Prosocial behaviour in children with conduct problems: Investigating putative cognitive-affective mechanisms and their malleability

Children with conduct problems (i.e. concerning levels of behavioural problems) are at risk of later criminality, mental health problems, educational underachievement and problems in their social relationships. Conduct problems are equally, or more common than other childhood disorders (e.g. ADHD, depression or autism spectrum disorders), but we have not seen the same level of advocacy, research spending and access to interventions for these children.

The presentation of children with conduct problems evokes less empathy than other childhood disorders, yet these children and their families experience considerable distress. We need to improve our understanding of why these children have behavioural problems and what can be done to help them. Past research has focused on how children with conduct problems process negative emotions. This has helped researchers and clinicians understand why these children can find it difficult to empathise with other people (they may not respond typically to others' expressions of distress) or why they may act aggressively (they may have difficulty in regulating their emotions, especially if they feel threatened).

Much less research has focused on how these children perceive positive emotions, whether they pay attention to positive emotions and whether positive emotions motivate them. This is surprising, because we know that positive emotions can promote prosocial behaviour and are important for successful interactions with other people. Positive emotional expressions, both happy facial expressions and voices, can make us feel included and motivate us to please others. It is important for us to recognise and notice these emotions. There are a few studies that suggest that children with conduct problems may be less likely to notice positive emotional expressions and may be less motivated by them. We need a study that systematically investigates whether these findings are real and what aspects of positive emotion processing are affected. We also need to know if we can train positive emotion perception and whether doing so would reduce antisocial behaviour and increase prosocial behaviour in children with conduct problems. Finally, we need to know whether all children with conduct problems look the same or whether difficulties in positive emotion processing only apply to some children with conduct problems, perhaps those who have difficulty empathising with other people? We also know if training positive emotion perception is effective for all or only some children with CP.

This project addresses each of these gaps in our knowledge. We will work together with children and young people with and without conduct problems to create an attractive set of tools to assess and train positive emotion processing. We will also measure antisocial and prosocial behaviour following training, to study its impact. Our hope is that this work will help us improve interventions for children and young people with conduct problems.

Children with conduct problems (CP) are at risk of developing persistent antisocial behaviour, which costs society £60 billion annually. There is an urgent need to improve our ability to help and support these children. There remain significant gaps in our understanding of potential information processing mechanisms underlying CP. To date the field has predominantly focused on how children with CP process negative affect and how this may influence their risk of aggression. There has been surprisingly little work focusing on how children with CP process positive affect, particularly given the role that positive affect is thought to play in promoting prosocial engagement and behaviour. The primary aims of the current study are to investigate: (i) how positive affect signals are processed by children with CP; (ii) the degree to which such processing is malleable following affective perception training; and (iii) whether training reduces aggressive and increases prosocial behaviour.

Children with CP are a heterogeneous group with varied presentations and needs. Those with high levels of callous-unemotional (CU) traits have been distinguished at cognitive and behavioural levels from their peers with low levels of CU traits and there is tentative evidence that these groups may also differ in their processing of positive affect. The proposed research will compare these groups with matched typically developing controls. It will inform a genuinely mechanistic cognitive model of CP subtypes and test a potential translational application by addressing the following key questions:

1) Do children with CP display atypical processing of positive affect signals, indexed by measures of perception, attention and motivation?
2) Can training impact perception, attention and motivation of positive affect in children with CP?
3) Does training: a) reduce antisocial behaviour; b) promote prosocial behaviour in children with CP?