Psychopathy, autonomic functioning, and the orienting response.

Abstract

Autonomic activity was continuously recorded while primary psychopaths (P), secondary psychopaths (S), and nonpsychopaths (NP) listened to a series of repetitive tones and solved simple arithmetic problems. During rest, Group P had lower levels of skin conductance and autonomic variability than did Group NP, but the difference in autonomic variability disappeared during the arithmetic period. Group P was generally less autonomically responsive to the tones, particularly when GSR and cardiac responses were expressed in terms of individual differences in the range of autonomic activity possible. While GSR habituated at the same rate for all groups, cardiac deceleration and, to a lesser extent, digital vasoconstriction habituated more slowly for Group P than for Group NP. Moreover, Group P gave a relatively small cardiac deceleratory response to a novel tone presented after the repetitive tones. The results were interpreted in terms of autonomic, cortical, and sensory coupling. Several investigators (Eysenck, 1964; Hare, of nonpsychopathic individuals. One reason 196Sb; Lykken, 1957; Quay, 196S; Schach-for this situation is that relatively little releter & Latane, 1964; Tong & Murphy, 1960; vant research has actually been carried out. Walton, 1960) have suggested that certain Moreover, the results of this research, though features of psychopathic behavior may be suggestive, have not always been consistent, related to some form of autonomic (and in For example, the psychopath's resting level some cases cortical) dysfunction. In most of autonomic activity has been found to be cases, it is assumed that the psychopath has normal in some cases and below normal in a hypoactive autonomic nervous system others. Similarly, he has been found to be (ANS) with the result that he is deficient in autonomically hyperresponsive, hyporesponthose autonomic correlates of anxiety neces-sive, and normally responsive to a variety of sary for the development and maintenance of neutral and stressful stimuli, certain patterns of behavior. Although several Methodological differences between studies studies are consistent with this assumption, it may account for part of the discrepant findis nevertheless true that very little is really ings. However, a more important reason may known about the ways in which the function-be the fact that not all investigators have used ing of the psychopath's ANS differs from that the same or comparable criteria for the selec-,_.. , tJ t.T,i.vTT ui. ti on °f psychopathic subjects (5s). In many iThis research was supported by

A cognitive neuroscience perspective on psychopathy: Evidence for paralimbic system dysfunction

“…This collection of abnormalities suggests that psychopaths have difficulty in fear conditioning, are relatively lacking in fear, and do not respond well in classical conditioning paradigms with punishment contingencies. An alternative interpretation, first proposed by Hare (1968), is that these results suggest abnormalities in orienting processes. That is, in all the psychophysiological studies listed above, an orienting response would be elicited by the salient cues or stimuli.…”

Psychopathy and Aggression: When Paralimbic Dysfunction Leads to Violence

“…Some of the first physiological evidence for these models demonstrated that psychopaths fail to show appropriate autonomic responses in conditioning paradigms (Hare and Quinn 1971; Lykken 1957), and in anticipation of aversive stimuli (Hare 1968, 1982; Hare et al 1978). This trend has been replicated in many different contexts, as psychopaths show relatively subdued physiological responses to emotionally evocative stimuli including sounds (Verona et al 2004), emotional words (Williamson et al 1991), and disturbing images (Herpertz et al 2001).…”

Personality

“…Maddi (231) and Jacobovits (171) have both critically evaluated the evi dence for both the accuracy and the generality of such an effect of "mere exposure" over wider ranges of exposure frequency and an array of different stimulus objects. Hare (152) plotted habituation to novel stimuli observed in autonomic recordings from groups of psychopathic and nonpsychopathic prisoners. Although he found differences between these groups in initial reactivity for the stimuli that he employed, they followed similar habituation curves over successive exposures.…”