engleski

Decision-making in young children: The role of psychopathic traits

Taking the advantage of a prospective community study following children across the transition from kindergarten to school (N =175 ; 51% boys ; MageT1=5.28 years ; Mage T3=8.74 years), including data from parents and teachers, we examined whether psychopathic traits (Child Problematic Traits Inventory) concurrently and prospectively have an impact on the children’s decision-making capabilities as measured by the Balloon Analogue Task (BART) and the Hungry Donkey Task (HDT). Using structural equation modelling, higher levels of callous- unemotional (CU) traits were, above and beyond control variables (i.e., child’s gender, intelligence and working memory), behavioral and interpersonal features of psychopathy, prospectively (T3), but not concurrently (T1) related to lower levels of responsivity to reward. That is, children with higher levels of CU traits were less likely to increase their pumps following a successful bank of their money. Furthermore, the CU traits were, above and beyond other included variables, prospectively related to sensitivity to loss as measured by the HDT. Specifically, children high on CU traits chose less often from the doors with infrequent but larger losses than from doors with smaller, more frequent losses, which in turn led them to accumulating more apples (i.e., rewards) in the long run. Taken together, these findings suggest that CU traits might facilitate heightened rationality in responding to rewards, which in turn could protect children from engaging in long-term counterproductive behaviors, especially those that may not personally serve them. Furthermore, these results highlight that affective deficits have lasting influences on children’s everyday functioning.

children ; decision-making ; psychopathic traits

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