Background

There is a great deal of research indicating that callous-unemotional traits in childhood are among the strongest predictors of adult psychopathy and psychopathic traits. As a result, there has been a recent surge of studies examining potential risk factors that may be related to the development of callous-unemotional traits.

Objective

The current study sought to extend prior research examining potential risk factors for the development of callous-unemotional traits by estimating the extent to which child maltreatment related to callous-unemotional traits in children and adolescents.

Participants

To do so, the study uses a longitudinal sample of 4579 male and female youths drawn from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW I) across four waves of data. Data collection ran from November 1999 to December 2006.

Methods

A series of multilevel random-effects models were estimated in order to examine the association between child maltreatment and callous-unemotional traits.

Results

The results of the analyses revealed a significant association between child maltreatment and callous-unemotional traits across all the models. Additionally, our models demonstrated that the association between child maltreatment and callous-unemotional traits may be dependent upon the biological sex of the individual with child maltreatment having a stronger effect on males than females (β = 0.15*).

Conclusions

Overall, our analyses lend support to prior research examining child maltreatment as a risk factor for the development of callous-unemotional traits in youth. We conclude by discussing the implications of our study and considerations for future research.

中文翻译：

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检查儿童虐待与儿童和青少年冷酷无情的特质之间的潜在联系：多层次分析

背景

有大量研究表明，童年时期冷酷无情的特征是成人精神病和精神病特征的最强预测因素之一。因此，最近出现了大量研究，研究可能与冷酷无情特征的发展有关的潜在风险因素。

客观的

目前的研究试图通过估计虐待儿童与儿童和青少年的冷酷无情特征相关的程度来扩展先前的研究，以检查导致冷酷无情特征发展的潜在风险因素。

参与者

为此，该研究使用了来自全国儿童和青少年福祉调查 (NSCAW I) 的 4579 名男性和女性青年的纵向样本，跨越四波数据。数据收集时间为 1999 年 11 月至 2006 年 12 月。

方法

估计了一系列多级随机效应模型，以检查虐待儿童与冷酷无情的特质之间的关联。

结果

分析结果显示，在所有模型中，虐待儿童与冷酷无情的特质之间存在显着关联。此外，我们的模型表明，虐待儿童与冷酷无情的特质之间的关联可能取决于个体的生理性别，虐待儿童对男性的影响比对女性的影响更大（β  = 0.15*）。

结论

总体而言，我们的分析支持先前的研究，将虐待儿童视为青少年冷酷无情特征发展的风险因素。最后，我们讨论了我们研究的意义和对未来研究的考虑。