Decoding emotions: The unique and combined roles of callous-unemotional traits and anxiety in facial emotion recognition in children

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits, characterized by lack of empathy, guilt, and deficient affect, are linked to facial emotion recognition (FER) deficits in children. While anxiety is also associated with FER anomalies, these relationships are often examined in isolation despite co-occurrence. This study aims to concurrently investigate unique contributions of CU traits and anxiety on children's FER patterns. We recruited 107 children aged 6 to 11 from community settings, assessing CU traits through caregiver reports and anxiety via caregiver and child reports. FER performance was evaluated using a computer-based task. Results indicate that CU traits negatively impact overall FER accuracy, particularly when controlling for parent-reported anxiety. CU traits were inversely related to total FER accuracy for children self-reporting high anxiety levels. These findings enhance our understanding of how CU traits and anxiety interact to influence FER deficits, suggesting that interventions targeting CU traits should consider anxiety symptoms as a critical factor in emotional processing challenges among children.