Is your little one a psychopath? You’re probably not looking for signs of psychopathy in your toddler, but new research suggests that the signs may be there as young as age 3. Could it be true, or are we stepping over the worry-line?
Researchers from the University of New South Wales examined 214 preschool-age girls and boys to see if they could detect the callous and unemotional traits associated with psychopathy using a new tool set comprised of parent and teacher questionnaires and computer programs designed for young children.
Dr. Eva Kimonas and colleagues suggest that children who possessed these traits had trouble identifying facial expressions and were “less attentionally-engaged by images of others in distress when co-occurring conduct problems presented.”
Ten percent of the children in the study showed a lack of sympathy for others’ feelings, lack of remorse, no affection, and other psychopathic traits. [1]
“Even very young children with these traits show that difficulty in recognizing emotions in others and they are also not engaged by other people’s emotions,” Dr. Kimonis said.
“When they see people in distress it’s not capturing their attention in the same way as it would for the healthy population.”
Similar testing had only been carried out on older children and teens, but all 3 age groups showed ‘impaired development’ of conscience and struggled to process emotions. [2]
“These children are poorer at recognizing other people’s emotional expressions, and images depicting others in distress don’t capture their attention like it does for typically developing children as young as age three,” Dr. Kimonis said.
Related: Teens Doing This for 2 Hours/Day Risk Mental Health Problems
If the idea of a 3-year-old psychopath doesn’t make you think, consider this: new research suggests that psychopathic traits may be present in 5-week-old babies.
When psychologists at King’s College London used a red ball to track the visual preferences of 213 5-week-old babies to see if the infants preferred to interact with an object or a human face, they found that babies who preferred the red ball were more likely to have more unemotional traits later in childhood, which could be a precursor to adult psychopathy. [3]
But infants who prefer a ball over a human aren’t necessarily destined to become psychopaths. It could be a sign of developmental issues. It could also mean the child is more interested in a brightly colored ball, and nothing more. Or perhaps conducting research on young children consciously or subconsciously affects them mentally, making them feel like a test subject at a young age?
At any rate, parents who are concerned they are rearing a psycho-baby can reduce the risk by engaging with their child in a very appropriate, supportive and warm way. That goes for toddlers, too.
“We coach the parents how to be very warm, involved and loving with them to see if that reduces those callous traits over time,” Dr. Kimonis said.
Additional Sources:
[1] The Huffington Post Canada
[2] The Independent
[3] The Huffington Post