» Articles » PMID: 24932762

Psychopathic and Externalizing Offenders Display Dissociable Dysfunctions when Responding to Facial Affect

Overview
Journal Personal Disord
Specialty Psychology
Date 2014 Jun 17
PMID 24932762
Citations 4
Authors
Affiliations
Soon will be listed here.
Abstract

Despite similarity in their disinhibited behaviors, the cognitive-affective mechanisms that characterize psychopathy and externalizing are relatively distinct. One theoretical perspective suggests that psychopathy is associated with an early attention bottleneck that precludes the processing of contextual information, leading to a rigid goal-directed focus. Alternatively, externalizing may be associated with an overallocation of processing resources to motivationally salient information, which disrupts the use of cognitive control. In this study, male prisoners assessed on psychopathic and externalizing traits performed a new gaze detection task involving affective faces. As predicted, psychopathy but not externalizing was associated with superior performance on the gaze-detection task when the necessity of using contextual affect to regulate goal-directed behavior was minimized. Conversely, externalizing but not psychopathy was associated with increased errors on trials that required participants to use affective expressions, specifically fear, as a cue to inhibit dominant responses. These results have theoretical and applied significance for both psychopathic and externalizing forms of disinhibition. Recognition and utilization of facial affect are important for socialization and interpersonal interactions; therefore, any cognitive-affective processes that interrupt the fluency with which this information is processed may be important for understanding the underpinnings of disinhibition.

Citing Articles

Cognitive Empathy in Subtypes of Antisocial Individuals.

Chang S, Tillem S, Benson-Williams C, Baskin-Sommers A Front Psychiatry. 2021; 12:677975.

PMID: 34290630 PMC: 8287099. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.677975.


Electrophysiological evidence that psychopathic personality traits are associated with atypical response to salient distractors.

Carolan P, Gaspar J, Kleffner K, Liotti M Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2020; 20(1):195-213.

PMID: 31898054 DOI: 10.3758/s13415-019-00762-8.


More or less likely to offend? Young adults with a history of identified developmental language disorders.

Winstanley M, Webb R, Conti-Ramsden G Int J Lang Commun Disord. 2017; 53(2):256-270.

PMID: 29159847 PMC: 5888152. DOI: 10.1111/1460-6984.12339.


Theta phase coherence in affective picture processing reveals dysfunctional sensory integration in psychopathic offenders.

Tillem S, Ryan J, Wu J, Crowley M, Mayes L, Baskin-Sommers A Biol Psychol. 2016; 119:42-5.

PMID: 27373371 PMC: 4993675. DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2016.06.011.

References
1.
Endres M, Rickert M, Bogg T, Lucas J, Finn P . Externalizing psychopathology and behavioral disinhibition: working memory mediates signal discriminability and reinforcement moderates response bias in approach-avoidance learning. J Abnorm Psychol. 2011; 120(2):336-51. PMC: 3091963. DOI: 10.1037/a0022501. View

2.
Blair R . Neurocognitive models of aggression, the antisocial personality disorders, and psychopathy. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2001; 71(6):727-31. PMC: 1737625. DOI: 10.1136/jnnp.71.6.727. View

3.
Birbaumer N, Veit R, Lotze M, Erb M, Hermann C, Grodd W . Deficient fear conditioning in psychopathy: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2005; 62(7):799-805. DOI: 10.1001/archpsyc.62.7.799. View

4.
Meffert H, Gazzola V, den Boer J, Bartels A, Keysers C . Reduced spontaneous but relatively normal deliberate vicarious representations in psychopathy. Brain. 2013; 136(Pt 8):2550-62. PMC: 3722356. DOI: 10.1093/brain/awt190. View

5.
Costa L, Bauer L, Kuperman S, Porjesz B, OConnor S, Hesselbrock V . Frontal P300 decrements, alcohol dependence, and antisocial personality disorder. Biol Psychiatry. 2000; 47(12):1064-71. DOI: 10.1016/s0006-3223(99)00317-0. View