Abnormal processing of affective words by psychopaths

Utilization of emotion cues in male and female offenders with antisocial personality disorder: results from a lexical decision task

Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) diagnoses have demonstrated good reliability and validity in male offenders. However, there is a paucity of research assessing utilization of emotion cues in ASPD individuals and the extent to which correlates of ASPD in males generalize to females. This investigation examined emotion utilization in incarcerated men and women with and without ASPD using a lexical decision task with emotional and neutral words. The performance of male offenders with ASPD was similar to that of male controls, whereas women with ASPD demonstrated greater emotional facilitation than female controls. Moreover, the number of violent crimes committed by female inmates with ASPD was related to emotion facilitation, suggesting a link between their sensitivity to emotion cues and antisocial behavior.

Deficient response modulation and emotion processing in low-anxious Caucasian psychopathic offenders: results from a lexical decision task

The clinical and research literatures on psychopathy have identified an emotion paradox: Psychopaths display normal appraisal but impaired use of emotion cues. Using R. D. Hare's (1991) Psychopathy Checklist-Revised and the G. S. Welsh Anxiety Scale (1956), the authors identified low-anxious psychopaths and controls and examined predictions concerning their performance on a lexical-decision task. Results supported all the predictions: (a) low-anxious psychopaths appraised emotion cues as well as controls; (b) their lexical decisions were relatively unaffected by emotion cues; (c) their lexical decisions were relatively unaffected by affectively neutral word-frequency cues; and (d) their performance deficits were specific to conditions involving right-handed responses. The authors propose that deficient response modulation may underlie both the emotional and cognitive deficits associated with low-anxious psychopaths.

The reliability and validity of the psychopathy checklist: youth version (PCL:YV) in nonincarcerated adolescent males

Current knowledge about the validity of the psychopathy syndrome in youth is limited largely to studies relying on parent-teacher rating scales or slight modifications of adult measures. Recently, the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV) was designed for use with adolescents. However, most studies that have used this measure examined incarcerated males and addressed only validity criteria related to antisocial behavior. We investigated the generality and construct validity of the psychopathy syndrome in an adolescent sample by assessing 115 adolescent males on probation with the PCL:YV. Reliability of measurement was high. PCL:YV ratings predicted not only antisocial behaviour but also other indices of childhood psychopathology, interpersonal behaviors associated with adult psychopathy, and a lack of attachment to parents. These findings suggest that the PCL:YV identifies a syndrome in adolescence consistent with theory and research on adult males.

Limbic abnormalities in affective processing by criminal psychopaths as revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging

BACKGROUND

Psychopathy is a complex personality disorder of unknown etiology. Central to the disorder are anomalies or difficulties in affective processing.

METHODS

Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to elucidate the neurobiological correlates of these anomalies in criminal psychopaths during performance of an affective memory task.

RESULTS

Compared with criminal nonpsychopaths and noncriminal control participants, criminal psychopaths showed significantly less affect-related activity in the amygdala/hippocampal formation, parahippocampal gyrus, ventral striatum, and in the anterior and posterior cingulate gyri. Psychopathic criminals also showed evidence of overactivation in the bilateral fronto-temporal cortex for processing affective stimuli.

CONCLUSIONS

These data suggest that the affective abnormalities so often observed in psychopathic offenders may be linked to deficient or weakened input from limbic structures.

Risk as feelings

Virtually all current theories of choice under risk or uncertainty are cognitive and consequentialist. They assume that people assess the desirability and likelihood of possible outcomes of choice alternatives and integrate this information through some type of expectation-based calculus to arrive at a decision. The authors propose an alternative theoretical perspective, the risk-as-feelings hypothesis, that highlights the role of affect experienced at the moment of decision making. Drawing on research from clinical, physiological, and other subfields of psychology, they show that emotional reactions to risky situations often diverge from cognitive assessments of those risks. When such divergence occurs, emotional reactions often drive behavior. The risk-as-feelings hypothesis is shown to explain a wide range of phenomena that have resisted interpretation in cognitive-consequentialist terms.

