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Parasympathetic Nervous System Functioning Moderates the Associations between Callous-Unemotional Traits and Emotion Understanding Difficulties in Late Childhood.
Lynch, Sarah F; Perlstein, Samantha; Ordway, Cora; Jones, Callie; Lembcke, Hanna; Waller, Rebecca; Wagner, Nicholas J.
Afiliación
  • Lynch SF; Developmental Sciences, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
  • Perlstein S; Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
  • Ordway C; Developmental Sciences, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
  • Jones C; Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
  • Lembcke H; Department of General Psychology, University of Hagen, 58097 Hagen, Germany.
  • Waller R; Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
  • Wagner NJ; Developmental Sciences, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
Children (Basel) ; 11(2)2024 Feb 02.
Article en En | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38397296
ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are characterized by low empathy, guilt, and prosociality, putting children at risk for lifespan antisocial behavior. Elevated CU traits have been linked separately to difficulties with emotion understanding (i.e., identifying emotional states of others) and disrupted parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) functioning. However, no study has investigated how PNS functioning and emotion understanding are jointly related to CU traits.

METHOD:

We explored associations between CU traits, emotion understanding, and PNS functioning (indexed via respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA]) among children aged 7-10 years old (n = 55). We also tested whether deficits in emotion understanding differ across specific emotions (i.e., fear, pain, happiness, anger). Each child's RSA was continuously recorded while they watched a film that included emotionally evocative social interactions. To assess emotion understanding, children identified emotions replayed in 1s animations of scenes from the film. Parents reported on child CU traits, conduct problems, and demographic information.

RESULTS:

Higher CU traits were related to lower emotion understanding (ß = -0.43, p = 0.03). PNS activity during the film moderated this association (ß = -0.47, p < 0.001), such that CU traits were associated with lower emotion understanding among children with mean (B = -0.01, t = -2.46, p = 0.02) or high (i.e., 1 SD > M; B = -0.02, t = -3.00, p < 0.001) RSA levels during the film, but not among children with low RSA levels (i.e., 1 SD < M; B = 0.00, t = -0.53, p = 0.60). Moreover, we found that the observed moderated associations are driven by deficits in fear, specifically.

CONCLUSIONS:

The link between poorer emotion understanding, fear understanding in particular, and CU traits was attenuated for children who demonstrated patterns of PNS functioning consistent with attentional engagement while viewing the emotion stimuli.
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Texto completo: 1 Colección: 01-internacional Base de datos: MEDLINE Idioma: En Revista: Children (Basel) Año: 2024 Tipo del documento: Article País de afiliación: Estados Unidos Pais de publicación: Suiza
Texto completo
Añadir a Mi BVS
Imprimir
XML
PubMed Links
Buscar en Google

Texto completo: 1 Colección: 01-internacional Base de datos: MEDLINE Idioma: En Revista: Children (Basel) Año: 2024 Tipo del documento: Article País de afiliación: Estados Unidos Pais de publicación: Suiza