There have been suggestions that Theory of Mind (ToM) impairment might lead to aggressive behaviour and psychopathy. Psychopathic and matched non-psychopathic individuals, as defined by the Hare Psychopathy Checklist [The Hare Psychopath Checklist-Revised, 1991] completed the 'Reading the Mind in the Eyes' ToM Test [Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 1997;38:813]. This test requires the self-paced identification of mental states from photographs of the eye region alone. Results indicated that the psychopathic individuals did not present with any generalised impairment in ToM. The data are discussed with reference to the putative neural system mediating performance on this task and models of psychopathy.

The performance of adult psychopathic individuals on a novel response reversal task involving 2 reward-punishment contingencies (100-0 and 80-20) was investigated. In line with predictions, adults with psychopathy presented with impairment on the response reversal component but not on the acquisition component of this task. This selective impairment for response reversal was seen for both reward-punishment contingencies and was related to the tendency of individuals with psychopathy to be less likely to stay with a rewarded correct response to a stimulus on the subsequent presentation of that stimulus. Results are discussed with reference to current models of the development of psychopathy.

The impact of emotional stimuli on a simple motor response task in individuals with psychopathy and comparison individuals was investigated. Psychopathy was assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist Revised (Hare, 1991). Participants were presented with the Emotional Interrupt Task, in which they responded with left and right button presses to shapes that were temporally bracketed by positive, negative, and neutral visual images taken from the International Affective Picture System. The comparison group showed increased response latencies if the shape was temporally bracketed by either a positive or negative emotional stimulus relative to a neutral stimulus. Individuals with psychopathy did not show this modulation of reaction time for either positive or negative emotional stimuli. Results are discussed with reference to current models regarding the modulation of attention by emotion and the emotional impairment seen in individuals with psychopathy.

The processing of emotional expressions is fundamental for normal socialization and interaction. Reduced responsiveness to the expressions of sadness and fear has been implicated in the development of psychopathy (R. J. R. Blair, 1995). The current study investigates the ability of adult psychopathic individuals to process vocal affect. Psychopathic and nonpsychopathic adults, defined by the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; R. D. Hare, 1991), were presented with neutral words spoken with intonations conveying happiness, disgust, anger, sadness, and fear and were asked to identify the emotion of the speaker on the basis of prosody. The results indicated that psychopathic inmates were particularly impaired in the recognition of fearful vocal affect. These results are interpreted with reference to the low-fear and violence inhibition mechanism models of psychopathy.Psychopathy is a disorder characterized in part by emotional traits such as callousness, a diminished capacity for remorse, and superficial charm as well as impulsivity and poor behavioral controls (Hare, 1991). Psychopathy is indexed in adults by the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991). Recent data suggest that the emotional difficulties associated with psychopathy interfere with moral socialization and put the individual at risk for developing high levels of antisocial behavior (Wootton, Frick, Shelton, & Silverthorn, 1997).Currently, there are two main models that attempt to explain why psychopathic individuals show emotional dysfunction and poor socialization. These are the low-fear model (e.g., Patrick, 1994) and the empathy dysfunction, violence inhibition mechanism (VIM) model (e.g., Blair, 1995Blair, , 2001. The low-fear explanation suggests that failed socialization in psychopathic individuals is the result of an attenuated ability to experience fear and, subsequently, a reduced ability to adjust their behavior in response to the negative consequences their behavior has led to in the past. Empirical support for this position is drawn from experiments suggesting that psychopathic individuals show impaired fear conditioning (Lykken, 1957) and impaired startle reflex potentiation (Levenston, Patrick, Bradley, & Lang, 2000).The VIM model suggests that there is a system that preferentially responds to sad and particularly fearful emotional displays (Blair, 1995(Blair, , 2001. The functional integrity of this system is thought to be crucial for moral socialization; the healthy individual learns to avoid initiating behaviors that result in the sadness or fear of others because this is aversive to the observer. One of the important predictions of the VIM model is that psychopathic individuals should show particular difficulty when processing sad and fearful expressions. Responding to other facial expressions (e.g., anger and disgust) has been shown, through neuroimaging studies, to involve dissociable systems from those that process sad and fearful expressions. These other systems are not thought to be impaired in psychopath...

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