Abstract
ABSTRACT Objective Atypical emotion recognition (ER) is characteristic of children with high callous unemotional (CU) traits. The current study aims to 1) replicate studies showing ER difficulties for static faces in relation to high CU-traits; 2) test whether ER difficulties remain when more naturalistic dynamic stimuli are used; 3) test whether ER performance for dynamic stimuli is moderated by eye-gaze direction and 4) assess the impact of co-occurring autistic traits on the association between CU and ER. Methods Participants were 292 (152 male) 7-year-olds from the Wirral Child Health and Development Study (WCHADS). Children completed a static and dynamic ER eye-tracking task, and accuracy, reaction time and attention to the eyes were recorded. Results Higher parent-reported CU-traits were significantly associated with reduced ER for static expressions, with lower accuracy for angry and happy faces. No association was found for dynamic expressions. However, parent-reported autistic traits were associated with ER difficulties for both static and dynamic expressions, and after controlling for autistic traits, the association between CU-traits and ER for static expressions became non-significant. CU-traits and looking to the eyes were not associated in either paradigm. Conclusion The finding that CU-traits and ER are associated for static but not naturalistic dynamic expressions may be because motion cues in the dynamic stimuli draw attention to emotion-relevant features such as eyes and mouth. Further, results suggest that ER difficulties in CU-traits may be due, in part, to co-occurring autistic traits. Future developmental studies are required to tease apart pathways toward the apparently overlapping cognitive phenotype.
Highlights
Atypicalities in socio-affective behavior are characteristic of children with high callous unemotional (CU) traits
The current study aims to 1) replicate studies showing emotion recognition (ER) difficulties for static faces in relation to high CU-traits; 2) test whether ER difficulties remain when more naturalistic dynamic stimuli are used; 3) test whether ER performance for dynamic stimuli is moderated by eye-gaze direction and 4) assess the impact of co-occurring autistic traits on the association between CU and ER
Our results showed a significant association between CUtraits and ER for static facial expressions, with higher CUtraits associated with reduced accuracy for angry and happy faces
Summary
Atypicalities in socio-affective behavior are characteristic of children with high callous unemotional (CU) traits, (a proposed developmental precursor to adult psychopathy, characterized by low empathy, guilt, prosociality, sensi tivity to others’ emotions, and a lack of care about activ ities such as school work; Frick et al, 2014a). In children with high CU-traits, ER performance improved after being expli citly cued to pay attention to the eyes (Dadds et al, 2008), suggesting the primary difficulty may be one of social motivation and/or endogenous attention control Another key factor that has been shown to influence the perception of emotional facial expressions is the direc tion of eye gaze. Adams and Kleck (2003) found that recognition of approach emotions (such as anger and happiness) is faster when there is direct eye gaze while recognition of avoidance emotions (such as fear and sadness) is facilitated by averted gaze This paradigm used static stimuli and an adult sample, these effects have been replicated using dynamic stimuli (Sander et al, 2007), and in child samples (Akechi et al, 2009). If emotion recognition associations are specific to CU-traits the effects should remain significant when controlling for autistic traits
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