The Face-to-Face Still-Face (FF-SF) procedure has been a popular paradigm to understand infant behavior. The current study examines the validity of mothers' behavior during the Still-Face phase of the FF-SF, especially the quality of her neutral face and its impact on infant arousal (N = 358 ethnically-diverse mother-infant dyads, Mean infant age = 223 days, SD = 27 days). Results showed that more than half of the mothers in the sample breached one or more Still-Face phase instructions; however, mothers' breaches of the Still-Face instructions were unrelated to infant arousal (Skin Conductance Responses) during the FF-SF.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCallous-unemotional (CU) traits are associated with severe conduct problems (CP) in youth. Causal theories for CU traits focus on emotion processing deficits that interfere with empathy development. However, though CU traits are consistently associated with deficits in affective empathy (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCallous-unemotional (CU) traits in children and adolescents are linked to severe and persistent antisocial behavior. Based on past empirical research, several theoretical models have suggested that CU traits may be partly explained by difficulties in correctly identifying others' emotional states as well as their reduced attention to others' eyes, which could be important for both causal theory and treatment. This study tested the relationships among CU traits, emotion recognition of facial expressions and visual behavior in a sample of 52 boys referred to a clinic for conduct problems (Mage = 10.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The presence of callous-unemotional (CU) traits in adolescence predisposes youth to negative behavioral and social outcomes and may be particularly damaging to youth involved in the justice system. Whereas research has shown that CU traits predict later arrest, it remains unknown whether rearrest predicts changes in CU traits and whether these associations may be modified by maternal relationship quality. The present study assessed whether being rearrested predicted changes in CU traits and whether these associations varied by maternal warmth and maternal hostility.
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