Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine if personality traits can be used to characterize subgroups of youth diagnosed with childhood-onset conduct disorder (CD). Participants were 11,552 youth from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study. Data used in this report came from doi: 10.15154/1504041 (M age 9.92; 45.3% female, 49.6% white, 19.0% Hispanic). A subset of this sample (n = 365) met criteria for CD. Latent profile analyses (LPA) were performed on this subgroup (n = 365) to define profiles of individuals with CD based on self-report measures of impulsivity, punishment sensitivity, reward response, and callous-unemotional traits. Follow up analyses determined if these groups differed on clinically relevant variables including psychopathology, environmental risk factors, social risk factors, and neurocognitive functioning. Participants with a CD diagnosis scored significantly higher on psychological, environmental, social, and neurocognitive risk factors. The LPA revealed three unique profiles, which differed significantly on liability for broad psychopathology and domain-specific liability for externalizing psychopathology but were largely matched on environmental and social risk factors. These unique configurations provide a useful way to further parse clinically relevant subgroups within youth who meet criteria for childhood-onset CD, setting the stage for prospective longitudinal research using these latent profiles to better understand the development of youth with childhood-onset CD.
Highlights
Conduct disorder (CD) is a set of serious emotional and behavioral problems that manifests in children and adolescents, characterized by repetitive and persistent patterns of antisocial and rulebreaking behavior
The CD+ and CD- groups did not differ on BIS or on the BAS-Reward Response subscale; the CD+ group did score significantly higher on the BAS-Drive (d = 0.36), BAS-Fun Seeking (d = 0.37), and CU Traits (d = 0.73) scales
These results are valuable for understanding antisocial behavior in youth and how different configurations of personality traits can provide relevant information to further understand heterogeneity within the childhood-onset CD diagnosis
Summary
Conduct disorder (CD) is a set of serious emotional and behavioral problems that manifests in children and adolescents, characterized by repetitive and persistent patterns of antisocial and rulebreaking behavior. Individuals with childhood-onset CD represent a high-risk group as they are more likely to have a persistent life course of CD and chronic antisocial behaviors compared to adolescent-onset subtypes [1]. There is evidence that a significant number of youth with childhood-onset CD desist from antisocial behavior by early adulthood [3], suggesting that age of onset alone still designates a relatively heterogeneous group. Additional factors such as callous-unemotional (CU) traits, impulsivity, and reactivity to punishment and reward have been shown to designate subgroups. The current study utilized person-centered analyses in a large, diverse sample of emerging adolescents to determine if individual differences in relevant traits can define clinically meaningful subgroups of youth with childhood-onset CD
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