Parenting Facts: Child Psychopathic Signs Can Be Found As Early As 3 Years Old

A study revealed that children as young as three can display psychopathic tendencies. Psychopathic tendencies among children are usually displayed by showing a lack of empathy and how they would react to scenarios.

According to Sydney Morning Herald, a study from the University of New South Wales in Australia emerged stating that young children can display psychopathic tendencies. The study published in the Journal of Abbnormal Child Psychology focused on 214 girls and boys. The preschoolers were studied for the researchers to find out if they can exhibit callousness and lack of empathy which are all related to psychopathy.

The study was conducted by exposing the children to various images which contain facial expressions; it also included distressing and neutral photos. Dr. Eva Kimonis, the lead researcher stated and her team came up with a fascinating result. It was stated that children who exhibited un-empathetic and unemotional traits had difficulties in reading facial expressions. They were also less reactant by images showing distress.

"Until now we didn't really have a way to identify those traits in very young children," Dr. Kimonis said. "This is really the first study which uses tools adapted for very young children and the sooner those children are identified, the earlier they can be helped."

"Even very young children with these traits show that difficulty in recognizing emotions in others and they are also not engaged by other people's emotions," Dr Kimonis added. "When they see people in distress it's not capturing their attention in the same way as it would for the healthy population."

Determining psychopathic tendencies in toddlers as young as three may be challenging as behavioral traits may tend to change as they'd grow, psychologist from the King's College in London stated that babies as young as five weeks can already exhibit psychopathic tendencies.

The study published in the Biological Psychiatry focused on five-week-old babies and their visual response preferences. They were given two choices: a red ball and a human face. It was revealed that babies who preferred the red ball tend to display higher possibilities of unemotional traits as they'd grow up.