ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the cognitive neuropsychology associated with callous-unemotional (CU) traits, including intelligence quotient, executive functioning, and working memory. Executive functions refer to the higher-order cognitive processes involving initiation, planning, cognitive flexibility, and decision making that allow goal-oriented behavior appropriate to the context. Children with conduct problems are characterized by the tendency to interpret ambiguous situations as being hostile, and to respond aggressively. Work has also examined the ability of children and adolescents with CU to understand emotions within themselves. One study has reported a deficit associated with CU in children’s ability to attribute feelings of fear to themselves, with a strong trend for a poverty in the self-attribution of guilt. A range of methods have been used to elicit mental state attributing during functional imaging of healthy adult volunteers, but very few studies to date have investigated the brain correlates of cognitive empathy in children with CU traits.
