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Aggression in Children with Conduct Problems and Callous-Unemotional Traits: Social Information Processing and Response to Peer Provocation

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Abstract

Callous/unemotional traits (CU) moderate children’s conduct problems (CP) in numerous domains, including social functioning. The present study examined whether CU traits also moderate the aggressiveness of children’s social information processing (SIP) and responses to varying intensities of peer provocation. Sixty elementary school-age children (46 males) were grouped into those without CP or CU (controls, n = 32), those with CP but not CU (CP-only; n = 14), and those with both CP and CU (CPCU, n = 14). Participants completed a task that measured two aspects of SIP (response generation and hostile attribution bias) and a computerized reaction time task (CRTT) that measured behavior, affect, and communication before and after provocation under instrumental and hostile aggressive conditions. Children with CPCU generated more aggressive responses than controls on measures of SIP. On the CRTT, all children exhibited reactive aggression following high provocation, but only children with CPCU exhibited proactive aggression, and reactive aggression following low provocation; no differences in affect were found. In a series of exploratory analyses, CPCU children communicated antisocially, while CP-only communicated prosocially. Finally, children with CPCU did not seem to hold a grudge following the final instance of provocation, instead gradually returning to baseline like their non-CU peers. These distinct social cognitive and behavioral profiles hint at different etiologies of CP and CPCU, underscoring the variability of aggression in these populations.

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Notes

  1. Fifteen additional participants were excluded from this study because they met criteria for ADHD but not ODD or CD (n = 8), they had high CU but not ODD or CD (n = 2), or they were missing data on the measure of CU traits (n = 5). Excluded participants did not differ from included participants on age or gender (ps ≥ 0.309).

  2. Codes capturing passive and appeal to authority messages were also used but later dropped due to lack of variance; they were nearly always rated as not at all. Codes capturing unusual, fearful, and social competence of messages were also used but not analyzed because they were not theoretically relevant for this study.

  3. A commonly recommended first step to address failure to converge is to simplify the statistical model by reducing the terms in the model (Kiernan et al. 2012). We successfully simplified our model by averaging trials; the reduction from six repeated measures to three allowed the parameters to be correctly estimated.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grants to Daniel A. Waschbusch from the Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation (304E) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (839-2000-1061; 410-2004-1272) and by a student research award to Sara King from the Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation.

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The authors reported no conflicts of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

    Sarah A. Helseth & Daniel A. Waschbusch

  2. Penn State Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA, USA

    Daniel A. Waschbusch

  3. Mount St. Vincent University, Halifax, NS, Canada

    Sara King

  4. RTI International, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA

    Michael T. Willoughby

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  1. Sarah A. Helseth
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  2. Daniel A. Waschbusch
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Correspondence to Sarah A. Helseth.

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Helseth, S.A., Waschbusch, D.A., King, S. et al. Aggression in Children with Conduct Problems and Callous-Unemotional Traits: Social Information Processing and Response to Peer Provocation. J Abnorm Child Psychol 43, 1503–1514 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-015-0027-6

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