Predicting childhood aggression: a replication study looking at the interaction between childhood psychopathy and parenting practices

Abstract

This replication study provides mixed support for Wootton, Frick, Shelton and Silvelthorn's (1997) findings that the relation between parent socialization practices and children's aggression is moderated by children's callous and unemotional (CU) traits. While the interaction term between ineffective parenting and CU status was significant in this study, this was true only when CU traits were treated as a continuous variable. The findings were in the expected direction such that the relation between parenting and externalizing behavior was less predictive for children higher in CU traits than children lower in CU traits. The curvilinear quadratic parenting composite term used in this study was also significantly predictive of externalizing behavior when CU traits were evaluated as a dichotomous variable. Our findings suggest a positive relationship between parenting ineffectiveness and children's externalizing behavior, but only up to a point. However, the robustness of both of these finding must be replicated in future studies that use multi-modal measures of parenting, including behavioral observations.