Citation

Kilshaw RE, Kerig PK, Baucom BRW. Child Psychiatry Hum. Dev. 2022; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s10578-022-01486-6

PMID

36572843

Abstract

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are associated with severe and persistent juvenile offending. CU traits are also associated with dampened emotional arousal, which suggests that fundamental frequency (f(0)), a measure of vocally-encoded emotional arousal, may serve as an accessible psychophysiological marker of CU traits in youth. This study investigated the associations between f(0) range measured during an emotionally evocative task, CU traits, and emotion dysregulation in a mixed-gender sample of 168 justice-involved youth. For boys, after controlling for covariates, wider f(0) range-indicating greater emotional arousal-was negatively associated with CU traits and positively associated with emotion dysregulation. For girls, no significant associations with f(0) range emerged; however, CU traits were positively associated with emotion dysregulation.

FINDINGS suggest that f(0) range may serve as a valid indicator of CU traits in JJ-involved boys, and that detained boys and girls with high CU traits are characterized by different profiles of emotion dysregulation.

Language: en

Keywords

Delinquency; Callous-unemotional traits; Emotional arousal; Fundamental frequency