Developmental Trajectories Of Childhood Psychopathic Traits

Psychopathy is a personality disorder that manifests in many aspects of emotion,interpersonal and behavior,including emotional weakness,lack of empathy,deception,selfcenteredness,impulsivity,enjoy stimulation,etc.Previous studies have proven psychopathy could be observed in children.Since the appearance of psychopathic traits mostly begins in childhood,it is of great significance to explore the developmental characteristics and influencing factors of childhood psychopathic traits.Although there have been studies that have found a relatively stable downward trend in the psychopathic traits of Western children groups,there is still no clear conclusion on the developmental characteristics of psychopathic traits among children in China.In addition,the impact of family environmental factors on children’s psychopathic traits have received widespread attention.Parental monitoring and parent-child relationships are an important part of family environmental factors,and the relationship between the development of children’s psychopathic traits in China is not yet clear.Based on the above research background,this research plan will further understand the impact of parental monitoring and parent-child relationship on the basis of exploring the developmental characteristics of children’s psychopathic traits in China,and explore the existing gender differences in children.Based on the above research,the longitudinal study design was adopted in this paper to track the students from grade 1 to grade 3 of a primary school in Guangdong province at five consecutive time points,and finally collected 457 valid participates.Parental Monitoring Scale(PMS)and Child Parent Relationship Scale(CPRS)were used to measure maternal reported parental monitoring and parent-child relationship at first time,while maternal reported psychopathic traits were collected at all five time points by using The Child Problematic Traits Inventory(CPTI).This study using latent growth curve model(LGCM)to analyze children’s mental development trend of psychopathic traits,include the parents monitoring,positive and conflict parent-child relationship in multiple mediation model based on previous finding,and use the Wald test to explore the gender differences of children.The conclusions were as follows:1.The developmental trajectory of children’s psychopathic traits presented a stable downward trend,with significant gender differences.Specifically,the initial level of girls’ psychopathic traits was significantly lower than that of boys,but the rate of decline was significantly higher than that of boys.2.The higher the level of parental monitoring,the lower the initial level of psychopathic traits in girls,and the direct influence of parental monitoring on the development speed of psychopathic traits in boys and girls is not significant.3.The higher the level of positive parent-child relationship is,the lower the initial level of boys’ psychopathic traits is,and the direct influence of positive parent-child relationship on the development speed of boys’ and girls’ psychopathic traits is not significant.The higher the level of parent-child conflict,the higher the initial level of psychopathic traits,and the slower the linear and nonlinear decline.4.Multiple mediating effects of parent-child relationship between parental monitoring and the development of children’s psychopathic traits.The specific action path is as follows:(1)The lower the level of parental monitoring,the higher the level of conflicting parent-child relationship,the higher the initial level of child psychopathic traits of male and female children,and the lower the linear and non-linear decline rate.(2)The lower the level of parental monitoring,the lower the level of positive parent-child relationships,and the higher the initial level of the child’s psychopathic traits in boys.