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Introduction
Over the past decade, interest and knowledge regarding the theoretical and empirical applicability of the concept of psychopathy in children and adolescents has expanded at a fast pace (Kotler & McMahon, 2005; Salekin et al. 2005). Strong links between psychopathic personality traits with antisocial behavior and violence in the adult literature have prompted interest in the further understanding of psychopathic personality traits in youths (Moffitt et al. 1996). Investigators hope that the construct of psychopathy may help to identify the select group of youth with serious conduct problems who will mature into adults with psychopathic personality disorder (Lynam, 1996, 1997, 1998; Frick, 1998). It is thought that to prevent serious negative outcomes associated with psychopathic personality, the early identification of psychopathic traits is crucial because attempts to alleviate and treat psychopathy in adulthood have been unsuccessful in the past (Hart et al. 1988; Lynam, 1996, 1997). Thus far, there has been little research on the genetic and environmental etiology of psychopathic traits especially in children. The present study aims to investigate and identify the underlying dimensions of psychopathic traits in pre-adolescent youth, to determine the extent of genetic influences on these traits in boys and girls and whether both shared and non-shared environmental influences also play a significant role.
A number of assessment instruments have been constructed to assess psychopathic traits in adolescence and childhood (Frick et al. 1994; Lynam, 1997; Forth et al. 2003). Each instrument represents a 'downward developmental translation' of what is arguably the 'gold standard' for the assessment of psychopathy in adulthood - the Hare Psychopathy Checklist - Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991). Initial work with these instruments focused on recreating the nomological network of adult psychopathy in juveniles. With few exceptions, research has generally supported the idea that child/adolescent psychopathy resembles adult psychopathy (see Lynam & Gudonis, 2005). It bears the expected relations to offending (Edens et al. 2001; Salekin et al. 2004), provides concurrent and short-term predictive utility above and beyond other relevant constructs (Lynam, 1997; Piatigorsky & Hinshaw, 2004) and predicts psychopathy in adulthood (Lynam et al. 2007). Child/adolescent psychopathy has also been found to relate generally, as predicted, to constructs that do not involve offending, such as personality, cognitive processing and...