The association of callous-unemotional (CU) traits with violence and severe antisocial behavior has led to a recent focus on the association between CU traits and sexual offending behavior. When assessing juveniles with sexual offenses, practice standards recommend that multiple sources of data are considered. However, the differential correlates of parent-report versus self-report of CU traits...

Background: Callous-unemotional (CU) traits have been found to index an important subgroup of antisocial youth who are at high risk for developing psychopathic personality pathology, and for becoming severe and persistent offenders. On the basis of such research findings, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, have included a “with limited prosocial emotions” ...

The Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD) is a well-supported tool for assessing psychopathic features in youth. However, most research with the APSD has been derived from clinical and forensic samples comprised mainly of male Caucasian and African American adolescents. In this prospective study, the incremental and predictive validity of the self-report APSD for violent and non-violent of...

Although prior research has examined the genetic correlates of antisocial behavior, molecular genetics influences on psychopathic traits remain largely unknown. Consequently, we investigated the influence of polymorphic variation at the serotonin transporter protein gene (SLC6A4) and socioeconomic resources (SES) on psychopathic traits in youth across two distinct samples in two separate studie...

Delinquency has been defined as youthful behavior that violates the law. 1 Juvenile court statistics indicate that 2.9 percent of American youths age 10-17 appear in Juvenile Court each year (excluding traffic offenses). Considering there are about 36 million youngsters in this age range in the United States,2 that means each year over a million youths are in serious trouble and appearing in co...

The aim of the present study was to analyze the role of psychopathic traits in female juvenile delinquency. Using a sample of 236 young females from the Juvenile Detention Centers of the Portuguese Ministry of Justice and schools in the Lisbon area, a group of female youths with high psychopathic traits (n=118; M=15.84 years of age; range=14-18 years of age) and a group of female youths with lo...

OBJECTIVE The present study investigates whether youths with childhood-onset antisocial behavior have higher rates of psychiatric illness, neuropsychological and psychosocial dysfunction than youths who engage in antisocial behavior for the first time in adolescence. Prior studies have generally focused on single domains of function in heterogeneous samples. The present study also examined the ...