Testing neuropsychological hypotheses for cognitive deficits in psychopathic criminals: A study of global–local processing

Abstract

Competing hypotheses about neuropsychological mechanisms underlying psychopathy are seldom examined in the same study. We tested the left hemisphere activation hypothesis and the response modulation hypothesis of psychopathy in 172 inmates completing a global-local processing task under local bias, global bias, and neutral conditions. Consistent with the left hemisphere activation hypothesis, planned comparisons showed that psychopathic inmates classified local targets more slowly than nonpsychopathic inmates in a local bias condition and exhibited a trend toward similar deficits for global targets in this condition. However, contrary to the response modulation hypothesis, psychopaths were no slower to respond to local targets in a global bias condition. Because psychopathic inmates were not generally slower to respond to local targets, results are also not consistent with a general left hemisphere dysfunction account. Correlational analyses also indicated deficits specific to conditions presenting most targets at the local level initially. Implications for neuropsychological conceptualizations of psychopathy are considered.

Evaluating the generalizability of a fear deficit in psychopathic African American offenders.

“…In fact, none of these studies, including the present one, have reported significant race by psychopathy interactions (see footnote). Moreover, when investigators do explicitly examine race by psychopathy interactions, they generally find them to be non-significant (e.g., Kosson, Miller, Byrnes & Leveroni, 2007; Suchy & Kosson, 2005; see also Epstein et al, 2006). The absence of such interactions represents an important limitation regarding the conclusions that may be drawn from this and other studies that fail to support the generalizability of psychopathy correlates in African American offenders.…”

“…On the one hand, some investigators have reported a lack of race-related differences in laboratory correlates of psychopathy based on the absence of a significant race by psychopathy interaction (Kosson, Miller, Byrnes & Leveroni, 2007; Suchy & Kosson, 2005; Epstein, Poythress, & Brandon, 2006). However, the absence of a significant interaction is not the same as demonstrating that a particular finding generalizes to another group (i.e.…”

Psychopathy and Risk Taking Among Jailed Inmates

“…Moreover, risky criminal behavior in adult offender populations is multi-determined, arising from a variety of complex interactions among a number of personality (Zuckerman & Kuhlman, 2000), cognitive (Walsh, Swogger, & Kosson, 2004), and social (Beyers, Loeber, Wikstrom, & Stouthamer-Loeber, 2001) factors other than sensation-seeking. Prominent efforts to explain the antisocial behavior of psychopaths have emphasized emotional deficits (Patrick, Cuthbert, and Lang, 1994), impairments in response modulation (Wallace, Vitale, & Newman, 1999), and state-dependent cognitive deficits associated with left hemisphere activation (Kosson et al, 2007), each of which may play a more important role in ICRT than the behavioral tendencies measured by the BART.…”

The Development of Severe and Chronic Violence Among Youth: The Role of Psychopathic Traits and Reward Processing

“… 12 A complete review of the empirical literature on cognitive dysfunction in psychopathy is beyond the scope of this review; however, there is also substantial evidence of deterioration in cognitive efficiency under approach motivation conditions [29, 145] and for specific impairments in processing peripheral stimuli under approach motivation conditions [99, 109] which are likely to further reduce the ability to modify approach behavior based upon punishment cues. …”