Passive avoidance in psychopaths: The effects of reward

Newman, Joseph P.; Patterson, C. Mark; Howland, Eric W.; Nichols, Sharon L.

doi:10.1016/0191-8869(90)90021-i

Cited by 256 publications

(213 citation statements)

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“…For instance, research suggests that the association between psychopathy and deficient response modulation is relatively specific to a subgroup of Caucasian psychopathic offenders with low levels of anxiety as assessed by the Welsh Anxiety Scale. Research with African American samples has failed to yield significant group differences on the passive avoidance or picture-word tasks (Kosson, Smith, & Newman, 1990;Newman & Schmitt, 1998;Newman et al, 1997;Thornquist & Zuckerman, 1995) and comparisons involving high-anxious psychopathic and nonpsychopathic offenders have also yielded non-significant results (Newman & Schmitt, 1998;Newman, Howland, Patterson, & Nichols, 1990;Newman et al, 1997). Thus, although response modulation deficits may be relevant to the disinhibited behavior of low-anxious, Caucasian psychopathic individuals, they do not appear to be central to the disinhibited behavior of these other groups.…”

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confidence: 83%

Deficient Behavioral Inhibition and Anomalous Selective Attention in a Community Sample of Adolescents with Psychopathic Traits and Low-Anxiety Traits

Vitale

Newman

Bates

et al. 2005

J Abnorm Child Psychol

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Socialization is the important process by which individuals learn and then effectively apply the rules of appropriate societal behavior. Response modulation is a psychobiological process theorized to aid in socialization by allowing individuals to utilize contextual information to modify ongoing behavior appropriately. Using Hare's (1991) Psychopathy Checklist and the Welsh (1956) anxiety scale, researchers have identified a relatively specific form of a response modulation deficit in lowanxious, Caucasian psychopaths. Preliminary evidence suggests that the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD; Frick & Hare, 2001) may be used to identify children with a similar vulnerability. Using a representative community sample of 308 16-year-olds from the Child Development Project (Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1990), we tested and corroborated the hypotheses that participants with relatively low anxiety and high APSD scores would display poorer passive avoidance learning and less interference on a spatially separated, picture-word Stroop task than controls. Consistent with hypotheses, the expected group differences in picture-word Stroop interference were found with male and female participants, whereas predicted differences in passive avoidance were specific to male participants. To the extent that response modulation deficits contributing to poor socialization among psychopathic adult offenders also characterize a subgroup of adolescents with mild conduct problems, clarification of the developmental processes that moderate the expression of this vulnerability could inform early interventions.Keywords response modulation; psychopathy; adolescents; socialization Developmental approaches to juvenile delinquency, conduct disorder, criminality, and psychopathy commonly emphasize the mediating construct of socialization (Eysenck, 1967;Lykken, 1995; Mednick & Christiansen, 1977;Trasler, 1978). Socialization involves the partially independent processes of learning a society's accepted rules for appropriate conduct NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript and using this information to conform one's behavior to these rules. Accordingly, failures of socialization that result in stable antisocial adjustment are commonly attributed to one or both of these processes.Consistent with this emphasis on learning and using rules to regulate one's behavior, laboratory-based investigations of the processes hampering appropriate socialization emphasize passive avoidance learning. Passive avoidance involves the inhibition of behavior that would otherwise result in punishment. Supporting the importance of passive avoidance learning for socialization, passive avoidance deficits are a reliable correlate of psychopathy (e.g., Lykken, 1957;Newman & Kosson, 1986;Schmauk, 1970), conduct disorder/juvenile delinquency (Hartung, Milich, Lynam, & Martin, 2002;Moses, Ratliff, & Ratliff, 1979;Newman, Widom, & Nathan, 1985), and other syndromes characterized by poorly regulated, socially inappropriate behavior (e.g., ...

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confidence: 83%

Deficient Behavioral Inhibition and Anomalous Selective Attention in a Community Sample of Adolescents with Psychopathic Traits and Low-Anxiety Traits

Vitale

Newman

Bates

et al. 2005

J Abnorm Child Psychol

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100

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“…Newman et al (1990) loss also involved a competing reward contingency. Namely, in a situation where the reward contingency is a salient component of the task, psychopathic individuals tend to take risks to obtain uncertain rewards.…”

Section: The Go/no-go Discrimination Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Namely, in a situation where the reward contingency is a salient component of the task, psychopathic individuals tend to take risks to obtain uncertain rewards. In the go/no-go discrimination task used by Newman et al (1985Newman et al ( , 1990Newman & Kosson, 1986), the computer flashes a series of numbers on the screen. Participants have to decide when to respond (by pressing a key) and when not to respond.…”

Section: The Go/no-go Discrimination Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The present article applies a similar type of model to the go/no-go discrimination task. As in the Iowa Gambling Task, studies have found poor performance on this task in several diverse clinical populations, including, for example, incarcerated psychopathic individuals, extraverts, and juvenile delinquents (Finn, Mazas, Justus, & Steinmetz, 2002;Newman, 1987;Newman, Patterson, Howland, & Nichols, 1990;Patterson, Kosson, & Newman, 1987;Scerbo et al, 1990), as well as children with attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (Hartung, Milich, Lynam, & Martin, 2002;Iaboni, Douglas, & Baker, 1995;Vaidya & Gabrieli, 1999), individuals with defensive coping styles (Shane & Peterson, 2004), and individuals with high anxiety (in females, Segarra, Molto, & Torrubia, 2000). The present cognitive model analyzes the source of performance deficits in the task and can be used to discover whether the performance errors in these populations are driven by the same factor.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A formal cognitive model of the go/no-go discrimination task: Evaluation and implications.

