Psychopathic Traits and Physiological Responses to Aversive Stimuli in Children Aged 9–11 Years

Abstract

Atypical eletrodermal and cardiovascular response patterns in psychopathic individuals are thought to be biological indicators of fearless and disinhibition. This study investigated the relationship between psychopathic traits and these autonomic response patterns using a count-down task in 843 children (aged 9–10 years). Heart rate (HR) and non-specific skin conductance responses (NS-SCRs) were recorded while participants anticipated and reacted to 105 dB signaled or unsignaled white-noise bursts. Using multilevel regression models, both larger HR acceleration and fewer NS-SCR were found to be significantly associated with psychopathic traits during anticipation of signaled white-noise bursts. However, two divergent patterns appeared for HR and SCR: (1) larger HR acceleration was specific to the callousness-disinhibition factor of psychopathic traits while reduced NS-SCR was only associated with the manipulative-deceitfulness factor; (2) the negative association between the manipulative-deceitfulness factor and NS-SCR was only found in boys but not in girls. These findings replicated what has been found in psychopathic adults, suggesting that autonomic deficits present in children at risk may predispose them to later psychopathy. The divergent findings across psychopathic facets and sexes raised the possibility of different etiologies underlying psychopathy, which may in turn suggest multiple treatment strategies for boys and girls.

As Far as the Eye Can See: Relationship between Psychopathic Traits and Pupil Response to Affective Stimuli

“…offender or forensic psychiatric populations). Psychopathic traits in community samples have been associated with an attenuated fear-potentiated startle reflex [22, 45, 46], deficient fear conditioning [12, 47], reduced anticipatory autonomic responses [48], and reduced amygdala response to affective stimulus [15, 49–51]. Furthermore, the majority of this research has linked this hypo-responsivity to the interpersonal/affective components of psychopathy rather than the lifestyles/antisocial features [22, 45, 47–49, 52, 53], which parallels work in offender samples [13, 14, 16].…”

Exploring The Development of Social Responses in Children with Callous and Unemotional Traits: An Examination of The Impact of Hypothesized Reinforcing and Aversive Stimuli

“…Analyses of EDA are congruent with previous findings that indicate a hyposensitive SCR response to both types of punishment in children with psychopathic traits (Fung et al, 2012;Wang et al, 2012). Children with psychopathic traits (H = 5.71) had a significantly lower SCR after being exposed to punishment (χ Frick (1996), indicating that CP/CU children are more likely to demonstrate active movement toward a reinforcer, in comparison to CP-only children.…”

“…The retardation of neuro-typical responses in favor of immature activation along the midline frontal and temporal regions concurs with observed cortical tapering that may underscore psychopathic propensities (Sumich et al, 2012). Hyporeactivity of skin conductance may index characteristics such as impulsivity and emotional deficits that underlie or heighten the propensity toward negative interpersonal relationships and antisocial behavior in individuals with psychopathy (Wang, et al, 2012). Also, atypical patterns in cardiovascular and electrodermal responses in psychopathic individuals are believed to be biological indicators of disinhibition and fearless (Wang et al, 2012).…”

“…Hyporeactivity of skin conductance may index characteristics such as impulsivity and emotional deficits that underlie or heighten the propensity toward negative interpersonal relationships and antisocial behavior in individuals with psychopathy (Wang, et al, 2012). Also, atypical patterns in cardiovascular and electrodermal responses in psychopathic individuals are believed to be biological indicators of disinhibition and fearless (Wang et al, 2012). Additionally, it has been shown that a hypersensitivy to reward and a hyposensitivity to punishment may also be predicted by indicators of psychopathy, such as fearlessness and aversive motivation (punishment avoidance), and skin conductance measures may provide a reliable measure of these predictors (Fowles, 1998 …”

“…The latency of the SCR signal is the time between onset and the first deviation that is significant between 1-3s (Dawson et al, 2001). The ER-SCR threshold for the current experiment will be set at deviations above 0.05 microsiemens (µS 10 -6 s), as this is considered to be standard practice (Dawson et al, 2001), and has been utilized in previous research investigating the effect of WN bursts on children with psychopathic traits (Wang et al, 2012).…”