Emotional Abilities in Children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD): Impairments in Perspective-Taking and Understanding Mixed Emotions are Associated with High Callous–Unemotional Traits

• Published in: Child psychiatry and human development 2017-04, Vol.48 (2), p.346-357
• Main Authors: O’Kearney, Richard, Salmon, Karen, Liwag, Maria, Fortune, Clare-Ann, Dawel, Amy
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Affective Symptoms - diagnosis; Affective Symptoms - psychology; Ambivalence; Anxiety; Anxiety disorders; Attention Deficit and Disruptive Behavior Disorders - diagnosis; Attention Deficit and Disruptive Behavior Disorders - psychology; Behavior Disorders; Behavior Observation Techniques; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Boys; Child; Child and School Psychology; Child Behavior - psychology; Child, Preschool; Children; Children & youth; Cognitive ability; Emotion recognition; Emotional Experience; Emotional Intelligence; Emotional Response; Emotions; Empathy; Expressive Language; Feedback (Response); Female; Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Male; Males; Moral Development; Oppositional defiant disorder; Original Article; Personality disorders; Perspective taking; Psychiatry; Psychological Patterns; Psychology; Resistance (Psychology); Sex Factors; Statistics as Topic; Understanding; Young Children
• ISSN: 0009-398X; 1573-3327
• DOI: 10.1007/s10578-016-0645-4

Most studies of emotion abilities in disruptive children focus on emotion expression recognition. This study compared 74 children aged 4–8 years with ODD to 45 comparison children (33 healthy; 12 with an anxiety disorder) on behaviourally assessed measures of emotion perception, emotion perspective-taking, knowledge of emotions causes and understanding ambivalent emotions and on parent-reported cognitive and affective empathy. Adjusting for child’s sex, age and expressive language ODD children showed a paucity in attributing causes to emotions but no other deficits relative to the comparison groups. ODD boys with high levels of callous–unemotional traits (CU) ( n  = 22) showed deficits relative to low CU ODD boys ( n  = 25) in emotion perspective-taking and in understanding ambivalent emotions. Low CU ODD boys did not differ from the healthy typically developing boys ( n  = 12). Impairments in emotion perceptive-taking and understanding mixed emotions in ODD boys are associated with the presence of a high level of CU.