Fire interest and antisociality as risk factors in the severity and persistence of juvenile firesetting.

OBJECTIVE: In the DSM-IV-TR, firesetting is included as a criterion for the diagnoses of conduct disorder and pyromania. The link between firesetting and antisocial behavior is well established in the empirical literature. Although theoretical models of firesetting often include fire interest as a putative risk factor, there is little research on the role of fire interest in firesetting or on the construct of pyromania. METHOD: The present study evaluated a sample of children and adolescents referred to an outpatient specialty program for juvenile firesetters with firesetting as the primary presenting problem. By assessing fire interest and antisocial behavior concurrently, the contribution of fire interest to firesetting after controlling for the role of conduct problems was evaluated. RESULTS: Results revealed that fire interest and antisocial behavior were significantly and positively correlated. Moreover, variations in fire interest added to the prediction of firesetting severity at assessment and firesetting recidivism at 18-month follow-up above and beyond what was predicted by antisociality alone. CONCLUSIONS: These findings have implications for an empirically derived taxonomy of pathological firesetting.

Maternal appraisal styles, family risk status and anger biases of children.

The present study investigated the relationship between maternal appraisal styles, family risk status, and anger biases in children. Participants included 90 mothers and their children between 3-6 years of age. Eighty families were followed up 1 year later. Maternal appraisal styles were assessed via a naturalistic story-reading method, and Time 1 and Time 2 emotion biases included teacher ratings of anger and aggression, peer ratings of anger, as well as classroom and playground observations of anger. While discussing ambiguous stories with their children, mothers with higher scores on the family risk index utilized more hostile appraisals and fewer prosocial appraisals in their explanations. A higher proportion of hostile-to-prosocial appraisals was also related to higher-risk family status. Prosocial appraisals by mothers were inversely correlated with children's anger biases at school. When the appraisal balance in mothers' talk favored hostile appraisals, children tended to show higher levels of anger biases evidenced at school. Finally, a hostile balance of maternal appraisals was found to predict change in children's anger biases in the school with different effects in high- and low-risk families.