Muratori Pietro, Paciello Marinella, Buonanno Carlo, Milone Annarita, Ruglioni Laura, Lochman John E, Masi Gabriele
IRCCS Fondazione Stella Maris, Scientific Institute of Child Neurology and Psychiatry, Calambrone, Pisa, Italy.
Università Telematica Internazionale UNINETTUNO, Rome, Italy.
Crim Behav Ment Health. 2017 Dec;27(5):514-524. doi: 10.1002/cbm.2019. Epub 2016 Sep 13.
Callous-unemotional traits have been proposed as risk factors for a poorer prognosis in young people with disruptive behaviour disorders. Identification of factors that may cause or maintain elevated levels of such traits could help in developing targeted therapeutic interventions. Some previous studies have investigated the role of moral cognitive mechanisms, such as moral disengagement, but these previous studies focused primarily on normal or 'at-risk' samples.
We aimed to evaluate associations and possible interactions between moral disengagement as a cognitive dimension and callous-unemotional traits as an affective dimension in adolescents with disruptive behaviour disorders.
We recruited 55 adolescents with a disruptive behaviour disorder from a community care hospital in Pisa. They were evaluated at baseline and after one year with measures that included a moral disengagement scale, the Antisocial Process Screening Device, to assess callous traits, and the Youth Self-Report, to explore externalising behaviour problems.
Structural equation modelling showed that higher initial moral disengagement scores were associated with later higher levels of callous-unemotional traits in adolescents and vice versa, even after, respectively, controlling for previous levels of callous traits and moral disengagement.
As impairments in either cognitive or affective traits may predispose to problematic development of the other, our findings would suggest that screening at the earliest opportunity possible for both moral disengagement and callous-unemotional traits among children with disruptive behaviour disorders could help to map natural outcome pathways and thus tailor more accurate interventions for prevention of antisocial or criminal behaviour. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
冷酷无情特质已被提出是破坏性行为障碍青少年预后较差的风险因素。识别可能导致或维持此类特质水平升高的因素有助于制定有针对性的治疗干预措施。先前的一些研究调查了道德认知机制的作用，如道德推脱，但这些先前的研究主要集中在正常或“有风险”样本上。
我们旨在评估道德推脱作为认知维度与冷酷无情特质作为情感维度在破坏性行为障碍青少年中的关联及可能的相互作用。
我们从比萨的一家社区护理医院招募了55名患有破坏性行为障碍的青少年。在基线和一年后对他们进行评估，评估措施包括道德推脱量表、用于评估冷酷特质的反社会过程筛查工具以及用于探索外化行为问题的青少年自评量表。
结构方程模型显示，即使分别控制了先前的冷酷特质水平和道德推脱水平，较高的初始道德推脱得分与青少年后期较高水平的冷酷无情特质相关，反之亦然。
由于认知或情感特质的损害可能会使另一方易于出现问题发展，我们的研究结果表明，尽早对破坏性行为障碍儿童的道德推脱和冷酷无情特质进行筛查，有助于描绘自然转归途径，从而制定更准确的干预措施以预防反社会或犯罪行为。版权所有© 2016约翰威立父子有限公司。
