Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T04:38:30.106Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

State-dependent executive deficits among psychopathic offenders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2005

YANA SUCHY  and
DAVID S. KOSSON
YANA SUCHY
Affiliation:
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah
DAVID S. KOSSON
Affiliation:
Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, North Chicago, Illinois
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Three hypotheses for cognitive deficits among psychopaths were tested: Response modulation, left hemisphere activation, and an interaction between the 2. Twenty-six psychopathic and 32 nonpsychopathic criminal offenders identified with the Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised were randomly assigned to left- and right-hemisphere activation groups. An auditory processing task was administered, such that the ability to classify nonverbal auditory signals and the ability to manage subgoals were assessed under left- and right-hemisphere activation conditions. The results showed that psychopaths' information processing in general, including response modulation, was deleteriously affected by left-hemisphere activation, supporting 2 of the 3 hypotheses tested. These results offer an explanation for inconsistent findings of executive deficits among psychopaths. (JINS, 2005, 11, 311–321.)

Keywords

Left-hemisphere activation hypothesisResponse modulationLateralityReaction timePitch discriminationPersonalityNeurobehavioral manifestationsNeuropsychology
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , May 2005 , pp. 311 - 321
Copyright
© 2005 The International Neuropsychological Society

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Arnett, P.A., Howland, E.W., Smith, S.S., & Newman, J.P. (1993). Autonomic responsivity during passive avoidance in incarcerated psychopaths. Personality and Individual Differences, 14, 173–184.Google Scholar
Bernstein, A., Newman, J.P., Wallace, J.F., & Luh, K.E. (2000). Left-hemisphere activation and deficient response modulation in psychopaths. Psychological Science, 11, 414–418.Google Scholar
Blair, R.J.R., Colledge, E., Murray, L., & Mitchell, D.G.V. (2001). A selective impairment in the processing of sad and fearful expressions in children with psychopathic tendencies. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 29, 491–498.Google Scholar
Chapman, L.J. & Chapman, J.P. (1987). The measurement of handedness. Brain and Cognition, 6, 175–183.Google Scholar
Cleckley, H. (1976). The mask of sanity (5th edition). St. Louis, MO: Mosby.
Dinn, W.M. & Harris, C.L. (2000). Neurocognitive function in antisocial personality disorder. Psychiatry Research, 97, 173–190.Google Scholar
Hare, R.D. (1984). Performance of psychopaths on cognitive tasks related to frontal lobe functions. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 93, 133–140.Google Scholar
Hare, R.D. (1998). Psychopathy, affect, and behavior. In D.J. Cooke, A.E. Forth, & R.D. Hare (Eds.), Psychopathy: Theory, research and implications for society (pp. 105–137). Boston: Kluwer Academic.
Hare, R.D. (1991). The Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised. North Tonawanda, NY: Multi-Health Systems.
Hare, R.D. & Jutai, J.W. (1988). Psychopathy and cerebral asymmetry in semantic processing. Personality and Individual Differences, 9, 329–337.Google Scholar
Hart, S.D., Forth, A.E., & Hare, R.D. (1990). Performance of criminal psychopaths on selected neuropsychological tests. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 99, 374–379.Google Scholar
Hiatt, K.D., Schmitt, W.A., & Newman, J.P. (2004). Stroop Tasks reveal abnormal selective attention among psychopathic offenders. Neuropsychology, 18, 50–59.Google Scholar
Howard, R., Payamal, L.T., Neo, L.N. (1997). Response modulation deficits in psychopaths: A failure to confirm and a reconsideration of the Patterson-Newman model. Personality & Individual Differences, 22, 707–717.Google Scholar
Howland, E.W. & Newman, J.P. (1993). The effect of incentives on Wisconsin Card Sorting Task performance in psychopaths. Unpublished manuscript. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin.
Kosson, D.S. (1996). Psychopathy and dual-task performance under focusing conditions. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 105, 391–400.Google Scholar
Kosson, D.S. (1998). Divided visual attention in psychopathic and nonpsychopathic offenders. Personality and Individual Differences, 24, 373–391.Google Scholar
Kosson, D.S. & Harpur, T.J. (1997). Attentional skills of psychopaths: Current evidence and developmental implications. In J.A. Burack & J.T. Enns (Eds.), Attention, development, and psychopathology (pp. 379–402). New York: Guilford Press.