Memory for murder. A psychological perspective on dissociative amnesia in legal contexts

There is currently a complex and inconsistent state in the law relating to dissociation and dissociative amnesia (McSherry, 1998). Although dissociative amnesia in defendants is relevant to both competency to stand trial and criminal responsibility in principle, courts have typically assumed a skeptical stance toward such claims in practice. However, there is considerable evidence from both nonoffender and offender populations to support the validity of dissociative amnesia in defendants. Further, there is information available to aid in the evaluation of amnesia, such as the quality of the report itself and characteristics of the person reporting the amnesia (e.g., psychopathy). When consideration is given to the legal response to reports of dissociative amnesia by complainants, the situation becomes even more complex. While some courts have rejected recovered memory evidence, others have convicted defendants of historical offenses based on such evidence. In some cases, judges have argued that jurors should be left to decide on the validity of recovered memories based on their common sense and experience. The uncritical acceptance of the validity of repressed memories in complainants by many courts stands in stark contrast to the response to claims of amnesia from defendants. It seems apparent that the courts need better guidelines around the issue of dissociative amnesia in both populations. We think that the increasing scientific understanding of memory in the past decade (see Schacter, 1999) can meaningfully contribute to the development of such guidelines. Responsible, nonpartisan expert testimony from mental health professionals would be one step in the direction of rectifying the current state of law in regards to dissociation.

The use of laboratory and performance-based measures in the assessment of children and adolescents with conduct disorders

Provides a review of laboratory and performance-based assessment techniques that have been used in research with children who have severe conduct problems. Many of these techniques have proven useful for monitoring the effects of interventions, which seems to be their most immediate clinical use. With further development, several of these techniques have the potential for assessing clinically important processes that may be involved in the development and maintenance of conduct problems in youth, especially processes that may differ across subgroups of children with conduct disorders (CDs). The assessment of such processes could contribute to the development of individualized treatment plans for children and adolescents with CDs. However, a number of theoretical, methodological, and ethical issues limit the clinical utility of these laboratory and performance-based techniques in their current stages of development, especially in their contribution to making initial diagnoses of CDs. These limitations lead to very cautious recommendations for their clinical use.

Brain mechanisms for detecting perceptual, semantic, and emotional deviance

The observation that we note the exceptional over the mundane has been the subject of extensive psychological and electrophysiological analysis in "oddball" paradigms. Whether detection of a sensory oddball reflects the operation of a generic mechanism or, alternatively, mechanisms sensitive to specific attributes of stimulus deviance is unknown. To address this question we used event-related functional MRI (fMRI) to measure neural responses during presentation of nouns, of which a proportion were perceptually, semantically, or emotionally deviant. Oddballs, regardless of deviant attributes and depth of processing, activated right inferior prefrontal and bilateral posterior fusiform cortices. Attribute-specific responses, independent of depth of processing, were evident in bilateral fusiform cortices for perceptual oddballs and left amygdala for emotional oddballs. By contrast, an interaction with depth of processing was evident in left prefrontal cortex for semantic oddballs. We conclude that detection of oddballs reflects the operation of a generic "deviance detection system," involving right prefrontal and fusiform cortices in addition to specific brain regions sensitive to the stimulus attributes that determine the qualitative characteristics of deviance.

A psychophysiological model of emotion space

Despite a wide variety of emotions that can be subjectively experienced, the emotion space has consistently revealed a low dimensionality. The search for corresponding somato-visceral response patterns has been only moderately successful. The authors suggest a solution based on an assumed parallelism between emotion coding and color coding. According to the color detection model proposed by Sokolov and co-workers, neurons responsible for color detection are triggered by a combination of excitations in a limited number of input cells. Similarly, a limited number of input channels may feed complex emotion detectors being located on a hypersphere in a four-dimensional emotion space, the three angles of which correspond to emotional tone, intensity, and saturation, in parallel to hue, lightness, and saturation in color perception. The existence of such a four-dimensional emotion space in the subjective domain is shown by using schematic facial expressions as stimuli. A neurophysiological model is provided in which reticular, hypothalamic, and limbic structures constitute input channels of an emotion detecting system, thus acting as the first layer of emotion predetectors. Hypothalamic neurons with differential sensitivity for various transmitters may elicit a subsequent selective activation in a second layer of predetectors at the thalamic level. The latter are suggested to trigger emotion detectors located in cortical areas, the action of which should be revealed by measures of central nervous system activity. Preliminary results from evoked potential studies show that switching between schematic faces that express different emotions may be used as an objective measure for establishing a psychophysiological emotion space.

