TY - JOUR
T1 - Callous-unemotional traits in youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
T2 - Replication of prevalence estimates and associations with gaze patterns when viewing fearful faces
AU - Carter Leno, Virginia
AU - Bedford, Rachael
AU - Chandler, Susie
AU - Yorke, Isabel
AU - White, Pippa
AU - Charman, Tony
AU - Pickles, Andrew
AU - Simonoff, Emily
PY - 2020/6/29
Y1 - 2020/6/29
N2 - Research suggests an increased prevalence of callous-unemotional (CU) traits in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and a similar impairment in fear recognition to that reported in non-ASD populations. However, past work has used measures not specifically designed to measure CU traits and has not examined whether decreased attention to the eyes reported in non-ASD populations is also present in individuals with ASD. The current paper uses a measure specifically designed to measure CU traits to estimate prevalence in a large community-based ASD sample. Parents of 189 adolescents with ASD completed questionnaires assessing CU traits, and emotional and behavioral problems. A subset of participants completed a novel emotion recognition task (n = 46). Accuracy, reaction time, total looking time, and number of fixations to the eyes and mouth were measured. Twenty-two percent of youth with ASD scored above a cut-off expected to identify the top 6% of CU scores. CU traits were associated with longer reaction times to identify fear and fewer fixations to the eyes relative to the mouth during the viewing of fearful faces. No associations were found with accuracy or total looking time. Results suggest the mechanisms that underpin CU traits may be similar between ASD and non-ASD populations.
AB - Research suggests an increased prevalence of callous-unemotional (CU) traits in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and a similar impairment in fear recognition to that reported in non-ASD populations. However, past work has used measures not specifically designed to measure CU traits and has not examined whether decreased attention to the eyes reported in non-ASD populations is also present in individuals with ASD. The current paper uses a measure specifically designed to measure CU traits to estimate prevalence in a large community-based ASD sample. Parents of 189 adolescents with ASD completed questionnaires assessing CU traits, and emotional and behavioral problems. A subset of participants completed a novel emotion recognition task (n = 46). Accuracy, reaction time, total looking time, and number of fixations to the eyes and mouth were measured. Twenty-two percent of youth with ASD scored above a cut-off expected to identify the top 6% of CU scores. CU traits were associated with longer reaction times to identify fear and fewer fixations to the eyes relative to the mouth during the viewing of fearful faces. No associations were found with accuracy or total looking time. Results suggest the mechanisms that underpin CU traits may be similar between ASD and non-ASD populations.
KW - Autism
KW - Callous-unemotional traits
KW - Conduct problems
KW - Fear recognition
KW - Quest
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85090158457&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S0954579420000449
DO - 10.1017/S0954579420000449
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85090158457
SN - 0954-5794
JO - Development and Psychopathology
JF - Development and Psychopathology
ER -
