L5 - Autonomic Nervous System correlates of antisocial and violent behaviours

Question 1

What are the two main branches of the nervous system?

Answer 1

Central nervous system and peripheral nervous system

Question 2

Which part of the nervous system functions outside of conscious awareness?

Answer 2

Autonomic - controls physiological arousal

Question 3

What are the 3 branches of the autonomic nervous system?

Answer 3

Parasympathetic
Sympathetic
Visceral

Question 4

What is the function of the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system, and what physiological changes does it cause?

Answer 4

Induces arousal:

• pupils dilate
• salivation decreases
• sweat
• respiration increases
• heart rate increases
• digestion slows
• adrenal glands secrete stress hormones

Question 5

What is the function of the parasympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system, and what physiological changes does it cause?

Answer 5

Induces calming:

• pupils contract
• salivation increases
• skin dries
• respiration decreases
• heart rate slows
• digestion activates
• adrenal glands decrease secretion of stress hormones

Question 6

What is the most influential theory on low resting heart and its relation to ASB? What does it suggest?

Answer 6

Fearlessness theory (Raine, 1993)

Low resting HR is a marker for low fear. Disrupts early (age) fear conditioning, facilitating criminal acts that require a degree of fearlessness to carry out.

Question 7

Which theory is an alternative theory for the link between low RHR and ASB?

Answer 7

Sensation-seeking theory (Quay, 1965; Eysenck, 1997)

Low resting HR is an unpleasant physiological state. Therefore those with low RHR seek stimulating behaviours, including antisocial ones, to increase level of arousal.

Question 8

What did Davies and Maliphant (1971) find about the difference in RHR between problem students and non-problem students in a boarding school?

Answer 8

Teachers at boarding school asked to name the students which cause issues (ASB group)

Students had their HR measured 12 times a day for a minute each.

Found significantly lower RHR in the group with AS students, compared to others.

Question 9

What did Wadsworth (1976)

Answer 9

Measured HR before a medical exam. Looked at official delinquent records - court appearances, etc.

Those with records of criminal behaviour had lower RHR than those without.

Question 10

What did Venables (1983) find about RHR in a sample of children with criminal parents in Copenhagen?

Answer 10

Sample of 11 year olds of children with criminal, schizophrenic and psychiatrically normal parents.

The children of criminal fathers had lower RHR than the children of non-criminals. Suggests a genetic link to RHR.

Question 11

What did Ortiz and Raine’s (2004) meta-analysis find, in attempting to summarise the literature on RHR and antisocial children?

Answer 11

Significant overall effect size for resting heart rate, and heart rate during a stressor (focus of the secondary meta-analysis), in its effect on antisocial behaviour.

Low RHR explained Around 5% of the variance in ASB (high compared to other effect sizes in medical literature).

Results regardless of gender, age, method of recording, use of psychiatric control, recruitment source, concurrent vs prospective testing, and source of behavioural rating.

Question 12

What is the correlation between low resting heart rate and antisocial behaviour?

Answer 12

.22, which is huge in the context of a medical literature.

Question 13

What did Baker et al., (2009) find about the genetic influence of low resting heart rate?

Answer 13

Low RHR is under genetic influence, as is antisocial behaviour from age 9-14.

Supports Venables’ (1983) finding re criminal parents.

Question 14

What did Latvala et al., (2015)

Answer 14

Prospective association between low RHR and violent criminality in a sample of 700,000 Swedish men.

Low RHR increase the risks for violent and non-violent ASB in adulthood, as well as unintentional injury in adulthood and committing other crimes (apart from sexual crimes)

Similar associations found for systolic blood pressure

Question 15

What are the proposed factors to be a compound in the relationship between low resting heart rate and ASB?

Answer 15

None. Only low RHR and poor concentration were independently related to violence according to Farrington, (1997)

Low RHR may be one of the most important explanatory factors for violence.

Question 16

Is high RHR a protective factor for ASB?

Answer 16

Raine et al., (1995) showed that high autonomic arousal at age 15 acted as a protective factor against criminal behaviour at age 29.

Those who had engaged in crime up until age 15 but were no longer criminals by 29, had significantly higher cardiovascular and electrodermal (GSR) arousal than the criminal group.

Question 17

What is the countdown paradigm?

Answer 17

Subjects watch a countdown timer and are told that, when it hits 0, there will be a very loud unpleasant white noise in their headphones.

Question 18

Our bodily responses (GSR, HR) are thought to be associated with what?

Answer 18

Bodily response that we have (GSR, HR) is thought to be associated with previous experience with punishment. These experiences seem to drive our moral compass/conscience, making us anxious for acts or behaviours that, on the basis of past punishment, seem to be wrong in some way.

Question 19

What were the differing views of Raine and Blair on the mechanisms for which a conscience/moral compass develops, and how this influences engagement in crime and ASB?