Loss of control and negative emotions: a cortical slow potential topography study

This study investigated cortical steady potential changes in 18 subjects while processing a series of solvable arithmetic items (induction of control) that became unsolvable (withdrawal of control). Two different phases of induction and withdrawal of control (early and late) were dealt with separately in the analyses. The DC EEG was recorded from 20 locations. In all experimental conditions the overall slow potential topographical pattern did not change. However, negative-going DC shifts at occipito-parietal and left posterior-frontal regions were observed during induction of control whereas a generalized positive-going DC shift developed during phases of withdrawal of control. This positive-going shift persisted for the duration of the item presentation, resulting in pronounced positive values at temporal sites. The authors assume that temporal lobe activity (inferior and/or ventral surface) correlated to emotional/motivational processes that was picked up via the linked mastoid reference locations contributed essentially to these observed phenomena.

Reduced P300 responses in criminal psychopaths during a visual oddball task

BACKGROUND

Clinicians have long recognized that psychopaths show deficits in cognitive function, but there have been few experimental studies exploring these deficits. We present here the first in a series of event-related potential (ERP) experiments designed to elucidate and characterize the neural correlates of cognitive processes of psychopaths.

METHODS

We recorded ERPs from a topographic array from 11 psychopathic and 10 nonpsychopathic prison inmates, assessed with the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, during performance of a visual oddball task. ERPs to target (25% of trials) and nontarget (75% of trials) visual stimuli were analyzed.

RESULTS

Consistent with previous research, there were no group differences in the latency or amplitude of the ERPs for the nontarget stimuli. For nonpsychopaths, the P300 amplitude was larger when elicited by the target stimuli than when elicited by the nontarget stimuli. In contrast, psychopaths failed to show reliable P300 amplitude differences between the target and nontarget conditions. Psychopaths had a smaller amplitude P300 to target stimuli than did nonpsychopaths. In addition, the amplitude of the P300 was less lateralized in psychopaths than in nonpsychopaths. Psychopaths also had a larger centrofrontal negative wave (N550) during the target condition than did nonpsychopaths.

CONCLUSIONS

The results of this study indicate that there are substantial differences between psychopaths and others in the processing of even simple cognitive tasks and provide support for information processing models of psychopathy.

Event-related potentials to stimuli with emotional impact in posttraumatic stress patients

BACKGROUND

Psychophysiological research has given conflicting results with respect to whether the abnormal physiologic responses observed in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) reflect a general abnormality or are linked to trauma-related stimuli. We studied differences in the central nervous processing of words with emotional impact in survivors after a ship fire disaster.

METHODS

Event-related potentials were studied in 11 survivors with posttraumatic stress pathology, and compared with 9 survivors without such pathology. Nonwords and words with negative or positive emotional valence were used as distractors in a P3 oddball paradigm.

RESULTS

PTSD subjects had increased N1 latency to standard tones and increased positive amplitude to both words and nonwords compared with controls, occurring between 200 and 350 msec after stimulus onset. The amplitudes to emotionally meaningful words were significantly related to Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale-assessed PTSD dimensions, in particular avoidance and arousal.

CONCLUSIONS

The abnormality in information processing observed in PTSD patients seems in part to be linked with increased attention, in part with emotional responses to the trauma. Intrusion was mainly related to the processing of nonwords, while arousal and avoidance were related to event-related potential amplitudes to emotionally meaningful words, suggesting that intrusion has a different neurobiological basis than arousal and avoidance.

Methodological advances and developments in the assessment of psychopathy

The last decade has witnessed a number of significant methodological advances and developments in the assessment of psychopathy. The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised and the two-factor model of psychopathy have facilitated the assessment of psychopathy and clarified the differential correlates of the personality- and behavior-based operationalizations of this syndrome. Although preliminary evidence suggests that certain features of psychopathy may be underpinned by a latent taxon, the categorical versus dimensional status of psychopathy requires clarification. Researchers have accorded increasing attention to the assessment of psychopathy in non-criminal samples, although the construct of subclinical psychopathy remains controversial. Other recent methodological developments include: (a) the extension of the Five-Factor Model and other higher-order personality taxonomies to psychopathy; (b) development of a Q-sort methodology to permit the assessment of psychopathy by observers; (c) standardized assessment of psychopaths' interpersonal behaviors; (d) assessment of psychopathy in children; and (e) examination of gender, ethnic, and cross-cultural differences in psychopathy.

