Profiles of primary and secondary callous-unemotional features in youth: The role of emotion regulation.

Abstract

There is increasing evidence for multiple pathways in the development of callous-unemotional (CU) features, including primary and secondary profiles. Understanding affect regulation strategies among variants may provide further insight to the development and treatment of CU features. This study evaluated whether profiles of CU features could be identified within a clinical sample of youth using measures of affect dysregulation, affect suppression, anxiety, and maltreatment. We also examined whether these profiles were consistent across gender. Participants (N = 418; 56.7% female) ranged in age from 12 to 19 years (M = 15.04, SD = 1.85) and were drawn from a clinical sample. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was conducted using five indicators, including affect regulation, suppression, anxiety, CU features, and maltreatment. The best fitting model, a four-profile solution, included a low (low CU/dysregulation), anxious (low CU/high dysregulation), primary CU (high CU/low dysregulation), and secondary CU profile (high CU/dysregulation/maltreatment). LPAs found the same four-profile model when conducted separately for males and females. This is the first study to examine gender and include affect regulation strategies in the examination of primary and secondary profiles of CU.