Chhoa, Celine;
(2023)
Callous-Unemotional Traits and Responsiveness to Rewards and Discipline in Young Children.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are associated with a lack of fear of negative consequences, with implications for parent socialisation, conscience development, and intervention efforts for childhood conduct problems (CP). The use of rewards instead may prove a fruitful avenue for promoting prosocial behaviour in children with elevated CU traits. Given the low affinity for social affiliation associated with CU traits, the quality of the parent-child relationship may affect the motivation value of rewards, especially social reward such as praise. This thesis explored the associations among CU traits and responsiveness to punishment and reward in the context of parenting during early childhood. In Chapter 2, I described the development of a novel experimental task designed to capture how well children learn from punishment and reward. Children higher in CU traits showed more difficulty learning from punishment and this was exacerbated by the presence of reward. In Chapter 3, insensitivity to parental punishment was related to poorer conscience and more dysfunctional patterns of parent discipline in children higher in CU traits. In Chapters 4 and 5, child responsiveness to social versus tangible rewards was compared using two newly developed instruments, an experimental task and a parent questionnaire, designed to assess responsiveness to different types of rewards in relation to CU traits. CU traits were unrelated to differences in responsiveness to tangible versus social reward using the novel experimental task (Chapter 4) but were related to decreased responsiveness to social rewards measured by parent report (Chapter 5). In Chapter 6, observation was used to examine parental use of social rewards and child responsiveness to rewards in the home setting. Children were equally responsive to parents’ positive attention regardless of level of CU traits, but emotional interactions were less positive in dyads with children high in CU traits.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Callous-Unemotional Traits and Responsiveness to Rewards and Discipline in Young Children |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2023. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Psychology and Human Development |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10176710 |
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