Performance of criminal psychopaths on selected neuropsychological tests.

Screening batteries of standard neuropsychological tests were administered to 2 different samples (Ns?=?90 and 167) of male prison inmates. Scores on the Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (R. D. Hare, 1990) were used to divide inmates in each sample into high, moderate, and low psychopathy groups. There were no group differences in test performance in either of the samples, even when the effects of self-reported psychopathology and substance abuse were taken into account. The overall prevalence of both test-specific and global neuropsychological impairment was low and did not vary significantly across the 3 groups. The results provide no support for traditional brain-damage explanations of psychopathy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personal space and its relation to extraversion-introversion.

Employed behavioral and questionnaire measures to test the hypothesis that extroverts would prefer to be physically closer to people with whom they were interacting than would introverts. Ss were 40 male extrovert and introvert undergraduates, selected on the basis of either a high or low score on the Extraversion scale of the MMPI and a score close to the group mean on the Neuroticism scale. It was found that extroverts did not generally differ from introverts in their distance preferences but did consistently indicate that they could comfortably allow people to get closer to them than did introverts. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathy and perceptual asymmetry during verbal dichotic listening.

Administered a verbal dichotic listening (divided attention) task to 146 male prison inmates (mean age 30 yrs) and 159 male noncriminals (mean age 27.5 yrs). The inmates were divided into psychopathic (P), nonpsychopathic (NP), and mixed (M) groups on the basis of a psychopathy checklist and the DSM-III criteria for antisocial personality disorder. Group P exhibited a significantly smaller right-ear advantage (less lateralized performance) than did either Group NP or the noncriminals. When the task was administered to 48 inmates under instructions to focus attention on 1 ear at a time, the performance of Group P was again less lateralized than was that of Group NP. The possibility that language processes are not strongly lateralized in psychopaths and that psychopaths are characterized by asymmetric low left-hemisphere arousal is discussed. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathy and laterality of cerebral function.

Used a tachistoscopic recognition task to test the hypothesis that psychopathy is associated with dysfunction of the dominant hemisphere. 55 prison inmates were divided into groups with high, medium, and low ratings of psychopathy. Ss were required to identify 3-letter words presented in a vertical arrangement either in the left visual half field (LVF) or the right visual half field (RVF) 1.5° from a central fixation point. Each of 24 words was presented twice, once in each visual half field, at an exposure time of 80 msec. The exposure time was then shortened to 40 msec, and a 2nd set of 24 words was presented twice, once in each visual half field. In general, words presented in the RVF were more readily identified than those presented in the LVF. There was no evidence that psychopathy was associated with any deficit in RVF performance even when handedness and writing position were taken into account. Further, based on responses to a laterality questionnaire, there were no group differences in "left-sidedness." Results do not support the hypothesis of dominant hemisphere dysfunction in psychopathy. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Characteristics of psychopathy in adolescent nonsmokers and smokers: Relations to delay discounting and self reported impulsivity.

This research compared impulsive behavior in adolescent nonsmokers with low ratings of psychopathy (n = 25) and daily smokers with low (n = 25) and high (n = 25) ratings of psychopathy. Assessments of impulsive behavior included question-based and real-time measures of delay discounting and a self report assessment of impulsivity (Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-Adolescent). Smokers with low psychopathy ratings discounted more by delay (i.e., more impulsively) than nonsmokers on both assessments of discounting; however, smokers with high psychopathy ratings did not differ from nonsmokers on either measure. Inversely, from the self report assessment of impulsivity, smokers with low psychopathy ratings did not differ from nonsmokers, but smokers with high psychopathy ratings were more impulsive than nonsmokers. These findings indicate that delay discounting and self reported impulsivity relate differently to characteristics of psychopathy in adolescent nonsmokers and smokers. Also, these findings demonstrate that there are definable subgroups of smokers for whom the frequently observed relationship between cigarette smoking and delay discounting does not apply. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Group decision making in hidden profile situations: Dissent as a facilitator for decision quality.