Cognitive Brain Event-Related Potentials and Emotion Processing in Maltreated Children

Cognitive event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 23 maltreated and 21 nonmaltreated children. Children were presented with slides of Ekman photographs of asingle model posing an angry (25%), a happy (25%), or a neutral (50%) facial expression. In 1 of 2 counterbalanced target conditions, children were asked to press a button in response to the angry face; in the other target condition, they responded to the happy face. Both samples, as expected, exhibited the largest amplitude of the P300 component of the ERP to target stimuli and the smallest amplitude to nontargets. For nonmaltreated children, the average amplitude of P300 across slides was comparable for the 2 target conditions. In contrast, maltreated children displaed larger P300 ampltude to stimuli when they were directed to attend to angry, as opposd children displayed larger p300 amplitude to stimuli whe they were directed to attend to angry, as opposed to happy, targets. These reaults suggest different cognitive processing for positive versus negative affective expressions by children with histories of atypical emotiaonal exotional experiences.

A brain imaging (single photon emission computerized tomography) study of semantic and affective processing in psychopaths

Psychopaths have been described as human predators who use charm, intimidation, and violence to control others and to satisfy their own needs. Underlying their propensity to violate social norms and expectations is a profound lack of empathy, guilt, or remorse, affective processes that have long resisted scientific investigation. Using brain imaging technology we found that psychopaths differed from nonpsychopaths in the pattern of relative cerebral blood flow during processing of emotional words. The results were consistent with the hypothesis that there are anomalies in the way psychopaths process semantic and affective information.

Cerebral processing of words and the development of chronic pain

The processing of pain-related, body-related, and neutral words was assessed in individuals with prechronic pain and matched healthy controls. Integrated surface electromyogram, heart rate, skin conductance level, and visual event-related potentials from 11 electrode sites were recorded during the presentation of three word types at perception threshold. Startle responses were recorded from words presented above perception threshold. The patient and control groups did not differ in recognition performance. Pain-related words evoked an enhanced early component (N100) of the visual event-related potential only in the prechronic pain group. In both groups the late slow wave and the startle response were enhanced for body- and pain-related words compared with those for neutral words. All word types elicited larger late positivities in the prechronic pain group and in the right compared with the left hemisphere. These data suggest differential cortical processing of pain-related material in persons at a prechronic pain stage.

The psychopathic individual: a lack of responsiveness to distress cues?

In this study, we investigated the psychophysiological responsiveness of psychopathic individuals to distress cues and to threatening and neutral stimuli. Eighteen psychopathic individuals and 18 incarcerated control individuals, identified using the Revised Psychopathy Checklist (Hare, 1991, The Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, Toronto: Multi-Health Systems), were shown slides of these three types of stimuli, and their electrodermal responses were recorded. The psychopathic individuals showed (relative to the controls) reduced electrodermal responses to the distress cues. In contrast, the two groups did not differ in their electrodermal responses to the threatening stimuli and to the neutral stimuli. The results are interpreted within the Violence Inhibition Mechanism model (Blair, 1995, Cognition, 57, 1-29) of the psychopathic individual.

Internalizing and externalizing characteristics of sexually and/or physically abused children

This study evaluates the behavioral consequences of childhood abuse (sexual, physical, or both), with particular focus on prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Three abuse type groups and nonabused controls were contrasted on behavioral rating scales and on structured psychiatric interview data. The participants (109 abused children and 16 normal control children) were recruited from Arkansas Children's Hospital and local agencies for abused children. As expected, proportionately more females than males were sexually abused. Overall, males were rated as more disturbed than females. Type of abuse did not consistently influence behavioral ratings. Externalizing scores were significantly higher than internalizing scores in all abused groups. PTSD was diagnosed in 50% of the abused children, with a higher rate for boys who had been sexually abused as opposed to physically abused only (58% versus 13%). The most frequent comorbid condition with PTSD was Separation Anxiety. Sexually abused boys were hospitalized for psychiatric treatment at a higher rate than were other abused children.

Evidence for a change in neural processing in phantom limb pain patients

The present study was designed to investigate differences in neural processing of pain-related semantic information in amputees with and without chronic phantom limb pain and healthy controls. One-hundred-and-twenty words (40 neutral, 40 body-related, 40 pain-related) were presented in pseudorandom order to probe group differences in the perception of pain-related information. Visual evoked potentials (VEP) to the words were recorded from 11 scalp locations, EMG was measured at the stump and the contralateral side and bilaterally from the M. corrugator. In addition, heart rate and skin conductance responses were obtained. Both early and late VEP components were altered. Pain-free amputees showed a reduced N100 amplitude compared to phantom limb pain patients and healthy controls whereas the phantom limb pain patients displayed a significantly enhanced late positivity (500-800 msec after word onset). VEP components were unaffected by word type. The peripheral EMG responses were significantly different among the groups: phantom limb pain patients showed larger EMG reactions on the stump than on the contralateral side, whereas pain-free amputees showed the opposite effect. The data suggest an enhanced central and peripheral processing of visual stimuli in phantom limb pain patients.

