The role of infants’ mother-directed gaze, maternal sensitivity, and emotion recognition in childhood callous unemotional behaviours

• Published in: European child & adolescent psychiatry Vol. 26; no. 8; pp. 947 - 956
• Main Authors: Bedford, R., Wagner, N. J., Rehder, P. D., Propper, C., Willoughby, M. T., Mills-Koonce, R. W.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.08.2017; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Acknowledgment; Behavior; Caregivers; Child; Child & adolescent psychiatry; Child and Adolescent Psychiatry; Child development; Childhood; Children; Emotion recognition; Emotions; Female; Fixation, Ocular - physiology; Humans; Indirect effects; Infant; Infant Behavior - psychology; Infants; Longitudinal Studies; Male; Maternal and infant welfare; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Mother-Child Relations - psychology; Mother-infant relations; Mother-offspring interactions; Mothers; Mothers - psychology; Original Contribution; Parenting; Parents & parenting; Path analysis; Pattern recognition; Prospective Studies; Psychiatry; Risk behavior; Risk factors; Triplets; Emotion recognition; Infant; Callous unemotional behaviours; Sensitive parenting; Face
• ISSN: 1018-8827; 1435-165X
• DOI: 10.1007/s00787-017-0967-1

While some children with callous unemotional (CU) behaviours show difficulty recognizing emotional expressions, the underlying developmental pathways are not well understood. Reduced infant attention to the caregiver’s face and a lack of sensitive parenting have previously been associated with emerging CU features. The current study examined whether facial emotion recognition mediates the association between infants’ mother-directed gaze, maternal sensitivity, and later CU behaviours. Participants were 206 full-term infants and their families from a prospective longitudinal study, the Durham Child Health and Development Study (DCHDS). Measures of infants’ mother-directed gaze, and maternal sensitivity were collected at 6 months, facial emotion recognition performance at 6 years, and CU behaviours at 7 years. A path analysis showed a significant effect of emotion recognition predicting CU behaviours ( β  = −0.275, S.E. = 0.084, p  = 0.001). While the main effects of infants' mother-directed gaze and maternal sensitivity were not significant, their interaction significantly predicted CU behaviours ( β  = 0.194, S.E. = 0.081, p  = 0.016) with region of significance analysis showing a significant negative relationship between infant gaze and later CU behaviours only for those with low maternal sensitivity. There were no indirect effects of infants’ mother-directed gaze, maternal sensitivity or the mother-directed gaze by maternal sensitivity interaction via emotion recognition. Emotion recognition appears to act as an independent predictor of CU behaviours, rather than mediating the relationship between infants’ mother-directed gaze and maternal sensitivity with later CU behaviours. This supports the idea of multiple risk factors for CU behaviours.