Heritable and Nonheritable Pathways to Early Callous-Unemotional Behaviors - PubMed (original) (raw)

Heritable and Nonheritable Pathways to Early Callous-Unemotional Behaviors

Luke W Hyde et al. Am J Psychiatry. 2016.

Abstract

Objective: Callous-unemotional behaviors in early childhood signal higher risk for trajectories of antisocial behavior and callous-unemotional traits that culminate in later diagnoses of conduct disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and psychopathy. Studies demonstrate high heritability of callous-unemotional traits, but little research has examined specific heritable pathways to early callous-unemotional behaviors. Studies also indicate that positive parenting protects against the development of callous-unemotional traits, but genetically informed designs have not been used to confirm that these relationships are not the product of gene-environment correlations. In a sample of adopted children and their biological and adoptive mothers, the authors tested novel heritable and nonheritable pathways to preschool callous-unemotional behaviors.

Method: In an adoption cohort of 561 families, history of severe antisocial behavior assessed in biological mothers and observations of adoptive mother positive reinforcement at 18 months were examined as predictors of callous-unemotional behaviors at 27 months.

Results: Despite limited or no contact with offspring, biological mother antisocial behavior predicted early callous-unemotional behaviors. Adoptive mother positive reinforcement protected against early callous-unemotional behaviors. High levels of adoptive mother positive reinforcement buffered the effects of heritable risk for callous-unemotional behaviors posed by biological mother antisocial behavior.

Conclusions: The findings elucidate heritable and nonheritable pathways to early callous-unemotional behaviors. The results provide a specific heritable pathway to callous-unemotional behaviors and compelling evidence that parenting is an important nonheritable factor in the development of callous-unemotional behaviors. The finding that positive reinforcement buffered heritable risk for callous-unemotional behaviors has important translational implications for the prevention of trajectories to serious antisocial behavior.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1

Heritable and non-heritable pathways to callous-unemotional behaviors in the toddler years: Biological mother severe antisocial behavior predicts adoptive child callous-unemotional behaviors, but is buffered by adoptive parent positive reinforcement. Note. *p < .05, **p < .01.

Figure 2

Figure 2

High levels of adoptive mother positive reinforcement at age 18 months buffer the heritable effects of biological mother antisocial behavior on child callous-unemotional behaviors at age 27 months. Note. Extracted callous-unemotional behavior factor scores account for covariance with attention-deficit and oppositional behaviors plotted against biological mother self-reported antisocial behavior at high versus low levels of adoptive mother observed positive reinforcement using a median split. Note that to show the full variability in this interaction, the full version (47 items) of biological parent antisocial behavior measure was used for display purposes.

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