Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA.
Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol. 2024 Oct;52(10):1565-1576. doi: 10.1007/s10802-024-01219-4. Epub 2024 Jun 14.
Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are associated with interpersonal difficulties and risk for severe conduct problems (CP). The ability to communicate thoughts and feelings is critical to social success, with language a promising treatment target. However, no prior studies have examined objective linguistic correlates of childhood CU traits in early childhood, which could give insight into underlying risk mechanisms and novel target treatments.
We computed lexical (positive emotion, sad, and anger words) and conversational (interruptions and speech rate) markers produced by 131 children aged 5-6 years (M = 5.98; SD = 0.54, 58.8% female) and their parents while narrating wordless storybooks during two online visits separated by 6-8 weeks (M = 6.56, SD = 1.11; two books, order counterbalanced). Audio recordings were diarized, time-aligned, and orthographically transcribed using WebTrans. Conversational markers were calculated using R and word frequencies were calculated using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) software. We examined links between child CU traits and linguistic markers, and explored whether relationships were moderated by child sex.
Higher CU traits were associated with fewer positive emotion words produced by parents and children. Higher CU traits were also associated with greater concordance in the degree of interruptions and expression of anger emotion words by parents and children.
Results suggest that objective linguistic correlates of CU traits are detectable during early childhood, which could inform adjunctive treatment modules that improve outcomes by precisely tracking and targeting subtle communication patterns.
冷酷无情（CU）特质与人际困难和严重行为问题（CP）风险相关。表达思想和感受的能力对社交成功至关重要，语言是一种有前途的治疗目标。然而，以前没有研究在幼儿期检查儿童 CU 特质的客观语言相关性，这可以深入了解潜在的风险机制和新的治疗目标。
我们计算了 131 名年龄在 5-6 岁的儿童（M=5.98；SD=0.54，58.8%为女性）及其父母在两次在线访问期间讲述无字故事书时产生的词汇（积极情绪、悲伤和愤怒词）和会话（中断和语速）标记，两次访问之间间隔 6-8 周（M=6.56，SD=1.11；两本书，顺序平衡）。音频记录使用 WebTrans 进行日程安排、时间对齐和正字法转录。使用 R 计算会话标记，使用语言探究和词汇计数（LIWC）软件计算单词频率。我们检查了儿童 CU 特质与语言标记之间的联系，并探讨了这些关系是否受儿童性别调节。
较高的 CU 特质与父母和孩子产生的积极情绪词较少有关。较高的 CU 特质还与父母和孩子在中断程度和表达愤怒情绪词方面的一致性增加有关。
结果表明，在幼儿期可以检测到 CU 特质的客观语言相关性，这可以为通过精确跟踪和靶向微妙的沟通模式来提高治疗效果的辅助治疗模块提供信息。
