Following on from the above, it is still not known, though, if other emotional problems at the root of CU traits might explain antisocial behaviour. Being able to feel fear oneself may be how one knows when others are afraid. The proposed study aims to test whether youths with CU traits do not have this basic emotional experience which aids understanding other people’s emotions. So, looking at how we feel fear could help us understand both misreading fear and behaving antisocially. For example, youths who have a lack of fear seem to resist parents’ efforts to punish them. Also, youths with CU traits seem to lack the fear that more typical youths feel. They seem to care less than those without CU traits about how their behaviour affects other people. In all, a lack of fear could explain the antisocial behaviour of youths with high levels of CU traits. Because fear reactions may be unknown to one’s self, biological measures of fear will be taken (using roller coaster simulations), like heart activity related to the fight/flight response.
Funding
Funding from the University of Durham has supported preliminary pilot research through the Department of Psychology and University-level Seedcorn funding for project “Fearlessness and fear recognition in adolescents” in 2012-2013
Further funding is being sought from ESRC for the project “Knowing Fear By Feeling Fear: Callous-unemotional Traits and Emotional Understanding”
Funding from Collingwood College was awarded in 2014 for an undergraduate summer intern and Louisa Boydston was successful in getting this internship. Celeste Wee, an undergraduate Natural Sciences student from University of Cambridge has also been assisted during summer, 2014.
Personnel
Nicholas Thomson has been researching biological measures of fearlessness in adolescent boys and girls to see if these measures might relate to ‘reading’ fear and to not hurting other people. This research is important because it could tell us whether youths with CU traits have trouble ‘reading’ fear in others because they tend not to feel it themselves. Also, we intend to see if problem behaviours (like aggression) of youths with CU traits may stem from fearlessness (of punishment, for example) or from failing to ‘read’ fear.
Publications:
Thomson, N., Gillespie, S. M., & Centifanti, L. (2019). Callous-unemotional traits and fearlessness: A cardiovascular psychophysiological perspective in two adolescent samples using virtual reality. Development and psychopathology.
Thomson ND, Centifanti LCM. Proactive and Reactive Aggression Subgroups in Typically Developing Children: The Role of Executive Functioning, Psychophysiology, and Psychopathy. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev. 2018 Apr;49(2):197-208. PubMed PMID: 28681106; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5856868.
Thomson, N.D., Gillespie, S., & Centifanti, L.C.M. (in press). Callous-unemotional traits and fearlessness: A cardiovascular psychophysiological perspective in two adolescent samples using virtual reality. Development and Psychopathology.
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