Abstract
While some children with callous unemotional (CU) behaviours show difficulty recognizing emotional expressions, the underlying developmental pathways are not well understood. Reduced infant attention to the caregiver’s face and a lack of sensitive parenting have previously been associated with emerging CU features. The current study examined whether facial emotion recognition mediates the association between infants’ mother-directed gaze, maternal sensitivity, and later CU behaviours. Participants were 206 full-term infants and their families from a prospective longitudinal study, the Durham Child Health and Development Study (DCHDS). Measures of infants’ mother-directed gaze, and maternal sensitivity were collected at 6 months, facial emotion recognition performance at 6 years, and CU behaviours at 7 years. A path analysis showed a significant effect of emotion recognition predicting CU behaviours (β = −0.275, S.E. = 0.084, p = 0.001). While the main effects of infants' mother-directed gaze and maternal sensitivity were not significant, their interaction significantly predicted CU behaviours (β = 0.194, S.E. = 0.081, p = 0.016) with region of significance analysis showing a significant negative relationship between infant gaze and later CU behaviours only for those with low maternal sensitivity. There were no indirect effects of infants’ mother-directed gaze, maternal sensitivity or the mother-directed gaze by maternal sensitivity interaction via emotion recognition. Emotion recognition appears to act as an independent predictor of CU behaviours, rather than mediating the relationship between infants’ mother-directed gaze and maternal sensitivity with later CU behaviours. This supports the idea of multiple risk factors for CU behaviours.
Highlights
Callous unemotional (CU) behaviours are a proposed precursor of adult psychopathy
We controlled for sex in the analysis, we tested whether sex moderates the association between infant measures and later CU behaviours, finding a marginal interaction for maternal sensitivity by sex
The main effect of infant gaze was not significant, and maternal sensitivity was only a marginally significant predictor of later CU behaviours, we found evidence for an interaction between 6-montholds’ gaze to their mother’s face and maternal sensitivity in the prediction of CU behaviours at 7 years of age
Summary
Callous unemotional (CU) behaviours are a proposed precursor of adult psychopathy. Research with older children demonstrates links between CU behaviours and difficulty recognizing emotional expressions [18], the developmental pathways underlying this association are not well understood. Recent studies have begun the search for antecedents, infant behaviours which are associated with the subsequent development of CU behaviours, and one proposed early CU precursor is reduced attention to the face of a caregiver [6, 16]. In the current study we aimed first to examine the associations between maternal sensitivity in infancy and infants’ mother-directed gaze with later CU behaviours, and second, to test whether emotion expression recognition mediates the associations between infants’ mother-directed gaze, maternal sensitivity, and later CU behaviours
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