Yechiam

Goodnight

Bates

et al. 2006

Psychological Assessment

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This article proposes and tests a formal cognitive model for the go/no-go discrimination task. In this task, the performer chooses whether to respond to stimuli and receives rewards for responding to certain stimuli and punishments for responding to others. Three cognitive models were evaluated on the basis of data from a longitudinal study involving 400 adolescents. The results show that a cuedependent model presupposing that participants can differentiate between cues was the most accurate and parsimonious. This model has 3 parameters denoting the relative impact of rewards and punishments on evaluations, the rate that contingent payoffs are learned, and the consistency between learning and responding. Commission errors were associated with increased attention to rewards; omission errors were associated with increased attention to punishments. Both error types were associated with low choice consistency. The parameters were also shown to have external validity: Attention to rewards was associated with externalizing behavior problems on the Achenbach scale, and choice consistency was associated with low Welsh anxiety. The present model can thus potentially improve the sensitivity of the task to differences between clinical populations. Keywords decision making; impulsivity; individual differences; cognitive models; reinforcement learningIn the last few years there has been increased interest in the use of complex choice tasks for studying individual differences. In fact, tasks such as the Iowa Gambling Task (Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994) and the go/no-go discrimination task (Helmers, Young, & Pihl, 1995;Newman, Widom, & Nathan, 1985) have become part of the array of tasks used by clinical scientists. Clearly, the advantage of using such tasks is that they capture key aspects of impulsive and risky behavior exhibited in real-world situations. In particular, the go/no-go discrimination task assesses the ability of a participant to learn to respond to cues (in the form of numbers presented on the screen) that have been previously paired with rewards and withhold a response to cues that have been paired with punishments. It has been postulated that impulsive individuals respond more frequently to negative cues, owing to an increased focus on reward and an inability to alter this dominant response set (Newman, 1987). However, it is quite possible that other factors lead to poor performance in this go/no-go task.One such factor is a tendency to completely ignore the cues (in the form of numbers) and to focus on the rewards and punishments contingent on responding. Another factor is a slow learning rate due, for instance, to forgetting of the different cues. Finally, some individuals may respond more randomly, alternating between "go" and "no go" irrespective of outcomes, either because of wanting to explore the outcome further or because of such factors as boredom, tiredness, or frustration. Accordingly, there are multiple component processes that can lead to a behavior that may seem impulsive...

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“…Go/No-Go Task First, participants were administered a computerized version of the Go/No-Go Task (Go/No-Go version 1.2; Hiloma Software Development, Montreal, Canada) in accordance to Newman and Kosson (1986) and Newman et al (1990). Participants learned by trial and error to press a button for "active" stimuli and not to press for "passive" stimuli.…”

Section: Neuropsychological Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elevated impulsivity and impaired decision-making cognition in heavy users of MDMA (“Ecstasy”)

et al. 2006

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Rationale: In animal studies, the common club drug 3,4-methylendioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, "Ecstasy") consistently caused a prolonged loss of presynaptic serotonergic neurons, and evidence suggests that MDMA consumption may also affect the human serotonergic system. Serotonin (5-HT) has been implicated in the regulation of impulsivity and such executive functions as decision-making cognition. In fact, MDMA users have shown elevated impulsivity in two studies, but little is known about decision making in drug-free MDMA consumers. Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the cognitive neurotoxicity of MDMA with regard to behavioral impulsivity and decision-making cognition. Methods: Nineteen male, abstinent, heavy MDMA users; 19 male, abstinent cannabis users; and 19 male, drug-naïve controls were examined with the Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFFT) as well as with a Go/No-Go Task (GNG) for impulsivity and with a Gambling Task (GT) for executive functioning. Results: MDMA users showed significantly elevated impulsivity in the MFFT Impulsivity score (I-score), but not in commission errors of the GNG, compared with controls. Cannabis users did not yield altered impulsivity compared with controls. In the GT, MDMA users performed significantly worse than cannabis consumers and controls, whereas cannabis users exhibited the same decision-making capacity as controls. In addition, the I-score as well as the decision-making performance was correlated with measures of MDMA intake. The I-score and the decision-making performance were also correlated. Conclusion: These results suggest that heavy use of MDMA may elevate behavioral impulsivity and impair decision-making cognition possibly mediated by a selective impairment of the 5-HT system.

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Passive avoidance in psychopaths: The effects of reward

Cited by 256 publications

References 23 publications

Deficient Behavioral Inhibition and Anomalous Selective Attention in a Community Sample of Adolescents with Psychopathic Traits and Low-Anxiety Traits

Deficient Behavioral Inhibition and Anomalous Selective Attention in a Community Sample of Adolescents with Psychopathic Traits and Low-Anxiety Traits

A formal cognitive model of the go/no-go discrimination task: Evaluation and implications.

Elevated impulsivity and impaired decision-making cognition in heavy users of MDMA (“Ecstasy”)

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