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Can violent offenders who commit acts of instrumental aggression for goal-oriented purposes such as robbery be distinguished from those who commit acts of reactive (or hostile) aggression in response to provocation? Because violent offenders often have a history of both instrumental and reactive aggression, this study distinguished between offenders with a history of at least 1 instrumental violent offense and offenders with a history of reactive violent offenses. Two studies tested the hypothesis that instrumental offenders would score higher than reactive offenders and nonviolent offenders on R. D. Hare's (1991) Psychopathy Checklist. The first study sample consisted of 106 violent and nonviolent offenders recruited from a medium-security correctional facility. The second study sample consisted of 50 violent offenders referred for pretrial forensic evaluation. In both samples, instrumental offenders could be reliably distinguished from reactive offenders on the basis of violent crime behavior and level of psychopathy. Group differences could not be attributed to participant age, race, length of incarceration, or extent of prior criminal record.

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The Austrian physician Hans Asperger (1944; created the label autistic psychopathy to describe a group of his patients who demonstrated unique problems with communication and a tendency to maintain idiosyncratic interests. This condition was similar, though not identical, to autism, the more widely known disorder of early childhood introduced by Asperger's contemporary, Kanner (1943). Much later, Wing (1981) reintroduced Asperger's work to a broader audience and provided additional descriptions and case studies of her patients with Asperger's syndrome. Wing's work prompted further research on this condition (Klin, 1994).Wing (1981) and subsequent researchers have described the core clinical characteristics of Asperger's syndrome as: (a) minimal empathy; (b) naïve, inappropriate, one-sided social interaction and limited capacity to form friendships; (c) pedantic and repetitious speech; (d) poor nonverbal communication; (e) intense preoccupation with circumscribed topics; and (f) clumsy movements, poor coordination, and odd posture. The recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) (American Psychiatric Association, 2000) has distilled these clinical features into two main criteria: severe and