Answer 19

Adrian Raine - how fear conditioning can be really important in crime and ASB engagement

James Blair: instrumental learning of punishment and reward will influence your development of moral rules and knowledge that will decrease engagement in violence and ASB.

Question 20

What did Lorber’s (2004) meta-analysis find on the relationship between fear conditioning, aggression, psychopathy and conduct problems?

Answer 20

Poor fear conditioning is associated with aggression, psychopathy and conduct problems

Question 21

What did Gao (2010) find in their longitudinal study of childhood fear conditioning and adult crime?

Answer 21

Measured fear conditioning in 3 year olds. GSR measured.

At age 23, 137 were criminal offenders. 274 comparison subjects.

When the pitch wasn’t followed by an unpleasant noise, the groups didn’t differ in the GSR. When the low pitch was followed by the unpleasant noise, a greater electrodermal response was found in the controls.

Question 22

What did Bechara et al., (1995) find about the neural regions associated with fear conditioning, and factual knowledge of what stimuli will elicit?

Answer 22

Controls could recognise pairing between US and CS, and showed heightened GSR response.

Amygdala patients could recognise association, but had no GSR conditioning.

Hippocampal patients had a normal GSR response but could not explicitly say what the relationship was.

Patients with amygdala and hippocampal damage had impairments in both aspects.

Hippocampus - associated with memory, amygdala associated with the pairing between stimuli - could be the mechanism for fear conditioning.

Question 23

What is the insular cortex responsible for?

Answer 23

Important for GSR. May be crucial for perception of bodily change. Recognition and experience of emotion, and empathy.

Question 24

What did Critchley et al., (2004) show about the function of the insular?

Answer 24

Those better at detecting HR had greater gray matter volume, and activity, of the insula.

Question 25

What did Birbaumer et al., (2005) find about differences between psychopaths and controls in their responses to fear conditioning?

Answer 25

Psychopaths vs controls. Photos of men with moustaches paired with a thumb electric shock. No differences in explicit recognition of contingency between moustache and shock. Controls - seeing the moustache was much more unpleasant Psychopaths - no differences between moustache and no-moustache. Psychopaths reported that it was more arousing to look at the guys with the moustache - similar to controls GSR - controls have a far higher conductance during acquising of the association. No difference for psychopaths. Psychopaths can recognise which stimulus is associated with pain, and they recognise that they should be intimidated, but their body's physiological response just doesn't care.

Question 26

What did Fairchild et al., (2009) show about skin conductance responses in youths with CD?

Answer 26

Youths with CD. Used skin conductance, and white noise as the aversive stimulus. Adolescent onset and childhood onset CD both showed reduced skin conductance response tot he stimulus predicting aversive white noise. Impairment in classical aversive conditioning, potentially amygdala issues.

Question 27

What did Fairchild et al., (2009) show about skin conductance responses in female youths with CD?

Answer 27

Females showed reduced skin conductance response compared to controls, in response to an aversive stimulus. Females with CD also show deficient classical fear conditioning.

Question 28

What is the fear-potentiated startle reflex?

Answer 28

Reflex - present in different species. Unconscious defensive response to threatening stimuli found across the lifespan.

Question 29

How is the fear-potentiated startle reflex measured?

Answer 29

Sensors on the muscle just below the eyes. Brief burst of white noise is played in headphones, and the eyeblink response is measured by recording electrical activity in that eye muscle

Question 30

What are the advantages of the startle reflex over the use of heart rate and skin conductance?

Answer 30

It indexes both aversive emotional activity independently of arousal and task demands. Fear will increase HR and skin conductance. But so will sexual arousal. Startle reflex is valence-specific, only elicited by fear or threat-based emotions.

Question 31

According to the psychopathy and low fear hypothesis, what are psychopaths impaired on?

Answer 31

Psychopaths show impairments on: - aversive conditioning (being shocked) - autonomic responses to anticipated threat (countdown) - passive avoidance learning - the augmentation of the startle reflex to visual threat primes (eyeblink response)

Question 32

What did Patrick, Bradley and Lang (1993) show about the potential cause of deficient startle responses in psychopaths?

Answer 32

Psychopaths with higher factor 2 only (antisocial-impulsive) vs psychopaths with high factor 1 and 2. Looked at response to unpleasant and pleasant stimuli. Those high on factor 2 only showed the expected startle reflex to unpleasant visual primes Unusually low startle response was only seen in those with high factor 1 and 2. Suggests that the impairment causing the startle response (perhaps amygdala dysfunction) is linked to factor 1.

Question 33

What did Fairchild et al., (2008; 2010) show about the startle reflex in those with CD?

Answer 33

Males and females with CD show lower startle reflexes in response to positive, neutral, sad, disgusted and fearful faces, regardless of adolescent or childhood onset CD. Amygdala dysfunction in youths with CD present in males and females, and across the two trajectories (AL and LCP)