Abstract
BackgroundChildren who are frequently aggressive or lack empathy show various deficits in their social information processing. Several findings suggest that children with conduct problems (CP) show a tendency to interpret ambiguous situations as hostile (hostile attribution bias) and have difficulties to disengage from negative stimuli (attentional bias). The role that additional callous-unemotional traits (CU-traits) play in these biases is yet unclear. Investigating both attentional and attributional aspects of social information processing in children can help us to understand where anomalies in the processing pathway occur and whether the biases are associated with CP and CU-traits separately or in an interactive manner.MethodsWe compared three groups of children: (a) 25 children with CP and low levels of CU-traits (b) 25 children with CP and elevated levels of CU-traits (c) 50 gender (68% male), age (8–17 years) and intelligence score-matched typically developing children, on a pictorial emotional stroop task and a hostile attribution bias task.ResultsIn contrast to our predictions, there were no significant group differences regarding attentional biases or hostile attribution biases. Boys with CP and high levels of CU-traits showed a significantly higher hostile attribution bias compared to girls with CP and high levels of CU-traits. The attention bias to angry stimuli significantly correlated with the hostile attribution bias. Compared to the control group the CP group with low levels of CU-traits showed a significantly stronger association between the attention bias to angry stimuli and the hostile attribution bias.ConclusionsThe current study provides evidence that boys with CP and high levels of CU-traits interpret ambiguous situations as more hostile than girls do. Our results further provide indications that the interaction of attentional and attributional biases in children with CP might contribute to their increased aggressive behavior.
Highlights
Children who are frequently aggressive or lack empathy show various deficits in their social information processing
Children were allocated to the conduct problems (CP)–CU group if their CU traits were at least one SD above the mean of their gender and age group according to the german norms established by Ueno et al [35]
The bias scores of the Hostile attribution bias task To investigate if the groups significantly differed in their hostile attribution, conceptualized by the hostile attribution bias score, we conducted an analysis of variance (ANOVA) with the hostile attribution bias score as dependent and group as independent variable
Summary
Children who are frequently aggressive or lack empathy show various deficits in their social information processing. According to the DSM-5 [1], the former is defined by symptoms including aggression towards animals and people, destructing the property of others, deceitfulness or theft, violations of rules and social norms and the latter by angry irritable mood, argumentative/defiant behavior, Hartmann et al Child Adolesc Psychiatry Ment Health (2020) 14:9 and vindictiveness Children with such conduct problems (CP) form a highly heterogeneous group. They have a higher heritability of antisocial behavior [4,5,6,7], show reduced responsiveness to punishment [8, 9], as well as a reduced amygdala activity [10] and reduced startle response [11, 12] to distressing stimuli These differences indicate that there are several distinct causal pathways, which can lead to the development of CP with and without CU-traits. Understanding these differences is crucial in order to develop meaningful treatment strategies
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