Reduced Face Preference in Infancy A Developmental Precursor to Callous-Unemotional Traits》.pdf

Biological Archival Report Psychiatry Reduced Face Preference in Infancy: A Developmental Precursor to Callous- Unemotional Traits? Rachael Bedford, Andrew Pickles, Helen Sharp, Nicola Wright, and Jonathan Hill ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: Children with callous-unemotional (CU) traits, a proposed precursor to adult psychopathy, are characterized by impaired emotion recognition, reduced responsiveness to others’ distress, and a lack of guilt or empathy. Reduced attention to faces, and more specifically to the eye region, has been proposed to underlie these difficulties, although this has never been tested longitudinally from infancy. Attention to faces occurs within the context of dyadic caregiver interactions, and early environment including parenting characteristics has been associated with CU traits. The present study tested whether infants’ preferential tracking of a face with direct gaze and levels of maternal sensitivity predict later CU traits. METHODS: Data were analyzed from a stratified random sample of 213 participants drawn from a population-based sample of 1233 first-time mothers. Infants’ preferential face tracking at 5 weeks and maternal sensitivity at 29 weeks were entered into a weighted linear regression as predictors of CU traits at 2.5 years. RESULTS: Controlling for a range of confounders (e.g., deprivation), lower preferential face tracking predicted higher CU traits (p 5 .001). Higher maternal sensitivity predicted lower CU traits in girls (p 5 .009), but not boys. No significant interaction between face tracking and maternal sen