The Association between Callous-Unemotional Traits and Emotional Processing Within Individuals and Across Generations

There is evidence to suggest that an impaired ability to process distressing and threatening emotional stimuli may result in a callous-unemotional (CU) and thrill-andadventure- seeking (TAS) personality. In this study we examined emotional processing in fifty community children, each with one parent, using the emotional pictures dot-probe task, which is a computerized task measuring attention to emotional pictures in the form of a facilitation score. The relationship between emotional processing, CU traits, and TAS were examined to determine whether individuals high on CU traits would also be more TAS, and show a lack of facilitation to emotional pictures. The results generally did not support study hypotheses; however, post-hoc analyses comparing children based on ethnicity found that Caucasian and minority children with CU traits show different and often opposite affective responses to emotional pictures, as well as different behavioral correlates to these traits.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Year

2003

Author dc:creator

• Kimonis, Eva

Contributors dc:contributor

• Frick, Paul

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/32

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.uno.edu:td-1031