The association between worry, rumination, and metacognitive beliefs in female adolescents with Anorexia Nervosa.

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits, which are characterized by reduced empathy, shallow emotional expression, and diminished guilt (), identify a clinically meaningful subgroup of youth with conduct disorder (CD) who exhibit severe and persistent antisocial behavior (, ). The importance of this high-risk subgroup has been internationally recognized through the inclusion of CU traits as the Limited Prosocial Emotions (LPE) specifier for CD in major diagnostic classification systems (, ). Recent research found that approximately 19% of youth diagnosed with CD met criteria for the LPE specifier (). Youth with elevated CU traits are more likely to engage in proactive aggression, show reduced responsiveness to punishment, and experience poorer long-term outcomes, including increased risk for adult psychopathy (, ). Although early family influences on CU traits are well documented, less research has examined whether caregiver characteristics continue to shape CU trajectories during adolescence in diagnosed samples. Caregiver characteristics have emerged as an important area of investigation in developmental models of CU traits. Research increasingly suggests that stable caregiver personality characteristics contribute to the broader familial context in which children develop and may therefore be associated with children's socioemotional functioning across childhood and adolescence (, ). At the same time, substantial evidence indicates that CU traits are moderately to highly heritable, with genetic influences accounting for a significant portion of individual differences in CU traits across development (, ). Importantly, however, contemporary developmental models do not view genetic and environmental influences as competing explanations. Rather, environmental experiences may modify the expression of genetic liability. For example, genetically informed studies suggest that characteristics of the caregiving environment can moderate genetic risk for CU traits (, , ). Thus, associations between caregiver characteristics and youth CU traits may reflect shared genetic liability, environmental influences, passive gene-environment correlation, or interactions between genetic vulnerability and caregiving contexts (). Identifying caregiver characteristics associated with CU traits therefore remains important because such characteristics should be conceptualized not simply as environmental influences but as markers of familial risk that may reflect inherited liability, environmental processes, and their interplay. Maternal psychopathic traits represent a particularly relevant caregiver personality characteristic for understanding youth CU traits. Psychopathy is a multidimensional construct encompassing interpersonal manipulation, affective deficits, impulsive and irresponsible lifestyle features, and antisocial behavior (, ). Parental psychopathic traits have been associated with elevated CU traits in offspring (, ). However, it remains unclear whether specific psychopathy facets differentially relate to offspring CU traits. Notably, the affective facet of psychopathy, reflecting shallow affect and diminished empathy, is conceptually aligned with the socioemotional deficits central to CU traits and may therefore represent the psychopathy dimension most closely associated with offspring CU traits.