Children who are frequently aggressive or lack empathy show various deficits in their social information processing. Several findings suggest that children with conduct problems (CP) show a tendency to interpret ambiguous situations as hostile (hostile attribution bias) and have difficulties to disengage from negative stimuli (attentional bias). The role that additional callous-unemotional traits (CU-traits) play in these biases is yet unclear. Investigating both attentional and attributional aspects of social information processing in children can help us to understand where anomalies in the processing pathway occur and whether the biases are associated with CP and CU-traits separately or in an interactive manner. We compared three groups of children: (a) 25 children with CP and low levels of CU-traits (b) 25 children with CP and elevated levels of CU-traits (c) 50 gender (68% male), age (8–17 years) and intelligence score-matched typically developing children, on a pictorial emotional stroop task and a hostile attribution bias task. In contrast to our predictions, there were no significant group differences regarding attentional biases or hostile attribution biases. Boys with CP and high levels of CU-traits showed a significantly higher hostile attribution bias compared to girls with CP and high levels of CU-traits. The attention bias to angry stimuli significantly correlated with the hostile attribution bias. Compared to the control group the CP group with low levels of CU-traits showed a significantly stronger association between the attention bias to angry stimuli and the hostile attribution bias. The current study provides evidence that boys with CP and high levels of CU-traits interpret ambiguous situations as more hostile than girls do. Our results further provide indications that the interaction of attentional and attributional biases in children with CP might contribute to their increased aggressive behavior.

中文翻译：

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有行为问题和冷酷无情特征的儿童的归因和注意偏差：病例对照研究

经常具有攻击性或缺乏同理心的孩子在社交信息处理方面表现出各种缺陷。多项研究结果表明，有行为问题（CP）的儿童倾向于将模棱两可的情况解释为敌对（敌意归因偏差），并且难以摆脱负面刺激（注意偏差）。其他冷酷无情的特质（CU 特质）在这些偏见中所起的作用尚不清楚。研究儿童社会信息处理的注意力和归因方面可以帮助我们了解处理路径中的异常发生在哪里，以及偏差是否与 CP 和 CU 特征单独相关或以交互方式相关。我们比较了三组儿童：(a) 25 名患有 CP 且 CU 特征水平较低的儿童 (b) 25 名患有 CP 且 CU 特征水平较高的儿童 (c) 50 名性别（68% 男性）、年龄（8- 17岁）和智力得分匹配的典型发育儿童，进行图像情感斯特鲁任务和敌对归因偏见任务。与我们的预测相反，在注意偏差或敌意归因偏差方面没有显着的群体差异。与患有 CP 和高水平 CU 特征的女孩相比，具有 CP 和高水平 CU 特征的男孩表现出明显更高的敌意归因偏差。对愤怒刺激的注意偏差与敌意归因偏差显着相关。与对照组相比，低 CU 特征水平的 CP 组表现出对愤怒刺激的注意偏差和敌意归因偏差之间的关联性明显更强。目前的研究提供的证据表明，患有 CP 和高水平 CU 特征的男孩将模棱两可的情况解读为比女孩更具敌意。我们的结果进一步表明，脑性瘫痪儿童的注意力和归因偏差的相互作用可能会导致他们的攻击行为增加。