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Reduced Face Preference in Infancy: A Developmental Precursor to Callous-Unemotional Traits?
BACKGROUND: Children with callous-unemotional (CU) traits, a proposed precursor to adult psychopathy, are characterized by impaired emotion recognition, reduced responsiveness to others’ distress, and a lack of guilt or empathy. Reduced attention to faces, and more specifically to the eye region, ha...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4510143/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25526972 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2014.09.022 |
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author | Bedford, Rachael Pickles, Andrew Sharp, Helen Wright, Nicola Hill, Jonathan |
author_facet | Bedford, Rachael Pickles, Andrew Sharp, Helen Wright, Nicola Hill, Jonathan |
author_sort | Bedford, Rachael |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Children with callous-unemotional (CU) traits, a proposed precursor to adult psychopathy, are characterized by impaired emotion recognition, reduced responsiveness to others’ distress, and a lack of guilt or empathy. Reduced attention to faces, and more specifically to the eye region, has been proposed to underlie these difficulties, although this has never been tested longitudinally from infancy. Attention to faces occurs within the context of dyadic caregiver interactions, and early environment including parenting characteristics has been associated with CU traits. The present study tested whether infants’ preferential tracking of a face with direct gaze and levels of maternal sensitivity predict later CU traits. METHODS: Data were analyzed from a stratified random sample of 213 participants drawn from a population-based sample of 1233 first-time mothers. Infants’ preferential face tracking at 5 weeks and maternal sensitivity at 29 weeks were entered into a weighted linear regression as predictors of CU traits at 2.5 years. RESULTS: Controlling for a range of confounders (e.g., deprivation), lower preferential face tracking predicted higher CU traits (p = .001). Higher maternal sensitivity predicted lower CU traits in girls (p = .009), but not boys. No significant interaction between face tracking and maternal sensitivity was found. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to show that attention to social features during infancy as well as early sensitive parenting predict the subsequent development of CU traits. Identifying such early atypicalities offers the potential for developing parent-mediated interventions in children at risk for developing CU traits. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4510143 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Elsevier |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-45101432015-08-01 Reduced Face Preference in Infancy: A Developmental Precursor to Callous-Unemotional Traits? Bedford, Rachael Pickles, Andrew Sharp, Helen Wright, Nicola Hill, Jonathan Biol Psychiatry Archival Report BACKGROUND: Children with callous-unemotional (CU) traits, a proposed precursor to adult psychopathy, are characterized by impaired emotion recognition, reduced responsiveness to others’ distress, and a lack of guilt or empathy. Reduced attention to faces, and more specifically to the eye region, has been proposed to underlie these difficulties, although this has never been tested longitudinally from infancy. Attention to faces occurs within the context of dyadic caregiver interactions, and early environment including parenting characteristics has been associated with CU traits. The present study tested whether infants’ preferential tracking of a face with direct gaze and levels of maternal sensitivity predict later CU traits. METHODS: Data were analyzed from a stratified random sample of 213 participants drawn from a population-based sample of 1233 first-time mothers. Infants’ preferential face tracking at 5 weeks and maternal sensitivity at 29 weeks were entered into a weighted linear regression as predictors of CU traits at 2.5 years. RESULTS: Controlling for a range of confounders (e.g., deprivation), lower preferential face tracking predicted higher CU traits (p = .001). Higher maternal sensitivity predicted lower CU traits in girls (p = .009), but not boys. No significant interaction between face tracking and maternal sensitivity was found. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to show that attention to social features during infancy as well as early sensitive parenting predict the subsequent development of CU traits. Identifying such early atypicalities offers the potential for developing parent-mediated interventions in children at risk for developing CU traits. Elsevier 2015-07-15 /pmc/articles/PMC4510143/ /pubmed/25526972 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2014.09.022 Text en © 2015 Society of Biological Psychiatry. All rights reserved. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. |
spellingShingle | Archival Report Bedford, Rachael Pickles, Andrew Sharp, Helen Wright, Nicola Hill, Jonathan Reduced Face Preference in Infancy: A Developmental Precursor to Callous-Unemotional Traits? |
title | Reduced Face Preference in Infancy: A Developmental Precursor to Callous-Unemotional Traits? |
title_full | Reduced Face Preference in Infancy: A Developmental Precursor to Callous-Unemotional Traits? |
title_fullStr | Reduced Face Preference in Infancy: A Developmental Precursor to Callous-Unemotional Traits? |
title_full_unstemmed | Reduced Face Preference in Infancy: A Developmental Precursor to Callous-Unemotional Traits? |
title_short | Reduced Face Preference in Infancy: A Developmental Precursor to Callous-Unemotional Traits? |
title_sort | reduced face preference in infancy: a developmental precursor to callous-unemotional traits? |
topic | Archival Report |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4510143/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25526972 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2014.09.022 |
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