Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ARTICLESCallous/Unemotional Traits and Social-Cognitive Processes in Adjudicated Youths
Section snippets
Psychopathic Traits and Social Cognition
Few studies have examined the social informationprocessing of children with psychopathic traits. However, examining the social cognitions associated with psychopathic traits in youths is important for several reasons. First, clinical descriptions note that individuals with significant psychopathic traits are of adequate intellect and display no obvious signs of thought disorder, but fail to exercise good judgment in decision making (Newman and Wallace, 1993a). Second, specific social
Participants
The sample consisted of 169 adjudicated juveniles (97 males and 72 females) residing at two gender-specific residential facilities in close proximity to each other in the southeastern United States. The majority of the participants were African American (n = 117, 69%), with the remainder being white (n = 50, 30%), Asian (n = 1, 0.5%), and Latino (n = 1, 0.5%). Most juveniles were in their mid teens (mean = 15.81, SD = 1.26) and had been incarcerated for several months (mean = 5.68, SD = 5.95).
RESULTS
Descriptive statistics for study variables are presented in Table 1. In comparison with the females, male participants tended to be younger (t167 = −4.92, p < .001), tended to have more prior offenses (t165 = 2.71, p < .01), tended to have lower Full Scale IQs (t167 = −2.62, p < .05), and were more likely to be gang-affiliated (χ2[1, N = 169] = 5.23, p < .05) and minorities (χ2[1, N = 169] = 6.78, p < .01). Females were more likely to report a history of physical/sexual abuse (χ2[1, N = 160] =
DISCUSSION
The results supported several hypotheses regarding the nature of the two factors of psychopathy and the relation between C/U traits and social-cognitive processes. Consistent with conceptualizations of psychopathic traits in children, the C/U factor was strongly associated with deficits in cognitive and emotional empathy, while the I/CP dimension was more strongly related to behavioral dysregulation. The two factors of psychopathy also exhibited divergent relations to scales measuring emotional
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This study was supported by a University of Alabama GSA award and NRSA from NIDA. Special thanks to Drs. William Chaplin, Leroy Richardson, and Mark Burge.