ArticleJournal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry2018
Parenting Is an Environmental Predictor of Callous-Unemotional Traits and Aggression: A Monozygotic Twin Differences Study.
Article in Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 55 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
55 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 114 citations in OpenAlex.
- Positive and negative parenting practices and offspring disruptive behavior: A meta-analytic review of quasi-experimental evidence.Psychological bulletin · 2025Pooled it
- Parenting Characteristics and Callous-Unemotional Traits in Children Aged 0-6 Years: A Systematic Narrative Review.Child psychiatry and human development · 2025Pooled it
- Emotion Recognition Deficits in Children and Adolescents with Psychopathic Traits: A Systematic Review.Clinical child and family psychology review · 2024Pooled it
- Treatment of childhood disruptive behavior disorders and callous-unemotional traits: a systematic review and two multilevel meta-analyses.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2023Pooled it
- Role of Callous and Unemotional (CU) Traits on the Development of Youth with Behavioral Disorders: A Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Pooled it
- Out of Sync: Parent-Child Behavioral Synchrony in Conduct Problem Subgroups.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2026Article
- Annual Research Review: Early conduct problems - precursors, outcomes, and etiology.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2026Review
- Using machine learning to identify parenting features prospectively related to callous-unemotional traits from infancy to early adolescence.Psychological medicine · 2026Article
- Disentangling the Reciprocal Relationships Between Maternal Emotional Expressiveness and Children's Callous-Unemotional Traits Through a Family Functioning Lens.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2026Article
- Applying a Network Approach To Characterize Gender Differences in Conduct Problems and Callous-Unemotional Traits among Children from Two Countries.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2026Article
- Maternal psychopathic traits prospectively predict youth callous-unemotional traits.Frontiers in child and adolescent psychiatry · 2026Article
- Genetic and Environmental Influences on the Development of Callous-Unemotional Behaviors in the Preschool Period.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2025Article
- Parenting Under Pressure: How Child Limited Prosocial Emotions Shape the Stress-Warmth Connection.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2025Article
- Parenting and Peer Victimization in the Development of Callous-Unemotional Behaviors: Moderation by Irritability and Basal Cortisol.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2025Article
- Understanding desistance from aggression: A joint interpretation of person-centered and variable-centered approaches.Development and psychopathology · 2025Article
- Linking Callous-Unemotional Traits to Social Withdrawal Among Young Chinese Left-Behind Children: Examining the Moderated Mediation Model.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Objective Linguistic Markers Associated with Callous-Unemotional Traits in Early Childhood.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2024Article
- Dimensions of Parenting and Children's Conduct Problems: The Importance of Considering Children's Callous-Unemotional Traits.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- Fearlessness as an Underlying Mechanism Leading to Conduct Problems: Testing the INTERFEAR Model in a Community Sample in Spain.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Newborn Brain Function and Early Emerging Callous-Unemotional Traits.JAMA psychiatry · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveCallous-unemotional (CU) traits increase risk for children to develop severe childhood aggression and conduct disorder. CU traits are typically described as highly heritable, and debate continues about whether the parenting environment matters in their etiology. Strong genetically informed designs are needed to test for the presence of environmental links between parenting practices and CU traits. Our objective was to determine whether parental harshness and parental warmth were related to children's aggression or CU traits when accounting for genetically mediated effects.
methodWe examined 227 monozygotic twin pairs (454 children) drawn from population-based and at-risk samples of twin families, leading to oversampling of twins living in poverty. We computed multi-informant difference scores combining mother and father reports of their harshness and warmth toward each twin, and differences in mother reports of each twin's aggression and CU traits.
resultsTwin differences in parental harshness were related to differences in both aggression and CU traits, such that the twin who received harsher parenting had higher aggression and more CU traits. Differences in parental warmth were uniquely related to differences in CU traits, such that the twin receiving warmer parenting evidenced lower CU traits. These effects were not moderated by child sex, age, or family income, with the exception that the relationship between differential parental harshness and differential child aggression was stronger among low-income families.
conclusionParenting is related to child CU traits and aggression, over and above genetically mediated effects, with low parental warmth being a unique environmental correlate of CU traits.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.