International Journal of Law and Psychiatry Assessing callous–unemotional traits in adolescent offenders: Validation of the Inventory of Callous–Unemotional Traits

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t The presence of callous–unemotional (CU) traits designates an important subgroup of antisocial youth. To improve upon existing measures, the Inventory of Callous–Unemotional Traits (ICU) was developed to provide an efficient, reliable, and valid assessment of CU traits in samples of youth. The current study tests the factor structure and correlates of the ICU scale in a sample (n = 248) of juvenile offenders (188 boys, 60 girls) between the ages of 12 and 20 (M =15.47, SD= 1.37). Confirmatory factor analyses are consistent with the presence of three independent factors (i.e., Uncaring, Callousness, and Unemotional) that relate to a higher-order callous–unemotional dimension. Also, CU traits overall showed associations with aggression, delinquency, and both psychophysiological and self-report indices of emotional reactivity. There were some important differences across the three facets of the ICU in their associations with these key external criteria. 1. Introduction Callous–unemotional (CU) traits (e.g., lack of empathy, lack of guilt, poverty in emotional expression) are relatively stable across childhood into adolescence, at least compared to other measures of childhood personality and psychopathology (Frick, Kimonis, Dandreaux, & Farrell, 2003c). There is now fairly substantial evidence that these traits designate an important subgroup of antisocial and delinquent youth (see Frick, 2006; Frick & Marsee, 2006 for other reviews). Frick and Dickens (2006) reviewed 22 published studies showing that CU traits either co-occurred with (n = 10), or predicted (n = 12), serious antisocial and aggressive behavior, and 5 studies showing that CU traits were related to poorer treatment response among antisocial youth. CU traits are particularly associated with violence that is more premeditated and instrumental in nature Beyond designating a more severe and aggressive subgroup of antisocial youth, CU traits also seem to specify a group of antisocial youth who show characteristics suggestive of different causal processes leading to their antisocial behavior than those operating for other antisocial youth