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Despite increasing interest in understanding psychopathic traits in youth, the role of early environmental factors in the development of psychopathic traits is not well understood. No prior studies have directly examined the relationship between early life events and psychopathic traits. We examined links between life events in the first 4 years of life and indices of the core affective and interpersonal components of psychopathy. Additionally, we examined relationships between early life events, psychopathic traits, and attachment to parents among 206 adjudicated adolescents. Results indicated that the total number of early life events was positively correlated with indices of the affective component of psychopathy. Moreover, psychopathic traits moderated the relationship between the number of early life events and later reports of attachment to parents. Findings suggest that early environmental factors could have important implications for the development of psychopathic traits and may impact attachment to parents for youth with psychopathic traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated personality and neurobehavioral differences between 16 children with Asperger’s Disorder, 15 children with High-Functioning Autism (HFA), and 31 controls, all ranging in age from 5–17 years, M age = 10.7 years, SD = 3.0. Parents rated their children’s behaviors on a 44-item autistic symptoms survey and on the 200-item Coolidge Personality and Neuropsychological Inventory (Coolidge, Thede, Stewart, & Segal (a). The Coolidge Personality and Neuropsychological Inventory for Children (CPNI): Preliminary psychometric characteristics. Behavior Modification, 26, 550–566). The results indicated that the two clinical samples were significantly elevated on the Executive Function Deficits scale and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) scale compared to controls. There were more similarities than differences between the two clinical samples on the personality scales, although the Asperger’s group scored significantly on the two scales with anxiety components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tested whether personality disorders may be the psychological manifestations of executive function deficits by examining their bivariate heritability in a community sample of 314 twins (ages 5–17 years; M age = 9.7; 96 monozygotic pairs and 61 dizygotic pairs). The parents of the twins completed the Coolidge Personality and Neuropsychological Inventory (Coolidge, 1998; Coolidge et al. , 2002). Heritability was estimated by structural equation modeling. Executive function deficits and personality disorders were significantly heritable (executive function deficits, .77; 11 out of 12 personality disorders, median = .69). The proportion of the observed correlation attributable to heritable factors or bivariate heritability between executive function deficits and the personality disorder scales ranged from .27 for schizoid to .64 for histrionic. These findings may provide some insight as to why individuals diagnosed with specific personality disorders frequently exhibit chronic difficulties with everyday decisions, selective attention and inhibition, judgments, choices, planning, and flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The heritability and prevalence of the gender identity disorder (GID) was examined, as well as its comorbidity with separation anxiety and depression, in a nonretrospective study of child and adolescent twins. The parents of 314 twins (ages 4–17 years; 96 monozygotic pairs [MZ] and 61 dizygotic [DZ] pairs) completed the Coolidge Personality and Neuropsychological Inventory (CPNI) containing a six-item DSM-IV -based GID scale. Prevalence of clinically significant GID symptomatology in the twin sample was estimated to be 2.3%. Univariate model fitting analyses were conducted using an ordinal transformation of the GID scale. The model that best described the data included a significant additive genetic component accounting for 62% of the variance and a nonshared environmental component accounting for the remaining 38% of the variance. Results suggested no heterogeneity in the parameter estimates resulting from age. The correlation between GID and depression was modest, but significant (r = .20; P < .05), whereas the correlation between GID and separation anxiety was nonsignificant (P > .05). Overall, the results support the hypothesis that there is a strong heritable component to GID. The findings may also imply that gender identity may be much less a matter of choice and much more a matter of biology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]