Stimulation seeking in antisocial preadolescent children.

Abstract

Sociopathie behavior has been interpreted as "pathological stimulation seeking" engaged in to compensate for the sociopath's diminished responsiveness to available stimulation. Experimental evidence in support of this interpretation deals with adult and older adolescent populations. The present study extends these findings and their implications to a population of antisocial preadolescent children.

A Rorschach Analysis of Violent Murderers and Nonviolent Offenders

“…Violent crime has been described as uncontrollable, explosive, and irrational (President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, 1967). There is substantial evidence to indicate that the criminal population has an increased level of impulsivity and difficulty with frustration tolerance (Quay, 1965, Mischel, 1961and Stumphauzer, 1973; and there appears to be elements of stimulation seeking and emotionality to criminal behaviors (Quay, 1965, Whitehill, DeMyer-Gapin and Scott, 1976, Eysenck, 1977. There are also indications that the cognitive development of criminals may be different and possibly contribute to criminal activity (Warren, 1983, Morash, 1983.…”

Performance of delinquent and nondelinquent males on planning, attention, simultaneous, and successive cognitive processing tasks

“…Delinquents have been described as impulsive (Curtiss, Feczko, & Marohn, 1979;Ostrov, Marohn, & Rosenwein, 1972;Quay, 1965;Whitehill, DeMyer-Gapin, & Scott, 1976) due to an inability to plan and regulate their behavior (Voorhees, 1981). While some researchers have found support for this hypothesis (e.g., Pontius & Ruttiger, 1976), others have not (e.g., Bowman, 1979;Oas, 1985;Shapiro, 1977).…”

“…While some researchers have found support for this hypothesis (e.g., Pontius & Ruttiger, 1976), others have not (e.g., Bowman, 1979;Oas, 1985;Shapiro, 1977). The conflicting results have led researchers to interpret what appeared to be poor planning and impulsivity as difficulty with attention (Ostrov et al, 1972;Skrzypek, 1969;Whitehill et al, 1976).…”

Effect of stimulus novelty on stimulation seeking in antisocial and neurotic children.

“…The failure to obtain significant differences between groups in response to Set B was, however, not expected. In an earlier study, Whitehill et al (1976) found significantly more rapid habituation by antisocial children than by neurotics in response to a similar set of boring photographic slides. A review of data from the previous study reveals that the viewing times for all subjects in the first study were much longer than the times observed in ours, suggesting that Set B of the slides in our study was more boring (i.e., less arousing) than the monotonous slides of the first study.…”

“…Empirical data are generally supportive of this thesis (Quay, in press) and the notion that the neurotic represents the polar opposite of the psychopath on the stimulation-seeking dimension. Whitehill, DeMyer-Gapin, and Scott (1976) have provided evidence that stimulation seeking is a factor in the behavior of antisocial children as well.…”