# Callousness and Distress Processing: An ERP Investigation of Attention and Emotion in Adolescence.

> **NIH NIH F31** · FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $37,405

## Abstract

Project Summary. Efforts to reduce public health burdens associated with crime must incorporate research on
risk factors for antisocial behavior. Callousness is a dispositional trait involving unemotionality and disregard
for others that can be identified in childhood and confers prospective risk for chronic, severe antisocial
behavior.1 Programs that aim to intervene with youth at risk for antisocial behavior are less effective for
individuals high in callousness, and few effective treatments have been shown to directly reduce dispositional
callousness.2 One area of particular promise for revitalizing stalled intervention research efforts across clinical
psychology is an increased attention to neurobiological processes contributing to psychopathology, as
reflected in the National Institute of Mental Health’s Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) initiative.3,4 Theories of
callousness posit that basic empathic deficits in callous individuals preclude the development of normative
checks on antisocial behavior over time.5 An inadequate understanding of empathic disruptions associated
with callousness in adolescence has hampered the development of effective early intervention programs to
prevent antisocial behavior. The proposed study will investigate callousness-related empathic dysfunction
through multiple measurement modalities, including behavioral emotion recognition accuracy and various
electrophysiological responses to affective faces. Specifically, we will (a) clarify the nature of emotion
recognition deficits in adolescent callousness with regard to particular facial expressions, (b) examine relations
of adolescent callousness to electrophysiological responses reflecting attentional engagement with and
affective processing of facial expressions, and (c) investigate the specificity of empathic deficits in adolescence
to callousness, over and above the related trait of disinhibition. Importantly, whereas most research to date has
focused on youths already demonstrating severe conduct problems, this project will utilize a community
adolescent sample to investigate whether these behavioral and physiological features are associated with
callousness prior to the emergence of antisocial behavior. Results will directly inform improvements in
neurobiologically informed assessment and intervention with adolescents at risk for antisocial behavior. In
addition, the training experiences gained through this fellowship will prepare the applicant for a productive
academic career as an independent developmental psychophysiologist examining dispositional traits and early
risk for antisocial behavior.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10085576
- **Project number:** 5F31MH122096-02
- **Recipient organization:** FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Emily Reed Perkins
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $37,405
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-09-30 → 2021-08-01

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10085576

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10085576, Callousness and Distress Processing: An ERP Investigation of Attention and Emotion in Adolescence. (5F31MH122096-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10085576. Licensed CC0.

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