Conduct Problems & Callous-Unemotional Traits in Young Children: Facial Reactions to Emotional Films

Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (ACAMH)

DOI: 10.13056/acamh.22321
For this podcast, we welcome clinical psychologist Eva Kimonis, Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia and director of the Parent Child Research Clinic at the same institution.
Eva is also President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathology, and the first author of the JCPP paper, ‘Facial reactions to emotional films in young children with conduct problems and varying levels of callous-unemotional traits’ (doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13701). This paper will be the focus of today’s conversation.
To set the scene, Eva first defines what is meant by the term ‘callous-unemotional traits’ and discusses how these generally present, before providing us with a brief overview of her paper.
Eva comments on the methodology used for the study and shares insight into the findings that surprised her from this study, including her finding that the callous-unemotional group showed a high intensity of anger during both the happy film clips and the sad film clips, and what she made of these findings.
Eva then explores why she thinks young children have been missed from these types of studies previously and shares insight into what implications her findings have for developmental models of childhood antisocial behaviour.
Furthermore, Eva comments on how she would like her findings to be translated into practice, how her findings could inform the development of targeted interventions, and what the implications are of her findings for mental health professionals, parents, and teachers.