Children with Psychopathic traits

Children with Psychopathic traits Abstract There have been numerous research studies on adult psychopaths and how to identify them. Although, according to some of the research, it may be a long time before we fully understand the roots of psychopathology; Researchers are attempting to understand how the brain of a psychopath works. Science can also focus on identifying traits earlier in childhood. There is a lack of research conducted on children who demonstrates psychopathic traits. Although not all children with psychopathic traits will grow up to be criminals, conducting more research on children with psychopathic traits may help us to intervene before some of these children grow up to be criminals. In order to understand the stability and the development of criminal behavior and long lasting conduct problems, it is important that individuals understand how a psychopathic personality develops in a person from childhood to adulthood.  This paper will examine callous unemotional children who exhibit a distinctive lack of affection, remorse or empathy and are considered at risk of becoming psychopaths as adults. It will also focus on the three major dimensions that are used in measuring psychopathic traits and how some of this research may not apply to psychopathic traits in children. Introduction Most researchers agree that psychopathic personalities measurable during childhood contribute to the odd criminal behaviors present in adolescents and adults. The three major dimensions that are used in measuring psychopathic traits include the interpersonal, behavioral and affective dimensions (Oliver, et al 2014). While measuring the development of psychopathic personalities, one of the questions that researchers have asked is “What is the minimum age where they could carry out their measurement.” Another question that researchers often ask is “What are the psychopathic traits that need to be measured at very early stages in life." Scholars (Andershed, 2010) refer to adult psychopathy as a syndrome that comprises of a concurring assemblage of extreme affective and interpersonal lifestyle traits. Studies conducted reveal that the children who portray these three dimensions of adult psychopathic traits tend to commit more offenses as compared to the children who have only one of the three adult psychopathic dimensions. According to (Andershed, 2010) people doing research on children in most cases tend to focus their study on all lower order factors, such as lying, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct problems and attention deficit disorder. There are those researchers who claim that the callous unemotional psychopathic personality (CUPP) is the most effective dimension in understanding conduct disordered and anti-social children. Researchers link the theory of fearlessness among children to the callous unemotional dimension. They claim that children that do not exhibit any fear tend to be more antisocial and have delinquent and disruptive behaviors, as they do not fear any likely punishment given to them. Another theory that tries to identify the different psychopathic traits is the Lynam theory. The Child Problematic Trait Inventory is one of the assessments researchers developed to determine psychopathic personality in childhood, especially during the early childhood (Ronan, 2013). In addition, the assessment was meant to provide a means researchers could assess whether adults demonstrated the presence of the psychopathic personality traits in childhood. The Child Problematic Trait Inventory (CPTI) may or may not include those behaviors that have close relations to anti-social behavior or conduct problems (Ronan, 2013). In most cases, the CPTI is used to understand the different psychopathic traits that are likely to cause conduct problems; thus making it easier to predict the occurrence of such behaviors. One dimension through which researchers assess the psychopathic personalities in individuals is the Interpersonal Dimension. Typically, this dimension refers to traits like manipulation, lying and dishonesty. These traits can be measured during early childhood, early as 3 years old. Lying has been defined as the making of a false statement to people with the intention of deceiving them, which is considered a psychopathic trait in some cases. However it is possible for a three year old child to make a misleading statement that can lead to the perception of manipulation. However, children that lie cannot be classified as psychopathic based on this behavior alone. Researchers categorize lying as being a normal cognitive development in children. Researches (Andershed, 2010) however take different sides when it comes to incorporating lies as part of an adult psychopathic construct. In most adults, the psychopaths differ on the frequency of telling a lie, ease of telling a lie, readiness to tell lie and how they react after being confronted with a lie. According to (Oliver, et al 2014) researchers have been able to prove that there are groups of preschoolers who are habitual liars. Given the opportunity, children in preschool can lie but the rate at which they lie varies. Adult psychopaths are known for overrating themselves and this makes people think of them as