The effect of diversity in individual prediscussion preferences on group decision quality was examined in an experiment in which 135 three-person groups worked on a personnel selection case with 4 alternatives. The information distribution among group members constituted a hidden profile (i.e., the correct solution was not identifiable on the basis of the members' individual information and could be detected only by pooling and integrating the members' unique information). Whereas groups with homogeneous suboptimal prediscussion preferences (no dissent) hardly ever solved the hidden profile, solution rates were significantly higher in groups with prediscussion dissent, even if none of these individual prediscussion preferences were correct. If dissent came from a proponent of the correct solution, solution rates were even higher than in dissent groups without such a proponent. The magnitude of dissent (i.e., minority dissent or full diversity of individual preferences) did not affect decision quality. The beneficial effect of dissent on group decision quality was mediated primarily by greater discussion intensity and to some extent also by less discussion bias in dissent groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationship between self-esteem and response style.

Response preferences of 30 high, 30 middle, and 30 low self-esteem undergraduate Ss on the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory (SCII) were analyzed to examine relationships between sex, self-esteem, and response style. Based on discriminant analyses, significant results indicated that like and dislike preferences discriminated between self-esteem groups but not between sex groups. Ss of high and middle self-esteem groups responded more often with like preferences, while Ss of the low self-esteem group responded more often with dislike preferences across all sections of the SCII. Inspection of the Your Characteristics section revealed that high and middle self-esteem Ss attributed strengths to themselves more frequently than did low self-esteem Ss. Two-way ANOVAs of Ss' profile scores revealed significant self-esteem effects but not significant sex and interaction effects. Compared with test profiles of low self-esteem Ss, test profiles of high and middle self-esteem Ss exhibited greater differentiation and provided more helpful information regarding particular interests and occupational areas for further vocational exploration. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Performance of male psychopaths following conditional release from prison.

The Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) was administered to 231 White male criminals prior to their release from prison on parole or mandatory supervision. Official parole supervision files provided details of each criminal's behavior during his supervised release. The PCL made a significant contribution to the prediction of outcome beyond that made by several key criminal-history and demographic variables. The percentage of criminals with low, medium, and high PCL scores who violated the conditions of release was 23.5, 48.9, and 65.2, respectively. The probability of remaining out of prison for at least 1 year was .80, .54, and .38 for low, medium, and high groups, respectively. The high group members received more suspensions and presented more supervisory problems than did those in the other groups. The results provide support for the validity of the PCL and for the view that it is possible to make useful predictions about some aspects of the criminal psychopath's behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aberrant neural processing of moral violations in criminal psychopaths.

A defining characteristic of psychopathy is the willingness to intentionally commit moral transgressions against others without guilt or remorse. Despite this “moral insensitivity,” the behavioral and neural correlates of moral decision-making in psychopathy have not been well studied. To address this issue, the authors used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record hemodynamic activity in 72 incarcerated male adults, stratified into psychopathic (n = 16) and nonpsychopathic (n = 16) groups based on scores from the Hare Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (R. D. Hare, 2003), while they made decisions regarding the severity of moral violations of pictures that did or did not depict moral situations. Consistent with hypotheses, an analysis of brain activity during the evaluation of pictures depicting moral violations in psychopaths versus nonpsychopaths showed atypical activity in several regions involved in moral decision-making. This included reduced moral/nonmoral picture distinctions in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and anterior temporal cortex in psychopaths relative to nonpsychopaths. In a separate analysis, the association between severity of moral violation ratings and brain activity across participants was compared in psychopaths versus nonpsychopaths. Results revealed a positive association between amygdala activity and severity ratings that was greater in nonpsychopaths than psychopaths, and a negative association between posterior temporal activity and severity ratings that was greater in psychopaths than nonpsychopaths. These results reveal potential neural underpinnings of moral insensitivity in psychopathy and are discussed with reference to neurobiological models of morality and psychopathy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of comorbid psychopathy on criminal offending and emotion processing in male offenders with antisocial personality disorder.

Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and psychopathy are two syndromes with substantial construct validity. To clarify relations between these syndromes, the authors evaluated 3 possibilities: (a) that ASPD with psychopathy and ASPD without psychopathy reflect a common underlying pathophysiology; (b) that ASPD with psychopathy and ASPD without psychopathy identify 2 distinct syndromes, similar in some respects; and (c) that most correlates of ASPD reflect its comorbidity with psychopathy. Participants were 472 incarcerated European American men who met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (4th ed., American Psychiatric Association, 1994) criteria for ASPD and Psychopathy Checklist criteria for psychopathy, who met the criteria for ASPD but not for psychopathy, or who did not meet diagnostic criteria for either ASPD or psychopathy (controls). Both individuals with ASPD only and those with ASPD and psychopathy were characterized by more criminal activity than were controls. In addition, ASPD with psychopathy was associated with more severe criminal behavior and weaker emotion facilitation than ASPD alone. Group differences in the association between emotion dysfunction and criminal behavior suggest tentatively that ASPD with and ASPD without prominent psychopathic features may be distinct syndromes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neuropsychological implications of selective attentional functioning in psychopathic offenders.

Several core characteristics of the psychopathic personality disorder (i.e., impulsivity, failure to attend to interpersonal cues) suggest that psychopaths suffer from disordered attention. However, there is mixed evidence from the cognitive literature as to whether they exhibit superior or deficient selective attention, which has led to the formation of several distinct theories of attentional functioning in psychopathy. The present experiment investigated participants' abilities to purposely allocate attentional resources on the basis of auditory or visual linguistic information and directly tested both theories of deficient or superior selective attention in psychopathy. Specifically, 91 male inmates at a county jail were presented with either auditory or visual linguistic cues (with and without distractors) that correctly indicated the position of an upcoming visual target in 75% of the trials. The results indicated that psychopaths did not exhibit evidence of superior selective attention in any of the conditions but were generally less efficient in shifting attention on the basis of linguistic cues, especially in regard to auditory information. Implications for understanding psychopaths' cognitive functioning and possible neuropsychological deficits are addressed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intelligence, personality, and criminal violence: A multivariate analysis.

The L. R. Huesmann et al (1978) Validity (F)?+?Psychopathic Deviate (Pd)?+?Hypomania (Ma) MMPT index of aggression and A. B. Heilbrun's (see record 1979-25100-001) hypothesis regarding the interaction of intelligence and psychopathy in relation to violent behavior were evaluated with 390 adult male offenders, mean age 26.2 yrs. The F?+?Pd?+?Ma composite did not differentiate significantly between inmates who had been classified according to the violent or nonviolent nature of their most recent offenses, although it was positively correlated with Ss' lifetime total number of violent convictions. Nonetheless, this latter correlation was of extremely small magnitude, and the combination of scales F, Pd, and Ma performed no better than Pd alone. Low levels of intellectual functioning were associated with violent crime in all analyses; however, contrary to Heilbrun, the relationship of intelligence and psychopathy to violence was found to be linear and additive rather than interactive, regardless of whether psychopathy was defined as F?+?Pd?+?Ma or as Pd only. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathy, Risk Taking, and Attention: A Differentiated Test of the Somatic Marker Hypothesis.

A. R. Damasio's (1994) somatic marker hypothesis relates psychopathy to deficits in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Using the gambling task (A. Bechara, A. R. Damasio, H. Damasio, & S. Anderson, 1994), the authors tested this premise and the role of attention as a moderator. Forty-nine male prison inmates were assessed with the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (R. D. Hare, 1991), the gambling task, and standardized tests on attention-concentration, and intelligence. Results revealed no general relation between psychopathy and gambling task performance. However, psychopathic inmates with low attention scores gambled worse than did the attentive ones. They also had more previous convictions. In nonpsychopathic individuals, attention had no impact. Different processing strategies for psychopathic and nonpsychopathic individuals are proposed to explain these findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differentiating among prefrontal substrates in psychopathy: Neuropsychological test findings.

