Correctly identifying and reacting to others’ sadness: investigating three parent-child interventions for limited prosocial emotions

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recognizing and appropriately responding to others’ emotional expressions is important for children’s moral and social development. Impairments in the emotion recognition of individuals high on Callous-Unemotional (CU) traits are thought to explain their reduced empathic responding, interpersonal problems, and persistent antisocial behaviour. The current study uses accuracy ratings and physiological measures to assess changes in identifying and reacting to others’ sadness, respectively, among children high on CU traits who received one of three brief parenting interventions designed to address their emotional deficits. Participants were 68 children (M age = 7.50 years, SD = 1.49, 46% female), selected from a larger screening sample (N = 1,283). The study assessed emotional accuracy and skin conductance reactivity during the presentation of sad video scenes pre- and post-intervention. Parents and children participated in three intervention programmes (i.e., Parent-Child Interaction Therapy-CU, Coaching and Rewarding Emotional Skills, Emotional Engagement) designed to target the emotional deficits of children with CU traits. Findings support the amenability of emotional deficits related to empathic responding to others’ sad expressions among children high on CU traits. Specifically, children showed improved ability to accurately identify sad emotions as well as increased autonomic reactivity (i.e., skin conductance) to sad expressions at post-intervention. Our findings draw attention to the importance of parenting interventions aiming to enhance the emotional functioning of children high on CU traits.