The Proposed Specifiers for Conduct Disorder - Parent (PSCD-P): Convergent Validity, Incremental Validity, and Reactions to Unfamiliar Peer Confederates

Nicholas A Bellamy; Randall T Salekin; Bridget A Makol; Tara M Augenstein; Andres De Los Reyes

doi:10.1007/s10802-023-01056-x

The Proposed Specifiers for Conduct Disorder - Parent (PSCD-P): Convergent Validity, Incremental Validity, and Reactions to Unfamiliar Peer Confederates

Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol. 2023 Aug;51(8):1097-1113. doi: 10.1007/s10802-023-01056-x. Epub 2023 Apr 25.

Authors

Nicholas A Bellamy¹, Randall T Salekin², Bridget A Makol¹, Tara M Augenstein³, Andres De Los Reyes⁴

Affiliations

¹ Comprehensive Assessment and Intervention Program, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, Biology/Psychology Building, Room 3123H, College Park, MD, 20742, USA.
² Department of Psychology, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA.
³ Department of Psychiatry, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY, USA.
⁴ Comprehensive Assessment and Intervention Program, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, Biology/Psychology Building, Room 3123H, College Park, MD, 20742, USA. adlr@umd.edu.

PMID: 37097378
DOI: 10.1007/s10802-023-01056-x

Abstract

Youth who experience psychopathy display multiple impairments across interpersonal (grandiose-manipulative [GM]), affective (callous-unemotional [CU]), lifestyle (daring-impulsive [DI]), and potentially antisocial and behavioral features. Recently, it has been acknowledged that the inclusion of psychopathic features can offer valuable information in relation to the etiology of Conduct Disorder (CD). Yet, prior work largely focuses on the affective component of psychopathy, namely CU. This focus creates uncertainty in the literature on the incremental value of a multicomponent approach to understanding CD-linked domains. Consequently, researchers developed the Proposed Specifiers for Conduct Disorder (PSCD; Salekin & Hare, 2016) as a multicomponent approach to assess GM, CU, and DI features in combination with CD symptoms. The notion of considering the wider set of psychopathic features for CD specification requires testing whether multiple personality dimensions predict domain-relevant criterion outcomes above-and-beyond a CU-based approach. Thus, we tested the psychometric properties of parents' reports on the PSCD (PSCD-P) in a mixed clinical/community sample of 134 adolescents (M_age = 14.49, 66.4% female). Confirmatory factor analyses resulted in a 19-item PSCD-P displaying acceptable reliability estimates and a bifactor solution consisting of GM, CU, DI, and CD factors. Findings supported the incremental validity of scores taken from the PSCD-P across multiple criterion variables, including (a) an established survey measure of parent-adolescent conflict; and (b) trained independent observers' ratings of adolescents' behavioral reactions to laboratory controlled tasks designed to simulate social interactions with unfamiliar peers. These findings have important implications for future research on the PSCD and links to adolescents' interpersonal functioning.

Keywords: Adolescents; Conduct Disorder (CD); GM traits; PSCD; Psychometric properties; Psychopathy.

Publication types

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

Adolescent
Antisocial Personality Disorder / psychology
Callosities*
Conduct Disorder* / psychology
Female
Humans
Male
Parents
Reproducibility of Results
Surveys and Questionnaires