Callous-unemotional traits and antisocial behavior - Genetic, environmental, and early parenting characteristics

This study compared early parenting characteristics in children with different levels of callous - unemotional ( CU) traits and antisocial behavior ( AB). Four groups were formed on the basis of teacher assessments: high CU and low AB ( CU+; N = 378), high CU and high AB ( AB/CU+; N = 234), low CU and high AB ( AB+; N = 210), and controls ( N = 3,608). In addition, genetic and environmental influences on elevated levels of CU traits were specifically investigated in CU+ and AB/ CU+ subgroups. Multivariate analysis of variance and DeFries-Fulker extremes analysis yielded three main findings: First, AB/ CU+ and AB+ children exhibited higher levels of early negative parenting characteristics than CU+ children and controls. Second, these higher levels of negative parenting characteristics in AB/ CU+ and AB+ children were explained by early child effects on parenting. Third, heritability estimates for CU in AB/ CU+ and CU+ groups are of similar magnitude.