Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention ResearchNov 7, 2024

How Unemotional Traits Relate to Emotion Recognition in School Children, Considering Behavior Problems and Age

Updated Dec 29, 2025

Abstract

A study of 258 school children found that conduct problems may influence how callous-unemotional traits relate to emotion recognition.

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are linked to serious conduct problems in youth.
Past research on CU traits and emotion recognition may have been affected by interactions with conduct problems and age.
At high levels of CU traits, conduct problems did not negatively impact overall emotion recognition.
For recognizing fear and sadness, conduct problems were positively associated with accuracy at low levels of CU traits.
Younger children showed non-significant negative associations between CU traits and emotion recognition accuracy, while 8th graders showed significant positive associations.
These findings could help improve interventions for conduct problems in young children.

Simplified

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are associated with severe conduct problems (CP) in youth. Causal theories for CU traits focus on emotion processing deficits that interfere with empathy development. However, though CU traits are consistently associated with deficits in affective empathy (i.e., emotional reactivity), the association between CU traits and cognitive empathy, which requires accurate emotion recognition, is less clear. We hypothesize that past inconsistencies in the associations between CU traits and emotion recognition may be due to interactions with conduct problems (CP) and age. To test this, a sample (N = 258) of school children in the 3rd, 6th, and 8th grades completed a computer task that assessed facial expression recognition, while caregivers and teachers reported on CU traits and CP. Results from hierarchical linear regression analyses indicated significant interactions between CU traits and CP in their associations with overall emotion recognition and with recognition of fearful and sad faces. In each case, CP showed a non-significant negative association with emotion recognition at high levels of CU traits. However, for fear and sadness recognition, CP was positively associated with accuracy at low levels of CU traits. Significant interactions between CU traits and age also emerged for recognition of fear and sadness, such that there were non-significant negative associations between CU traits and recognition accuracy in younger children, but significant positive associations in 8th grade students. These results have multiple implications as they help to clarify past inconsistencies on the association between CU traits and emotion recognition and can aid in the development of more effective interventions to prevent or treat conduct problems in young children.

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