Emotional information processing and visual evoked brain potentials

Visual evoked potentials to emotional slides presented for 2 sec. were investigated in 13 subjects. 73 emotional slides (pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral) were selected from a standardized set of photographic slides, the 1988 International Affective Picture System of Lang, Ohman, and Vaitl Visual evoked potentials were recorded from three head locations, frontal, central and parietal (Fz, Cz, and Pz). Analyses were performed in the two latency ranges: 300-400 msec. and 400-500 msec. Analyses showed an arousal effect, as indicated by a quadratic trend, indicating that emotional slides (both pleasant and unpleasant) gave higher cortical positivity than neutral ones, for all components. In addition, in the two latency epochs, larger positivities were found at Pz, compared to Fz and Cz, whereas Fz and Cz did not differ from each other.

[Event-related potentials and language processing]

The contribution of cognitive event-related potentials (ERPs) and particularly of the N400 component to the study of language processing is considered. After a general presentation of the various components of cognitive evoked potentials which are differentiated from early potentials (sensitive to perceptive parameters), the neurophysiological and psychological correlates of ERPs are discussed. Before the presentation of the main studies concerned with the correlation between specific late components and linguistic processes, it is proposed an introduction to some theoretical models of language processing which serve as conceptual framework supporting most of the experimental approaches in this field. The results of EPs studies devoted to functional asymetries in language processing are briefly mentioned. Then a number of studies are analysed, these demonstrate the sensitivity of event-related potential measures to linguistic manipulations. Finally, the studies concerned with the N400 are reviewed, this potential appears to be the more specifically language-related ERP component, even if its connection with specific linguistic processes or its differentiation from N200 are still under debate. Nevertheless language-related electrophysiological investigations may become in the near future a useful complementary approach to our understanding of language processing and language disorders.

Emotion and psychopathy: startling new insights

Abnormal affective response in psychopaths is conceptualized within a broad theory of emotion that emphasizes reciprocal appetitive and defensive motivational systems. The startle response is proposed as a specific measure of the directional component of emotional activation. I review the literature that indicates that criminal psychopaths do not show the expected potentiation of the startle reflex that normally occurs during processing of aversive stimuli such as unpleasant photographs or punishment cues. Evidence is presented to demonstrate that this deviant response pattern is specific to individuals who display the classic affective symptoms of psychopathy. The core emotional deviation in psychopathy could be a deficit in fear response, which is defined as a failure of aversive cues to prime normal defensive actions. This emotional deficit may represent an extreme variant of normal temperament.

Event-related potentials in the dual task paradigm: P300 discriminates engaging and non-engaging films when film-viewing is the primary task

Five groups of subjects (11-16/group) were run in three experiments. In each study P300 amplitude and latency were studied as a function of three sensory task conditions: (1) baseline (oddball task: target and non-target tones only); (2) boring film viewing plus oddball task; and (3) exciting film viewing plus oddball task. In Experiment I, target probability was P = 0.22. In Experiments II and III, each of two groups of subjects was run at P = 0.22 or P = 0.33. Two different exciting films and two different boring films were used. Oddball-target amplitude was found to consistently decrease from baseline to boring to exciting film-viewing conditions at P = 0.22. At P = 0.33, the 2-film discrimination was successful in one of two experiments. P300 amplitude consistently differed from baseline to film-viewing conditions. For the non-target (frequent) tones, the smaller P300 amplitudes consistently discriminated boring and exciting films, as well as single from dual tasks. For target P300 latency, single (baseline) and dual (film-watching) conditions were always discriminable, but boring and exciting films were not discriminable. There were no effects on non-target P300 latency. N100 amplitude discriminated baseline and film viewing conditions, but not boring and engaging films.

Knowledge systems

The primate brain appears to store knowledge in widely distributed neural systems. Recent evidence suggests that these systems are specialized with respect to their capacity for supporting acquisition and retrieval of different domains and levels of knowledge.