Lecture 4 Flashcards
1
Q
What was an experiment about psychopaths and response to treatment?
A
- Studied prisoners released from a therapeutic community in Canada
- Reconvictions after 2y of release
- Treatment for non-psychopaths decreased reconvictions
- Psychopaths who are treated reconvict more as they learn how to manipulate people and only those motivated to get out take the program
2
Q
What was the response to treatment?
A
- Psychopaths’ attitudes and behaviours are difficult to modify
- In UK, people scoring high are not allowed onto certain treatment programs = often don’t want to change but to leave earlier
- Psychopaths do not respond well to traditional current programs = more in-depth analysis is less pessimistic
3
Q
What was a study looking at psychopaths in the system?
A
- PCL-R score predicts disturbing behaviours
- In groups: they intellectualise and turn everything into a debate, evasive and tell lies, act as lawyer and blames others, dramatic and self-centred
- On wing: seeks attention, manipulates others for own needs, quick to exploit loopholes in rules, targets vulnerable staff, inflated sense of self-importance
- They gain conditional release at a greater rate than other offenders AND psychopaths gain more lenient sentences and permissions to appeal against sentences = very skilled at manipulating their image
- Individuals who are able to manipulate their profiles on self-report measures and help others do the same = examples of them manipulating staff into serious breaches of conduct
4
Q
What are the theories for psychopaths?
A
- Dysfunctional amygdala: poor processing of emotional material and insensitivity to punishment = stressed OFC = cannot learn right from wrong
- Paralimbic dysfunction: dysfunction of amygdala and OFC, leads to inability to use emotion to guide behaviour and poor decision-making
- Response Modulation Hypothesis: no specific brain areas, deficit in processing secondary information, so emotion may not be processed if not focus of attention = not empathy/emotion but cognition (overfocused)
5
Q
What was the Hare et al study?
A
- Ppts shown a screen which counts down a loud noise blast = high in psychopathy showed smaller skin conductance responses as the blast approached
- Lous noise = people jump = startle response = seen via eye-blink response
- Startle response is modified by emotional state, happy = reduced and upset = increases, can be manipulated by showing happy/sad pictures
- Normal people = Startle little with pleasant, a bit more with neutral, and more startled with high psychopathy
- Psychopaths = startles less in pleasant, startle highly in neutral, startle less than neutral and almost at same level as pleasant in unpleasant condition
- Most effects driven by factor 1
6
Q
Experiment with boldness?
A
- Boldness was associated with reduced Fear Potentiated Startle to threat stimuli but no effect on other affective images
- Meanness and Disinhibition show no significant results
- Not all psychopaths, just those with high boldness
- Psychopaths seem to show pleasant reactions to unpleasant stimuli = do not get automatic physiological responses = specific to psychopathy
7
Q
What is the Lexical Decision Task?
A
- Normally, when we see a stimulus, we understand it and it creates a physiological reaction, even with words
- Show people letters and put two buttons: word and not word, can assess affective connotations of words by recording lexical decision times and brain activity associated with decisions
- If word is emotional, we are faster at pressing the button for word
- With neutral emotionality of words = RT is same for Psych&non-Psych
- With positive emotionality = RT is quicker for non-psych vs psych
- With negative emotionality = RT is roughly the same for non-psych, but is very high and longer for psychopaths
8
Q
Response Modulation Hypothesis:
A
- Cognitive explanation of psychopathy
- Psych individuals have focused attention and fixate on certain things at the expense of others
- Noted that children with psychopathic tendencies were poor at spotting facial expressions and also failed to spend time looking at a person’s eyes. By forcing them to look at eyes = deficit disappeared
9
Q
What was a study looking at response modulation hypothesis?
A
- Train people to expect shock when see red letters on screen but not green
- Measured startle to red/green letters under two conditions: fear focus = had to say if letter was red/green OR alternate focus = had to say if letter was upper or lower case
- No effect of psychopathy in fear focus condition (as attention is focused) = reduced FPS in psychopaths in alternate focus
- Low psych: startled more with threat in both conditions
- High psych: startled more with red letters in threat condition, but no difference in startle in alternative focus condition = results hold for factor 1 and 2
10
Q
What did Grey et al do?
A
- Replicated Burley et al using pupillometry
- Tested 125 males
- Used sounds rather than images = sounds are more evocative and don’t have problem of early constriction that can hide sympathetic NS dilation
- Reduced effect of negative sounds in psychopathy - confined to meanness scale of TriPM
11
Q
Psychopathy and emotional recognition:
A
- Faces morphed from neutral to a particular expression - people have to press button when they think they can recognise the expression
- Did it for many emotions: significant difference for fearful faces = specific deficit for fear for psychopaths = is the difference in fear = a larger difference than the other emotions
- HOWEVER most results have been found inc. psychopaths are better at recognising emotions
12
Q
What neuropsych deficits do psychopaths have?
A
- Most things - no problem through pure ASPD generally do
- Go-Nogo task (psych make lots of commission errors - pressing when they are not supposed to), smell discrimination(require OFC - less able to do), porteus maze (don’t do it slowly but they have difficulty following rules) are tasks they have deficits in
- Characterised difference as those that rely on DLPC vs OFC
- Iowa Gambling Task = sensitive to OFC function
- Tested 40 offenders on IGT and PCL-R = normal = picking high risk decks and slowly change to picking low risk BUT psych = don’t show any difference in performance over time
13
Q
How was tower of London task related?
A
- Found that psychopathy is associated with a lack of planning
- Task gets harder as they spend more time thinking before commencing moving
- Absent in those with high PCL-R scores = planning time did not change, normal people spend longer planning for harder tasks
- Heavily relies on OFC
14
Q
How was the Brixton test related?
A
- Have to work out rule of where dot will be next - rule changes from time to time
- Psych have no trouble detecting the rule but then had trouble sticking to rule: many said they were trying to anticipate the rule change/beat system
15
Q
What is the relationship between psychopathy and the brain?
A
- Not very clear with brain imaging
- No consistent result
- Some people say it’s the amygdala and OFC, or others say limbic system
