Reduced neural responses to vocal fear: a potential biomarker for callous‐uncaring traits in early childhood

Abstract

Reduced neural responses to vocal fear could be a biomarker for callous-uncaring traits in early childhood. These findings are relevant for clinicians and researchers attempting to identify risk factors for early callous-uncaring traits.

Diminished Neural Responses to Emotionally Valenced Facial Stimuli: A Potential Biomarker for Unemotional Traits in Early Childhood

“…Our previous research using the same sample suggests that preschoolers displaying higher levels of callousness-uncaring traits show neural activation patterns indicative of less sensitive processing of vocal fear [20]. However, in the current study, the association between the neural correlates of facial affect processing and CU traits was limited to the unemotional scale, a scale that is typically uncorrelated with scores on the callous and uncaring dimension of CU traits [46].…”

“…However, in the current study, the association between the neural correlates of facial affect processing and CU traits was limited to the unemotional scale, a scale that is typically uncorrelated with scores on the callous and uncaring dimension of CU traits [46]. The possible reasons for these different associations are discussed below; however, when considered together, the current study and Hoyniak et al [20] provide converging evidence that the difficulties in processing fear that have been noted for older children, adolescents, and adults with high levels of CU traits are present in very early childhood. These results also support the interpretation that the emotionprocessing difficulties of children with CU traits extend across both auditory and visual sensory modalities.…”

“…Additionally, preschoolers with low concern for others (e.g., acted like he/she did not care when someone felt bad or sad; a feature of CU traits in early childhood) were found to have deficits in recognizing fearful facial stimuli [19]. Previous work from our lab focusing on preschoolers suggests that higher levels of CU traits, more specifically callous-uncaring traits, were associated with reduced responses to fearful vocal stimuli [20].…”

“…Neither study found an association between CU traits and neural responses to happy stimuli (although Hoyniak et al [20] did find a trending, positive association between CU traits and happy mismatch negativity [MMN] ERP amplitudes, such that children with higher levels of callousness-uncaring traits showed better capacity to differentiate auditory tones with happy valence). Coupled with a growing literature that suggests that emotion processing difficulties in individuals displaying CU traits may be specific to emotions associated with distress, especially fear [10,57], our findings support Blair's hypothesis [12] that emotion-processing deficits in early childhood could be the foundation for the development of later CU traits.…”

“…The current study examined the association between CU traits in early childhood and the N170, a well-studied ERP correlate of facial processing that is likely sensitive to emotion. Based on prior findings with adults [35,37] and findings indicating that children displaying CU traits may show difficulties in processing emotional stimuli associated with distress [18,19,20,22,23,24], it was expected that young children displaying higher levels of CU traits would show smaller N170 amplitudes, suggesting diminished processing of facial emotion stimuli. Additionally, given that diminished emotion processing capacities in children with CU traits may be specific to emotions associated with distress, the association between CU traits and N170 amplitudes was expected to emerge for facial stimuli depicting fear, but not for facial stimuli depicting happiness.…”