A New Measure to Assess Psychopathic Personality in Children: The Child Problematic Traits Inventory Olivier F. Colins & Henrik Andershed & Louise Frogner & Laura Lopez-Romero & Violaine Veen & Anna-Karin Andershed # The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Understanding the development of psychopathic personality from childhood to adulthood is crucial for under- standing the development and stability of severe and long- lasting conduct problems and criminal behavior. This paper describes the development of a new teacher rated instrument to assess psychopathic personality from age three to 12, the Child Problematic Traits Inventory (CPTI). The reliability and validity of the CPTI was tested in a Swedish general popula- tion sample of 2,056 3- to 5-year-olds (mean age=3.86; SD=.86; 53 % boys). The CPTI items loaded distinctively on three theoretically proposed factors: a Grandiose-Deceitful Factor, a Callous-Unemotional factor, and an Impulsive-Need for Stimulation factor. The three CPTI factors showed reli- ability in internal consistency and external validity, in terms of expected correlations with theoretically relevant constructs (e.g., fearlessness). The interaction between the three CPTI factors was a stronger predictor of concurrent conduct prob- lems than any of the three individual CPTI factors, showing that it is important to assess all three factors of the psycho- pathic personality construct in early childhood. In conclusion, the CPTI seems to reliably and validly assess a constellation of traits that is similar to psychopathic personality as manifested in adolescence and adulthood. Keywords Assessment . Child problematic traits inventory (CPTI) . Children . Conduct problems . Psychopathic personality Introduction Many studies have shown that psychopathic personality, or psychopathy, as it is usually termed when used among adults, is measurable and related to frequent and severe conduct problems and criminal behavior in late childhood and adoles- cence (Lynam et al. 2009; Salekin 2008; Salekin and Lynam 2010). Therefore, understanding the development and stabil- ity of psychopathic personality from early childhood to adult- hood may well be one of the most important missions for research aimed to understand the determinants of severe and long-lasting criminal behavior. An important question that subsequently arises, is how far down in ages this construct is measurable, and not the least, what psychopathic traits can (or cannot) be measured really early in life. In this paper, we describe the conceptual background and development of a new measure, the Child Problematic Traits Inventory (CPTI), and test its psychometric properties. Different Conceptualizations and Theories of Psychopathic Personality in Youths Adult psychopathy is described as a syndrome comprising a constellation of extreme interpersonal, affective and behavior/ lifestyle traits that co-occur together (Andershed et al. 2002; O. F. Colins Curium-LUMC, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Leiden University, Endegeesterstraatweg 27, 2342 AK Oegstgeest, The Netherlands e-mail: o.colins@curium.nl O. F. Colins : H. Andershed (*) : L. Frogner : A.<K. Andershed School of Law, Psychology, and Social Work, Örebro University, 701 82 Örebro, Sweden e-mail: henrik.andershed@oru.se L. Lopez-Romero Facultad de Psicología - Campus Vida - Dpto. de Psicología Clínica y Psicobiología, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain e-mail: laura.lopez.romero@usc.es V. Veen Violaine Veen, Clinical Child and Adolescent Studies, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: v.c.veen@fsw.leidenuniv.nl J Psychopathol Behav Assess DOI 10.1007/s10862-013-9385-y