Correlates of adolescent fire setting: examining the role of fire interest, fire-related attentional bias, impulsivity, empathy and callous–unemotional traits

Abstract

Little is known about potential correlates of problematic fire setting that could guide risk assessments and intervention. The current study measured aspects of fire-setting behaviour, fire interest, attentional bias towards fire-related words on a modified Stroop task, impulsivity, cognitive and affective empathy and callous–unemotional traits among adolescent fire setters, non-fire-setting antisocial adolescents and age-matched school controls. Results showed that current fire setting was associated with earlier onset of lighter/match play and unsanctioned fire setting. Fire-setting adolescents were also characterised by high impulsivity, callousness, uncaring traits and low cognitive empathy. Fire-setting frequency was best predicted by high impulsivity. Fire interest correlated negatively with accuracy on fire-related words on the fire Stroop task. These findings suggest that impulsivity may be important in the assessment and treatment of problematic fire setting, and encourage further research on modified Stroop tasks as a novel means to assess fire interest.

Keywords:

• fire setting
• arson
• fire interest
• adolescence

Notes

1. Ancillary analyses revealed no differences in RTs between individual colours.

2. Handedness: only two participants in the school control group were left-handed, and did not differ from right-handed participants on any variables examined in this study.

3. Differences between the individual colours chosen for this Stroop-task were analysed, however no statistically significant differences emerged for either task accuracy or RTs.