Cognitive control is typically described as disrupted following exposure to early caregiving instability. While much of the work within this field has approached cognitive control broadly, evidence from adults retrospectively reporting early-life instability has shown more nuanced effects on cognitive control, even demonstrating enhancements in certain subdomains. That is, exposure to unstable caregiving may disrupt some areas of cognitive control, yet promote adaptation in others. Here, we investigated three domains of cognitive control in a sample of school-age children (N = 275, Age = 6-12 years) as a function of early caregiving instability, defined as the total number of caregiving switches. Results demonstrated that caregiving instability was associated with reduced response inhibition (Go/No-Go) and attentional control (Flanker), but enhanced cognitive flexibility (Dimensional Change Card Sort Task Switching).Conversely, there were no statistically significant associations with group (i.e., institutional care versus foster care) or maltreatment exposure and these patterns. These findings build on the specialization framework, suggesting that caregiving instability results in both decrements and enhancements in children's cognitive control, consistent with the hypothesis that cognitive control development is scaffolded by early environmental pressures.

While there has been an exponential increase in brain imaging research on psychopathy in the past two decades, knowledge on the brain basis to child and adolescent psychopathic-like behavior is relatively new. This adult and child research has potential future implications for the development of new interventions, prediction of future offending, and punishment. This review examines both adult and child literatures on the neural basis of psychopathy, together with implications for the criminal justice system. The adult imaging literature provides growing evidence for amygdala structural and functional impairments in psychopaths, and more variable evidence for prefrontal deficits. The emerging child and adolescent imaging literature with notable exceptions broadly parallels these adult findings and may help explain the development of fearlessness, disinhibition, and lack of empathy. This knowledge places policy makers at a crossroads. Should new biological interventions be developed to remediate these brain abnormalities? Would imaging be used in the future to predict offending? Could imaging findings help excuse psychopathic behavior or alternatively argue for longer sentences for public protection? This review attempts to address these issues at the child and adult levels and provides directions for future research that include the incorporation of biological measures into treatment programs. AbstractWhile there has been an exponential increase in brain imaging research on psychopathy in the past two decades, knowledge on the brain basis to child and adolescent psychopathic-like behavior is relatively new. This adult and child research has potential future implications for the development of new interventions, prediction of future offending, and punishment. This review examines both adult and child literatures on the neural basis of psychopathy, together with implications for the criminal justice system. The adult imaging literature provides growing evidence for amygdala structural and functional impairments in psychopaths, and more variable evidence for prefrontal deficits. The emerging child and adolescent imaging literature with notable exceptions broadly parallels these adult findings and may help explain the development of fearlessness, disinhibition, and lack of empathy. This knowledge places policy makers at a crossroads. Should new biological interventions be developed to remediate these brain abnormalities? Would imaging be used in the future to predict offending? Could imaging findings help excuse psychopathic behavior or alternatively argue for longer sentences for public protection? This review attempts to address these issues at the child and adult levels and provides directions for future research that include the incorporation of biological measures into treatment programs.4

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits characterize a subset of youth at risk for persistent and serious antisocial behavior. Differences in resting state connectivity in the default mode network (DMN) have been associated with CU traits in forensic and clinical samples of adolescents and with deficient interpersonal/affective traits (often operationalized as Factor 1 psychopathy traits) in adults. It is unclear whether these brain-behavior associations extend to community-based children. Using mixed model analyses, we tested the associations between CU traits and within-network resting-state connectivity of seven task-activated networks and the DMN using data from 9,636 9–11-year-olds in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Even after accounting for comorbid externalizing problems, higher levels of CU traits were associated with reduced connectivity within the DMN. This finding is consistent with prior literature surrounding psychopathy and CU traits in clinically and forensically based populations, suggesting the correlation likely exists on a spectrum, can be detected in childhood, and is not restricted to children with significant antisocial behavior.

This study primarily tests whether incarceration negatively affects cognitive functioning; namely emotion regulation, cognitive control, and emotion recognition. As a secondary interest, we test protective effects of a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy/Mindfulness Training (CBT/MT) intervention. Dormitories containing 197 incarcerated males aged 16–18 were randomly assigned to either a CBT/MT program or an active control condition. A cognitive task was administered pre-treatment and again four months later, upon treatment completion. Performance on all outcome variables was significantly worse at follow-up compared to baseline. There were marginally significant group by time interactions. While the control group performance significantly declined in both cognitive control and emotion regulation, the CBT/MT group showed no significant decline in either outcome. This is the first study to probe the effects of incarceration on these three processes. Findings suggest that incarceration worsens a known risk factor for crime (cognitive functioning), and that a CBT/MT intervention may help buffer against declines.

There is a growing literature on biological explanations of antisocial and criminal behavior. This paper provides a selective review of three specific biological factors – psychophysiology (with the focus on blunted heart rate and skin conductance), brain mechanisms (with a focus on structural and functional aberrations of the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and striatum), and genetics (with an emphasis on gene-environment and gene-gene interactions). Overall, understanding the role of biology in antisocial and criminal behavior may help increase the explanatory power of current research and theories, as well as inform policy and treatment options.

Previous studies have found impaired affective decision-making, as measured by the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), in various antisocial populations. This is the first study to compare the IGT in violent and nonviolent incarcerated American youth. The IGT was administered to 185 incarcerated adolescent male offenders charged with either nonviolent (38.4%) or violent (61.6%) crimes. General linear mixed models and t tests were used to assess differences between the groups. The full sample performed worse than if they had selected from the decks at random. The violent offenders performed more poorly than the nonviolent offenders overall, primarily because they preferred “disadvantageous” Deck B to a greater degree; however, they did demonstrate some degree of learning by the final block of the task. Adolescent offenders demonstrate impaired affective decision-making. Behavior suggested preferential attention to frequency of loss and amount of gain and inattention to amount of loss.

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