College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, 112 S Copeland St, Tallahassee, FL 32304, USA.
College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, 112 S Copeland St, Tallahassee, FL 32304, USA; Prince Mishaal bin Majed bin Abdul Aziz Center for Social and Humanities Research, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Child Abuse Negl. 2021 Dec;122:105327. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2021.105327. Epub 2021 Sep 15.
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.
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.
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.
A series of multilevel random-effects models were estimated in order to examine the association between child maltreatment and callous-unemotional traits.
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*).
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.
大量研究表明，儿童时期的冷酷无情特征是成年后精神病态和精神病态特征的最强预测因素之一。因此，最近出现了大量研究，探讨可能与冷酷无情特征发展相关的潜在风险因素。
本研究旨在通过评估与儿童和青少年冷酷无情特征相关的儿童虐待程度，扩展先前关于发展冷酷无情特征潜在风险因素的研究。
为此，该研究使用了来自全国儿童和青少年福利调查（NSCAW I）的 4579 名男性和女性青少年的纵向样本，数据来自四个波次。数据收集时间从 1999 年 11 月至 2006 年 12 月。
为了检验儿童虐待与冷酷无情特征之间的关联，我们使用了一系列多级随机效应模型进行估计。
分析结果显示，在所有模型中，儿童虐待与冷酷无情特征之间存在显著关联。此外，我们的模型表明，儿童虐待与冷酷无情特征之间的关联可能取决于个体的生物性别，儿童虐待对男性的影响比女性更强（β=0.15*）。
总体而言，我们的分析支持了先前关于儿童虐待作为青少年发展冷酷无情特征的风险因素的研究。最后，我们讨论了我们研究的意义和对未来研究的考虑。
