Development and validation of the Parental Affection/Warmth Scale (PAWS) in a sample of parents of 2- to 8-year-olds.

Parental warmth is a treatment target of emerging interventions for children with callous-unemotional traits. However, research to date has yet to examine the empirical structure of parental warmth toward young children due to the lack of clinically feasible, psychometrically sound, and comprehensive measures of warmth for this population. To address this knowledge gap, the present study developed and tested the psychometric properties of a self-report measure of parental warmth, the Parental Affection/Warmth Scale (PAWS).

Educator Knowledge of Childhood Conduct Problems and Callous-Unemotional Traits.

Research evaluating mental health literacy (MHL) of adults who support children with mental health difficulties is relatively scarce. To date, no studies have investigated educator knowledge of conduct problems and callous-unemotional (CU) traits. This is a significant gap in the literature since conduct problems are among the most prevalent childhood mental disorders, while CU traits are associated with poor academic, behavioral, and social outcomes in school settings.

Clinical utility of diagnosing limited prosocial emotions in young children using the Clinical Assessment of Prosocial Emotions (CAPE).

This study evaluated the interrater reliability, convergent and divergent validity, incremental validity, and clinical prognostic utility of the Clinical Assessment of Prosocial Emotions (CAPE; Frick, 2013) for assessing limited prosocial emotions (LPE). Participants were 232 young children ( = 3.94 years, = 1.

Dimensions of Warm Parenting Attributions Differentiate Conduct Problem Subtypes in Young Children.

Understanding the developmental psychopathology of child conduct problems (CP) has been advanced by differentiating subtypes based on levels of internalizing problems (INT) and/or callous-unemotional (CU) traits (i.e., low empathy/guilt, poor motivation, shallow/deficient affect).

Treatment Outcomes of Children with Primary Versus Secondary Callous-Unemotional Traits.

Objective: Recent efforts to improve outcomes for young children with conduct problems and callous-unemotional (CU) traits involve adapting treatments to meet the unique needs of this subgroup. However, these efforts have ignored accumulating evidence for distinct primary and secondary variants within the CU subgroup. Existing treatment adaptations uniformly target risk factors associated with primary CU traits and no studies have investigated variant-specific patterns of responsiveness to treatment adaptations among young children with CU-type conduct problems.

The measure of empathy in early childhood: Testing the reliability, validity, and clinical utility of scores in early childhood.

Empathy is a critical socioemotional skill that motivates prosocial behavior and supports the ability to respond to the emotions of others. Although accurate measurement of empathy in young children is critical for identifying and remediating empathy deficits, currently available parent-report measures of childhood empathy have several psychometric limitations. The present study tested the reliability, validity, and clinical utility of scores on the Measure of Empathy in Early Childhood (MEEC), a new multidimensional, parent-report empathy scale, in 4- to 7-year-old children.

Commentary: Optimism and guidance for improving treatment effects among children with callous-unemotional traits - reflections on Perlstein et al. (2023).

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits have increasingly received attention as a potential predictor and outcome of treatment for children with conduct problems. The results of Perlstein et al. (2023) offer the first meta-analytic evidence against the long-held belief that CU traits confer treatment resistance.

Parent Training Adapted to the Needs of Children With Callous-Unemotional Traits: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits designate a distinct subgroup of children with early-starting, stable, and aggressive conduct problems. Critically, traditional parenting interventions often fail to normalize conduct problems among this subgroup. The aim of this study was to test whether parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT) adapted to target distinct deficits associated with CU traits (PCIT-CU) produced superior outcomes relative to standard PCIT.

Facial reactions to emotional films in young children with conduct problems and varying levels of callous-unemotional traits.

Background: Elevated levels of callous-unemotional (CU) traits have proven useful for identifying a distinct subgroup of children whose conduct problems (CP) are early emerging, severe, persistent, and underpinned by aberrant emotional processing. The early childhood emotional experiences and expressions of CP subtypes are poorly understood, despite their importance to understanding the problematic attachments and atypical social affiliation experienced by children with elevated CU traits. The current study aimed to test for differences in facial emotional reactions to mood-inducing film clips in children with CP and varying levels of CU traits.

Development of an Empathy Rating Scale for Young Children.

Empathy is critical to young children's socioemotional development and deficient levels characterize a severe and pervasive type of Conduct Disorder (i.e., with limited prosocial emotions).

An Effectiveness Open Trial of Internet-Delivered Parent Training for Young Children With Conduct Problems Living in Regional and Rural Australia.

There is accumulating evidence for the efficacy of online parent management training (PMT) programs to improve conduct problems in young children, and findings have been used to support the potential of online programs to close the research-to-practice gap in underserved rural settings. However, to date, no study has evaluated the effectiveness of online PMT under real-world conditions; that is, delivered by community practitioners as part of services-as-usual to families residing in rural communities. This has resulted in a critical lack of evidence supporting the capacity of online PMT to ameliorate actual geographical disparities in service accessibility.

Internet-Delivered Parent Training for Preschoolers with Conduct Problems: Do Callous-Unemotional Traits Moderate Efficacy and Engagement?

Recent efforts to improve access to evidence-based parent training programs using online delivery have largely neglected findings that young children with callous-unemotional (CU)-type conduct problems receive less benefit from parent training than children with conduct problems alone. The current study aimed to examine the moderating effect of child CU traits on efficacy and engagement outcomes associated with Internet-delivered Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (iPCIT) versus standard, clinic-based PCIT. Forty families (57.

Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and its ratio to cortisol moderate associations between maltreatment and psychopathology in male juvenile offenders.

This study examined whether DHEA and its ratio to cortisol moderated risk for psychopathology among incarcerated youth exposed to childhood maltreatment. Resistance to stress-related psychopathology under adversity was also examined in relation to callous-unemotional (CU) traits, a personality construct characterized by resistance to pathological anxiety and blunted reactivity to threatening stimuli. Participants were 201 ethnically heterogeneous (41.