arrogant. When using the interpersonal dimension in assessing psychopathic behaviors and normal behaviors, the most common disorder observed is the narcissistic personality disorder. One notable narcissistic trait present in people that have this disorder is having the need to be at the center of attention. It is easy to measure these narcissistic behaviors as early as three years of age, which is why pre schoolers can sometimes be categorized or miscategorized as psychopathic. Some of the psychopathic traits that are included in the Affective Dimension are callousness, lack of empathy, lack of remorse or guilt, and the inability to accept personal responsibilities. The guiding principle for this dimension is the failure of an individual to accept the responsibilities emanating from his or her own actions. According to (Oliver , et al 2014) children as young as 6 months have the ability of responding to emotional distress in their peers. From the age of two, a child can respond to distresses something that is evident in the different facial expressions. As they become older, children further develop physical expressions and this makes it easy for someone to notice how they are responding to cases of distress. It is thus possible to identify those children that do not respond to any distress, of their peers. This concept helps explain why there are some who do not help others in times of need and lack empathy. Shallowness and callousness are related to a psychopathic person’s lack of empathy such people are hostile, as they do not have the caring feelings present in people that show empathy. For instance, a child can be in a position where he or she is required to help out a friend in school but passes out on that chance. Scholars suggest that guilt is because of moral transgression and it includes the feeling of regret, remorse and tension (Oliver, et al 2014). Some of the ways through which an individual can notice guilt in children is by focusing on the different discomfort signs. For instance, a child who breaks an object shows guilt by trying to mend the broken pieces back together. In some children, callous unemotional traits manifest in obvious ways. Paul Frick, a psychologist at the University of New Orleans who has studied risk factors for psychopathy in children for two decades, described one boy who used a knife to cut off the tail of the family cat bit by bit, over a period of weeks. The boy was proud of the serial amputations, which his parents initially failed to notice. “When we talked about it, he was very straightforward,” Frick recalls. “He said: ‘I want to be a scientist, and I was experimenting. I wanted to see how the cat would react.” (Jennifer Khan) Some of the psychopathic traits included in the Behavioral Dimension are impulsivity, sensation seeking, parasitic lifestyle and lack or real long term goals (Cooke & Michie 2001). However, scholars argue that traits such as lack of realistic long-term goals and a parasitic lifestyle may be irrelevant to young children. People with impulsive behaviors find it hard to regulate some of their actions. For instance, there are people who are known to be impulse buyers and cannot refrain themselves from buying more regardless of the financial implication this impulse buying may have on them. The traits included in the behavioral dimension can be observed in preschool children. The sensation seeking and proneness to boredom are mostly seen in adolescents. It is at the adolescent stage that young people set out to discover things of importance to them failure of which makes them become bored (Oliver, et al 2014). At this point, some people express strong emotions as they try to seek sensation. Sensation seeking in this research field is often defined by features such as seeking varied, novel, intense, arousing, and emotionally behavioral experiences that are accompanied by physical risk taking (Morrongiello et al. 2012). A study made on institutionalized sample of delinquents (n=252), found that thrill seeking and impulsiveness were the strongest classification variables for delinquency and violent delinquency. Based on a sample of more than 700 institutionalized delinquents, Vaughn et al. (2008) found that self-reported ADHD diagnosis was significantly associated with delinquent onset, arrest onset, and juvenile court referral onset, but not predictive of violent delinquency, nonviolent delinquency, and hostile aggression. (Vaughn et al. 2013) Recent studies suggest that most of the linkage between ADHD, CD, and psychopathology relates more to conduct problems than executive dysfunction (Colledge & Blair, 2011). Prior research using a community sample of middle school student found that children with ADHD Predominantly Inattentive Type and ADHD Predominantly Impulsive-Hyperactive Type had generally lower psychopathy scores than children with ADHD Combined Type (DeLisi et al., 2011). The study of psychopathic personality in childhood and adolescences brings out controversies; especially given the negative associations related with psychopathic traits, such as callousness, conduct problems and the dimensions studied. It is important that researchers keep studying children who present some type of dysfunctional personality in order to assess them. If we are able to identify these children at an early age, clinicians and researchers will be able to develop interventions to help these children before they become a full develop psychopath. Although many of these traits are to some extent normative and temporary in children, future research will help to better understand psychopathic traits, going deeper into their specific characteristics. It will also improve our knowledge on children that display psychopathic traits in the hope of preventing the future criminals. Works Cited Andershed, H. (2010). Stability and change of psychopathic traits. What do we know? New York: The Guilford Press. Kahn Jennifer (2012, May 11) Can you call a 9 yr old a psychopath? Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/can-you-call-a-9-year-old-a-psychopath.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Cooke, D. J., & Michie, C. (2001). Refining the construct of psychopathy: towards a hierarchical model. Psychological Assessment, 13, 171-188 Oliver F. Collins., Henrik Andershed., Louise Fronger., Laura Lopez-Romero & Anna-Karin Andershed (2014). A new measure to assess psychopathic personality in children: The child problematic traits inventory. Journal of Psychopathology behavioral Assessment. 36:4-21 Ronan, G. F. (2013). Practitioner's guide to empirically supported measures of anger, aggression, and violence. Cham: Springer. DeLisi Matt., Vaughn (2014). Fledging Psychpathic Features and Pathological Delinquency: New Evidence. Southern Criminal Justice Association 2013. What is a Psychopath? According to Hervey Cleckley who is known as the first person to describe the psychopathy in detail. A psychopath is a person who shows a lack of empathy, lack of emotion, such as shame, guilt, and embarrassment. They are irresponsible; they tend to be charismatic and over confident. Also likes to be the center of attention, selfish and engage is violent behavior. For society psychopaths are simply morally depraved individuals who represent the “monsters” in our society. They are unstoppable and untreatable predators whose violence is planned, purposeful and emotionless. There is a lack of research conducted on children who demonstrates these psychopathic traits. Although not all children with psychopathic traits will grow up to be criminals, conducting more research on children with psychopathic traits may help us to intervene before some of these children grow up to be the “monsters” in our society. Thesis: My hypothesis is if we were to diagnose children with psychopathic traits at an early age can we teach them to develop empathy? Method Participants: The participants will be a sample of 50 children from the greater Danbury area between the ages of three and 12 who demonstrate the psychopathic traits of callous unemotional. Callous Unemotional: Children who display a lack of emotions such as guilt and remorse. Research Design: Children as young as three have been identified to show psychopathic traits that will lead to criminal behavior and a threat to society. In order to develop a technique to be 100% that children that display callous unemotional grows up to be psychopaths. I will conduct a research using a qualitative design that will explore a small sample of children that have been identified to show psychopathic traits. Structured interviews will be used in my qualitative research. Since my focus is a small group it would be beneficial to compare and contrast in order to answer a research question. This approach will increase the reliability and credibility of my data. Instrumentation: I’ll be using the Child Problematic Traits Inventory  (CPTI). The reliability and validity of the CPTI was tested in a Swedish general population sample of 2,056 to 5 year olds. (Collins). I will also use the PCL-R that is used for diagnosing psychopathy in individuals for clinical, legal or research purposes. The Hare PCL-R contains two parts, a semi-structured interview and a review of the subject’s file records and history. (Hare) Variables: Independent Variable- Intervention Dependent Variable- Callous Unemotional Traits Procedure: The participants will be randomly assigned to either a control or experimental group. Most of these children will be children that have conduct disorders at school and at home. After assessing my sample size an intervention will be conducted. The intervention involves teaching the kids that portray psychopathic traits about remorse and empathy. I will do this by having facilitators give intense social skills work out. Also I will test their emotional arousal to fear and distress in others and abnormalities in their responses to cues of punishment and danger. The intervention may not work to all children that portray psychopathic traits. I will conduct a series of open-ended questions. The intervention will involve classes that will teach how hitting each other, lying and hurting people is not allowed because it hurts people’s feelings. Instead they will be guided how to use that negative energy towards something they like to do. Children will also have karate and tai chi lessons. Facilitators will be trained and supervised equally. Consent will be given mostly from their parents. PLACE THIS ORDER OR A SIMILAR ORDER WITH US TODAY AND GET AN AMAZING DISCOUNT :)