B3024 - Taxometric analyses and predictive accuracy of the Limited Prosocial Emotions specifier in Conduct Disorder patients - 10/04/2018

B number: 
B3024
Principal applicant name: 
Christina Stadler | Universitäre Psychiatrische Kliniken (Switzerland)
Co-applicants: 
Dr. Martin Steppan, Dr. Nora Maria Raschle
Title of project: 
Taxometric analyses and predictive accuracy of the "Limited Prosocial Emotions" specifier in Conduct Disorder patients
Proposal summary: 

Adolescents with Conduct Disorder display a variety of psychological and social problems. Conduct Disorder is often regarded as the precursor to Antisocial Personality Disorder later in life, and is also associated with delinquency and other problematic behaviour which negatively affect the individual as well as the social environment. Recent studies showed that among patients with Conduct Disorder a subgroup with "limited prosocial emotions" exists, characterized by more callous-unemotional personality traits. Our research project focuses on the question whether this LPE (limited prosocial emotions) specifier indeed represents a clinically meaningful and distinct subgroup. Whether a subtype to a diagnosis is a meaningful classification can be assessed by finding out whether individuals endorsing the specifier show e.g. a different symptomatology, different prognosis, differing therapeutical outcome, different neuroanatomic and biological correlates, and other differential socioeconomic patterns. Hence, the project aims at finding out more on whether the LPE specifier is a useful behavioural and neurobiological marker to the diagnosis of Conduct Disorder. In a previous project (European Collaborative Study FemNAT-CD) we collected evidence on behavioural and neuroanatomic correlates of the LPE-specifier. We would like to use ALSPAC in order to replicate our findings in another sample and make use of the longitudinal quality of ALSPAC.

Impact of research: 
We hope that we can provide additional evidence on whether Limited Prosocial Emotions (LPE) are a clinically relevant subtype for Conduct Disorder. We hope that the impact of our research can be increased by replicating our findings using ALSPAC. Considering the fact that we already published on another sample, we can address our hypotheses in a confirmatory manner using ALSPAC, since our hypotheses are published. Therefore, we are optimistic that a confirmation in a prominent data source like ALSPAC will be received with positive attention in the research community on antisocial behaviour and conduct disorder.
Date proposal received: 
Friday, 15 December, 2017
Date proposal approved: 
Monday, 18 December, 2017
Keywords: 
Mental health - Psychology, Psychiatry, Cognition, Behaviour - e.g. antisocial behaviour, risk behaviour, etc., Developmental disorders - autism, Mental health, Statistical methods, Childhood - childcare, childhood adversity, Development, Methods - e.g. cross cohort analysis, data mining, mendelian randomisation, etc., Parenting, Psychology - personality, Sex differences, Statistical methods