title: Callousness and affective face processing in adults: Behavioral and brain-potential indicators.
abstract: The investigation of callous-unemotional (CU) traits has been central to contemporary research on child behavior problems, and served as the impetus for inclusion of a specifier for conduct disorder in the latest edition of the official psychiatric diagnostic system. Here, we report results from 2 studies that evaluated the construct validity of callousness as assessed in adults, by testing for affiliated deficits in behavioral and neural processing of fearful faces, as have been shown in youthful samples. We hypothesized that scores on an established measure of callousness would predict reduced recognition accuracy and diminished electocortical reactivity for fearful faces in adult participants. In Study 1, 66 undergraduate participants performed an emotion recognition task in which they viewed affective faces of different types and indicated the emotion expressed by each. In Study 2, electrocortical data were collected from 254 adult twins during viewing of fearful and neutral face stimuli, and scored for event-related response components. Analyses of Study 1 data revealed that higher callousness was associated with decreased recognition accuracy for fearful faces specifically. In Study 2, callousness was associated with reduced amplitude of both N170 and P200 responses to fearful faces. Current findings demonstrate for the first time that callousness in adults is associated with both behavioral and physiological deficits in the processing of fearful faces. These findings support the validity of the CU construct with adults and highlight the possibility of a multidomain measurement framework for continued study of this important clinical construct. (PsycINFO Database Record
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology.
authors.forename: Sarah J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Brislin
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology.
authors.forename: James R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Yancey
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology.
authors.forename: Emily R
authors.initials: ER
authors.lastname: Perkins
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology.
authors.forename: Isabella M
authors.initials: IM
authors.lastname: Palumbo
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology.
authors.forename: Laura E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Drislane
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Alabama Tuscaloosa.
authors.forename: Randall T
authors.initials: RT
authors.lastname: Salekin
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Cyprus.
authors.forename: Kostas A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Fanti
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of New South Wales.
authors.forename: Eva R
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-4325-6108
authors.initials: ER
authors.lastname: Kimonis
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University.
authors.forename: Paul J
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-7335-1299
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Frick
authors.affiliation: Center for Neurobehavioral Research, Boys Town National Research Hospital.
authors.forename: R James R
authors.initials: RJR
authors.lastname: Blair
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Florida State University.
authors.forename: Christopher J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Patrick
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D055815:Young Adult