathy features assessed in this study exhibited measurement consistency across development (~ages 7-16) and were found to tap into the same underlying construct as intended across measurement occasions, and equivalently for African-American and Caucasian youth. Results were similar when assessed using traditional IRT procedures for longitudinal invariance testing and when implementing the more recent BSEM methodology.

The developmental course of psychopathic features: Investigating stability, change, and long-term outcomes

“…Annual assessments of psychopathic features in youth were collected using a short-form of the teacher-reported Childhood Psychopathy Scale (CPSSF; Hawes et al, 2018; Lynam, 1997; Lynam et al, 2009). The CPS, which was originally constructed using items from the Childhood Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1991) and the Common-Language Q-sort (CCQ; Caspi et al, 1992), was developed to serve as a relatively pure measure of personality and therefore does not include items that tap into more overt antisocial behaviors (Lynam, Caspi, Moffitt, Loeber, & Stouthamer-Loeber, 2007).…”

“…The original CPS has demonstrated associations with other measures commonly used to assess psychopathy, including the Antisocial Process Screening Device (ASPD; Frick & Hare, 2001) (r’s = 0.57–0.61; Bijttebier & Decoene, 2009), the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM; Patrick et al, 2009) (r = 0.38; Drislane, Patrick, & Arsal, 2014), the Inventory of Callous- Unemotional Traits (ICU; Frick, 2004) (r = 0.49; Roose, Bijttebier, Claes, Decoene, & Frick, 2009) and the PCL-R across an 11-year span (r = 0.31; Lynam et al, 2007). The current study used a shortened, 14item shortened version of the CPS (Hawes et al, 2018), consisting of items from the standard CBCL Teacher Report Form (TRF; Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1986). This shortened version has previously demonstrated evidence of strong internal consistency across childhood and adolescence, as well as evidence of longitudinal measurement invariance and measurement equivalency across race (see Hawes et al, 2018).…”

“…The current study used a shortened, 14item shortened version of the CPS (Hawes et al, 2018), consisting of items from the standard CBCL Teacher Report Form (TRF; Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1986). This shortened version has previously demonstrated evidence of strong internal consistency across childhood and adolescence, as well as evidence of longitudinal measurement invariance and measurement equivalency across race (see Hawes et al, 2018). All items were rated on a 3-point scale from 0 (not true) to 2 (very true).…”

Assessing callous-unemotional traits: development of a brief, reliable measure in a large and diverse sample of preadolescent youth

“…This finding is consistent with studies that have explored psychopathy in adult samples, where individual items from psychopathy measures were shown to perform differently among African American v. Caucasian individuals (Cooke and Michie, 2001) and men v. women (Dotterer et al ., 2017). Other recent psychopathy focused research, however, has found little evidence of measurement inconsistiencies across race (Hawes et al ., 2018). As such, additional research is needed to explore whether measures of CU traits are commensurate across sex, race, and age in samples of youth.…”

“…Despite the need for studies of CU traits to explore potential measurement invariance across important demographic characteristics (i.e. sex, race, age) (Skeem and Cooke, 2010; Frick et al ., 2014 a ; Frick et al ., 2014 b ; Hawes et al ., 2018), remarkably few studies have actually established measurement equivalence of CU trait measures. Drawing on findings from research focused on assessing the construct of psychopathy more broadly, Tsang et al (2014) found that items assessing psychopathic traits showed differential item functioning among Caucasian v. African American boys (Tsang et al ., 2014).…”