Frontal lobe and consequent executive dysfunction have long been related to psychopathy. More recently, there have been suggestions that specific regions of frontal cortex, rather than all of frontal cortex, may be implicated in psychopathy. To examine this issue, the authors presented 25 individuals with psychopathy and 30 comparison individuals with measures preferentially indexing the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC; object alternation task), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC; spatial alternation task), and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC; number-Stroop reading and counting tasks). The individuals with psychopathy showed significant impairment on the measure preferentially sensitive to OFC functioning. In contrast, the 2 groups did not show impairment on the measures preferentially sensitive to the functioning of the DLPFC or ACC. These results are interpreted with reference to executive dysfunction accounts of the disorder. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personal adjustment and prediction of academic achievement.

The hypothesis tested was that "better" adjusted students would be more predictable than maladjusted students. Predictability was determined by correlation coefficients between aptitude test (CEEB-M and CEEB-V) scores and both 1st-quarter and 1st-yr grades. The sample consisted of 188 freshmen male business students who were classified into positive-, average-, and negative- adjustment groups on the basis of the means of the 10 Guilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey (GZTS) trait raw scores. Comparisons of the adjustment groups on correlations between the mathematics and verbal scores and grade averages indicated that the adjustment groups did not differ in terms of academic predictability. Analysis of differences between the groups on both high school achievement and college achievement revealed, however, that the positive-adjustment group earned significantly higher grades than the negative group. These results indicated that although the adjustment groups did not appear to be significantly different in terms of academic predictability, a definite relationship did exist between the groups on levels of achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spatial frequency discrimination in schizophrenia.

Pathways within the visual system can be distinguished on the basis of selectivity for low or high spatial frequencies. Spatial frequency discrimination was evaluated in 17 medicated male patients with schizophrenia and 19 male control subjects. Subjects were required to discriminate whether pairs of high contrast, sinusoidally modulated gratings were the same or different in spatial frequency. Accuracy performance was compared at high, medium, and low spatial frequencies on tasks matched for control performance. Patients showed a greater performance decrement of 12% on low as compared with 4% on high spatial frequencies. These findings suggest a disturbance of right hemisphere mechanisms involved in spatial perception and attention in schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing the basic traits associated with psychopathy: Development and validation of the Elemental Psychopathy Assessment.

A new self-report assessment of the basic traits of psychopathy was developed with a general trait model of personality (five-factor model [FFM]) as a framework. Scales were written to assess maladaptive variants of the 18 FFM traits that are robustly related to psychopathy across a variety of perspectives including empirical correlations, expert ratings, and translations of extant assessments. Across 3 independent undergraduate samples (N = 210–354), the Elemental Psychopathy Assessment (EPA) scales proved to be internally consistent and unidimensional, and were strongly related to the original FFM scales from which they were derived (mean convergent r = .66). The EPA scales also demonstrated substantial incremental validity in the prediction of existing psychopathy measures over their FFM counterparts. When summed to form a psychopathy total score, the EPA was substantially correlated with 3 commonly used psychopathy measures (mean r = .81). Finally, in a small male forensic sample (N = 70), the EPA was significantly correlated with scores on a widely used self-report psychopathy measure, disciplinary infractions, alcohol use, and antisocial behavior. The EPA provides an opportunity to examine psychopathy and its nomological network through smaller, more basic units of personality rather than by scales or factors that blend these elements. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparison of the effects of stanozolol, oxymetholone, and testosterone cypionate on the sexual behavior of castrated male rats.

In 3 experiments, adult male Long-Evans rats were castrated and treated daily with an anabolic-androgenic steroid (AAS) compound (either stanozolol, oxymetholone, or testosterone cypionate) for 6 weeks. Subjects were assigned to 5 groups that received injections of a high, medium, or low dose of the AAS, testosterone propionate, or the oil vehicle. Stanozolol failed to maintain ejaculation at any dose tested. Although some subjects receiving the low dose of oxymetholone ejaculated, oxymetholone generally failed to stimulate ejaculation above the levels of the oil group. Testosterone cypionate sustained ejaculation at all doses tested. The relative potency of the medium dose of each AAS in the sex accessory tissues was (from most potent to least potent): testosterone cypionate?>?stanozolol?=?oxymetholone?=?oil. Thus, these 3 AAS compounds produced a range of behavioral and endocrine responses in castrated male rats. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)