Empathic Accuracy in Male Adolescents with Conduct Disorder and Higher versus Lower Levels of Callous-Unemotional Traits.

ABSTRACT: Adolescents with disruptive behavior disorders are reported to show deficits in empathy and emotion recognition. However, prior studies have mainly used questionnaires to measure empathy or experimental paradigms that are lacking in ecological validity. We used an empathic accuracy (EA) task to study EA, emotion recognition, and affective empathy in 77 male adolescents aged 13-18 years: 37 with Conduct Disorder (CD) and 40 typically-developing controls. The CD sample was divided into higher callous-emotional traits (CD/CU+) and lower callous-unemotional traits (CD/CU-) subgroups using a median split. Participants watched films of actors recalling happy, sad, surprised, angry, disgusted or fearful autobiographical experiences and provided continuous ratings of emotional intensity (assessing

SUBMITTER: Martin-Key N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5603649 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature