title: The role of infants' mother-directed gaze, maternal sensitivity, and emotion recognition in childhood callous unemotional behaviours.
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.
authors.affiliation: Biostatistics and Health Informatics Department, Institute of Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, England. rachael.bedford@kcl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bedford
authors.affiliation: Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, USA.
authors.forename: N J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Wagner
authors.affiliation: Human Development and Family Studies Department, University of North Carolina-Greensboro, Greensboro, USA.
authors.forename: P D
authors.initials: PD
authors.lastname: Rehder
authors.affiliation: Center for Developmental Science, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, USA.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Propper
authors.affiliation: RTI International, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
authors.forename: M T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Willoughby
authors.affiliation: Human Development and Family Studies Department, University of North Carolina-Greensboro, Greensboro, USA.
authors.forename: R W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Mills-Koonce
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations / Q000523:psychology*; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D016487:Parenting; D011446:Prospective Studies
keywords: Callous unemotional behaviours; Emotion recognition; Face; Infant; Sensitive parenting