Emotion processing in the criminal psychopath: The role of attention in emotion-facilitated memory.

Abstract

The response modulation hypothesis specifies that low-anxious psychopathic individuals have difficulty processing information outside of their primary attentional focus. To evaluate the applicability of this model to affective processing, 239 offenders, classified using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (Hare, 2003) and the Welsh Anxiety Scale (Welsh, 1956), performed one of three emotion memory tasks that examined the effects of emotion on memory for primary and contextual information. Regardless of anxiety level, psychopathic and control offenders demonstrated a significant and comparable memory bias for emotional over neutral words in the primary conditions. However, psychopathic individuals showed significantly less memory bias than controls in the contextual conditions. Results indicate that the impact of emotion on memory is moderated by attentional factors. Keywords psychopathy; emotion; memoryPsychopathy is a highly unique and intriguing form of psychopathology because psychopathic individuals appear to lack the guiding force of emotion (Blair, 2005). Theoretical conceptualizations of psychopathy have focused on this affective poverty, emphasizing the psychopathic individual's inability to learn from punishment and insensitivity to the rights and feelings of others. A particularly common view is that psychopathic individuals have a diminished capacity for emotional responding which, in turn, undermines both their ability to learn from punishment and their motivation to conform behavior to the expectations of others (Blair;Lykken, 1995).The response modulation hypothesis (RMH), by contrast, holds that psychopathic individuals are capable of normal emotional responses but have difficulty processing affective information when it is peripheral to their primary attentional focus (Newman & Lorenz, 2003). Consistent with this model, psychopathic and non-psychopathic offenders display comparable behavioral and psychophysiological responses to threat cues when they are the focus of attention, but psychopathic individuals display significantly weaker responses when they are focused on earning rewards (Arnett, Smith & Newman, 1997;Newman & Kosson, 1986). Whereas emotion-based models predict weaker responses to affective cues regardless of attentional focus, the RMH holds that attentional factors determine the quality of emotion processing (Newman & Lorenz). Correspondence Gray's (1982) theory of behavioral inhibition system (BIS) functioning (Fowles, 1980) which, like the RMH, is based on the septo-hippocampalorbitofrontal system (Gorenstein & Newman, 1980). According to Gray, the BIS is sensitive to punishment stimuli, cues that predict omission of expected rewards and novelty. In response to such cues, the BIS functions to increase non-specific arousal, "inhibit all ongoing behaviour, whether instrumental or classically conditioned or innate" and "perform the maximum possible analysis of current environmental stimuli, especially novel ones" (Gray, p. 13). When operating effectively, the BIS enables a ...

Misremembering Events: Emotional Valence, Psychopathic Traits, and the Misinformation Effect

“…These findings suggest that psychopathic traits may not impair memory for emotional stimuli. While this contradicts existing research (e.g., Christianson et al 1996), it is possible that psychopathic traits are more relevant to attentional factors (see Glass and Newman 2009). Recent studies have argued that impairments on emotional tasks likely result from attentional deficits and not from amygdala-mediated emotional dysregulation (Newman et al 2010).…”

“…Zhu and colleagues (2010) reported that individuals with characteristics reflective of psychopathy (although not directly assessed) were more susceptible to false recall due to the presence of misinformation. Previous studies suggest that if persons high in psychopathic traits demonstrate an emotional memory bias and impaired peripheral recollection (see Glass and Newman 2009;Zhu et al 2010), then they may be susceptible to misinformation similar to (or more so than) persons low in these traits. If, however, psychopathic traits are related to equivalent or unimpaired recall of central and peripheral details (see Christianson et al 1996), individuals possessing psychopathic traits should be less influenced by the presentation of misleading information (as they would be equally attending to both central and peripheral information in a scene).…”

“…For example, Wilson et al (2008) reported better recognition memory in a group of males high in psychopathic traits for negative facial stimuli relative to positive stimuli. Glass and Newman (2009) found that psychopaths recalled more emotional relative to neutral words, but were impaired at recalling the context (peripheral information) of emotional words. Collectively, the literature suggests that psychopathic traits influence emotion processing in some way (whether impairment or enhancement depending on the stimuli and the task), which corresponds to variations in memory for emotional stimuli across psychopath and nonpsychopath groups.…”

Recent Advances in Psychopathy Research

“…[36][37][38][39] Because no published studies have examined hemodynamic activity in such situations, it is plausible that these situations will yield evidence of functional anomalies common to successful and unsuccessful psychopathy. Alternatively, if successful psychopathy represents a syndrome largely distinct from unsuccessful psychopathy, successful psychopaths may not exhibit these state-dependent cognitive deficits.…”

Initial development of an implicit and explicit approach to assess psychopathy

“…difficulties in evaluating emotion (Cleckley, 1976) and in responding appropriately to these (Lorenz & Newman, 2002) and 4.) difficulties in attending to emotion correctly (Glass & Newman, 2009;Baskin-Sommerset al, 2013).…”