We demonstrated for the first time that perceptual insensitivity to facial affect can be addressed by an implicit training that directs attention to salient regions of a face and gradually decreases the intensity of the emotional expression. Future studies should focus on the potential of this intervention to effectively increase empathy and inhibit violent behavior in antisocial individuals.

Prior studies provide evidence for impaired recognition of distress cues in individuals exhibiting antisocial behavior. However, it remains unclear whether this deficit is generally associated with antisociality or may be specific to violent behavior only. To examine whether there are meaningful differences between the two behavioral dimensions rule-breaking and aggression, violent and nonviolent incarcerated offenders as well as control participants were presented with an animated face recognition task in which a video sequence of a neutral face changed into an expression of one of the six basic emotions. The participants were instructed to press a button as soon as they were able to identify the emotional expression, allowing for an assessment of the perceived emotion onset. Both aggressive and nonaggressive offenders demonstrated a delayed perception of primarily fearful facial cues as compared to controls. These results suggest the importance of targeting impaired emotional processing in both types of antisocial behavior.

Substitution reactions of the chemically and photochemically unusually stable perylenetetracarboxylic bisimides proceed with neat amines even below room temperature where negative effective energies of activation were found. Analogous reactions proceed with naphthalenecarboximides as the lower homologues and terrylene and quaterrylene carboximides as the higher homologues. Bathochromically absorbing dyes with a novel pattern of substitution were obtained suitable as efficient metal-free light-absorbers for dye-sensitized solar cells.