Views of the downward extension: comparing the Youth Version of the Psychopathy Checklist with the Youth Psychopathic traits Inventory

Abstract

Increasing interest in "juvenile psychopathy" has been met with scholarly debate about the validity of directly extending the adult construct of psychopathic personality disorder to youth. To inform this debate, this study of 160 serious adolescent offenders compared two alternative, adult-based conceptualizations of juvenile psychopathy: that of the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV) and the self-report Youth Psychopathic traits Inventory (YPI). The results indicate that these two conceptualizations overlap only partially, with the YPI focusing more tightly on core interpersonal and affective features than the PCL:YV. Each conceptualization is reliable and predicts different forms of short-term institutional misbehavior. However, only the YPI possesses a theoretically coherent, inverse association with anxiety. Despite this promise, these conceptualizations of psychopathy are less strongly associated with one another than they are with psychosocial markers of developmental maturity. This raises questions about their divergent validity and ability to identify a disorder that will remain stable during the transition from adolescence into adulthood. Implications for future longitudinal research on the validity, manifestations, and course of juvenile psychopathy are discussed.

Fear extinction, persistent disruptive behavior and psychopathic traits: fMRI in late adolescence

“…with <100% reinforcement schemes and longer extinction periods, as well as detailed reports of US expectancy. Finally, although the psychopathic traits measure employed in this study is valid and reliable (Andershed et al, 2002;Skeem and Cauffman, 2003), its self-report nature may not capture all the variance of the psychopathy construct and we advise future studies to additionally employ reports by parents or teachers.…”

Callous-Unemotional Traits and Their Implication for Understanding and Treating Aggressive and Violent Youths

“…Although the reliability and validity of this scale has not been as extensively tested as other measures of psychopathy, its scales have generally shown adequate internal consistency. Also, scores on the YPI were related to institutional infractions in a sample of adolescent offenders (Skeem & Cauffman, 2003).…”

Nipping psychopathy in the bud: an examination of the convergent, predictive, and theoretical utility of the PCL‐YV among adolescent girls

“…The Psychopathy Checklist-Youth Version (PCL-YV: Forth et al, 2003) is a downward extension of the PCL-R that is designed to assess the interpersonal, affective, antisocial, and behavioral features of psychopathy among youth. While the guidelines included in the PCL-YV explicitly caution that ''the PCL-YV should not be the sole criterion used to make decisions about a youth for dispositions within the mental health and criminal justice systems'' (p. 4), the potential for misuse of the PCL-YV remains (Edens et al, 2001;Skeem & Cauffman, 2003;Steinberg, 2002;Vincent, unpublished doctoral dissertation). More recently, questions regarding the research and clinical limitations of extending psychopathy into adolescent female populations have emerged (Odgers, Moretti, & Reppucci, 2005).…”