Learning to 'talk the talk: the relationship of psychopathic traits to deficits in empathy across childhood.

Background: Psychopathy is characterised by profound deficits in the human tendency to feel and care about what other people feel, often known as 'affective empathy'. On the other hand, the psychopath often has intact 'cognitive' empathy skills, that is, he is able to describe what and why other people feel, even if he does not share or care about those feelings. Despite a rapidly advancing neuroscience of empathy, little is known about the developmental underpinnings of this psychopathic disconnect between affective and cognitive empathy.

A measure of cognitive and affective empathy in children using parent ratings.

The construct of "empathy" embodies a number of characteristics necessary for psychological health in children. Surprisingly, most research has been based solely on children and adolescent report and observational measures despite evidence that multi-informant assessment is fundamental to the accurate measurement of such constructs. We present research documenting the development and validation of a brief parent-report measure of child empathy targeted at the formative years for the development of empathic skills, through to adolescence.