Kosson, D.S., Miller, S.K., Byrnes, K.A., Leveroni, C., & Mayer, A. (2003). Testing neuropsychological hypotheses for cognitive deficits in psychopathic criminals: A study of global–local processing. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Kosson, D.S., Suchy, Y., Mayer, A.R., & Libby, J. (2002). Facial affect recognition in criminal psychopaths. Emotion, 2, 398–411.Google Scholar
LaPierre, D., Braun, C.M.J., & Hodgins, S. (1995). Ventral frontal deficits in psychopathy: Neuropsychological test findings. Neuropsychologia, 33, 139–151.Google Scholar
Lezak, M. (1995). Neuropsychological assessment (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Llanes, S.L. & Kosson, D.S. (in press). Divided visual attention and left hemisphere activation among psychopathic and nonpsychopathic offenders. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment.
Lopez, M., Kosson, D.S., Weissman, D.T., & Banich, M.T. (2004). Interhemispheric integration in psychopaths. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Miller, G.M. & Chapman, J.P. (2001). Misunderstanding analysis of covariance. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 110, 40–48.Google Scholar
Morgan, A.B. & Lilienfeld, S.O. (2000). A meta-analytic review of the relation between antisocial behavior and neuropsychological measures of executive function. Clinical Psychology Review, 20, 113–156.Google Scholar
Newman, J.P. & Kosson, D.S. (1986). Passive avoidance learning in psychopathic and nonpsychopathic offenders. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95, 252–256.Google Scholar
Newman, J.P., Patterson, C.M., Howland, E.W., & Nichols, S.L. (1990). Passive avoidance in psychopaths: The effects of reward. Personality and Individual Differences, 11, 1101–1114.Google Scholar
Newman, J.P. & Schmitt, W.A. (1998). Passive avoidance in psychopathic offenders: A replication and extension. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 107, 527–532.Google Scholar
Newman, J.P., Schmitt, W.A., & Voss, W.D. (1997). The impact of motivationally neutral cues on psychopathic individuals: Assessing the generality of the response modulation hypothesis. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 106, 563–575.Google Scholar
Patterson, M.C. & Newman, J.P. (1993). Reflectivity and learning from aversive events: Toward a psychological mechanism for the syndromes of disinhibition. Psychological Review, 100, 716–736.Google Scholar
Rizzolatti, G. & Craighero, L. (1998). Spatial attention: Mechanisms and theories. In M. Sabourin, F. Craik, & M. Robert (Eds.), Advances in psychological science, Vol. 2: Biological and cognitive aspects (pp. 171–198). Hove, UK: Psychology Press/Erlbaum.
Robertson, I.H. & North, N. (1993). Active and passive activation of left limbs: Influence on visual and sensory neglect. Neuropsychologia, 31, 293–300.Google Scholar
Schmitt, W.A. & Newman, J.P. (1999). Are all psychopathic individuals low-anxious? Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 108, 353–358.Google Scholar
Shevtsova, N. & Reggia, J. (1999). Lateralization in a bihemispheric neural model of letter identification. Neurocomputing: An International Journal, 26, 875–880.Google Scholar
Sil'kis, I.G. & Bogdanova, O.G. (1998). Background gamma-oscillations in neuronal networks with interhemisphere connections. Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology, 28, 645–659.Google Scholar
Sutton, S.K. & Davidson, R.J. (2000). Prefrontal brain electrical asymmetry predicts the evaluation of affective stimuli. Neuropsychologia, 38, 1723–1733.Google Scholar
Thut, G., Schultz, W., Roelcke, U., Nienhusmeier, M., Missimer, J., Maguire, R.P., & Leenders, K.L. (1997). Monetary reward activates human prefrontal cortex. Neuroreport, 8, 1225–1228.Google Scholar
Wallace, J.F., Vitale, J.E., & Newman, J.P. (1999). Response modulation deficits: Implications for the diagnosis and treatment of psychopathy. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 13, 55–70.Google Scholar
Welsh, G. (1956). Factor dimensions A and R. In G.S. Welsh & W.G. Dahlstrom (Eds.), Basic readings on the MMPI in psychology and medicine (pp. 264–281). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Williamson, S., Harpur, T., & Hare, R.D. (1991). Abnormal processing of affective words by psychopaths. Psychophysiology, 28, 260–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yamaguchi, S., Yamagata, S., & Kobayashi, S. (2000). Cerebral asymmetry of the “top-down” allocation of attention to global and local features. Journal of Neuroscience, 20, 1–5.Google Scholar
Zachary, R.A. (1986). Shipley Institute of Living Scale: Revised manual. Los Angeles, CA: Eastern Psychological Services.
Zalla, T., Koechlin, E., Pietrini, P., Basso, G., Aquino, P., Sirigu, A., & Grafman, G. (2000). Differential amygdala response to winning and losing: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study in humans. European Journal of Neuroscience, 12, 1764–1770.Google Scholar