Module 11: READINGS (2) Flashcards
What is psychopathy?
Are personality traits and behavioural tendencies positively correlated?
A cluster of personality traits and behavioural tendencies associated with callousness and antisocial behaviours.
Personality traits: > callous-unemotional traits > lack of empathy or remorse > weak social bonds > uncaring nature > shallow emotional responding
Behavioural tendencies: > poor anger control > impulsiveness > irresponsibilty > a parisitic orientation towards others
Personality and Behavioural tendencies are (+)’ly correlated with one another, high in one means high in the other.
Is psychopathy better thought of as taxonomic or continuum?
continuum.
Are psychopathic traits is both adults and children?
Yes, children can exhibit callous-unemotional traits and CD behaviours.
4 Callous-Unemotional Traits:
> Highly Heritable
Childhood CU is moderately predictive of psychopathy
in adulthood.
Are a protective factor against parental maltreatment;
meaning only children that do not have CU-traits who
experience parental maltreatment are at higher risk of
developing antisocial behaviours.
Only antisocial behaviour and CU-traits are heritable.
Meaning that antisocial behaviour in the absence of
CU-traits is not heritable.
Fear is…
> Fear: is the state that accompanies the anticipation of an aversive outcome and promotes avoidance and escape behaviours.
5 Fear Responding:
More prominent in — than —
Hard to recognize —
Less likely to —
> psychopaths are less likely to moderate their behaviour in response to an electric shock, aversive classical conditioning impaired.
Reduced fear-potentiated startle response, skin conductance, contraction of eyebrow muscles during threat anticipation.
Impaired recognition of fear in facial expressions, voice and body language.
Deficit in fear responding is more prevalent in primary psychopaths relative to secondary psychopaths.
Experience fear less intensely and less often.
5 Anger Responding:
> Anger: high arousal state that follows frustration or perceived threat and, behaviorally is closely linked to aggression against the source of frustration or threat.
Psychopaths experience frequent temper tantrums and rage-induced aggression.
More likely to feel goal-frustration induced anger that threat induced anger.
Anger responding in psychopaths is intact and maybe even enhanced.
May show more outwards expressions of anger but experience a muted form of aggression relative to controls.
3 Positive Excitement:
> Positive Excitement: is not happiness, is a state that
accompanies the anticipation of an appetitive outcome
and promotes the acquisition of said reward.
Is intact and may be enhanced in psychopaths which
would explain their tendency to pursue unrestrained
goal-seeking and stimulation.
The motivational component from rewarding stimuli is
enhanced in psychopaths.
1 Disgust:
Intact.
1Sadness:
Insufficient research on sadness in psychopaths.
Are emotions qualitatively or quantitatively distinct?
(A) Qualitatively:
> A limited number of basic emotions are differentiable based on the neurological processes associated with the experience of each emotion.
*emotion-specific deficits
(B) Quantitativley:
> Emotions differ on two continuums of valence (+/-) or arousal (high or low).
> positive excitiment is high in arousal and + in valence.
> fear and anger are high in arousal and - in valance.
*global emotional deficit.
In summary, evidence suggests that emotions are qualitatively distinct in which fear (high and -) are impaired but anger (high and -), positive excitement (high and +) and disgust (high and -) are left intact.
What do enhanced frustration based anger and positive excitement in psychopaths tell us?
that psychopaths have intact reward systems but their threat anticipation systems are impaired.
The amygdala is specialised for __ responding.
fear. lesions to amygdala impair threat potentiated feat response and amygdala activation increases in response to threatening stimuli.
4 what amygdala abnormalities are correlated with reduced responding?
> bilateral volume reductions
grey matter reductions
surface abnormalities in the basolateral and lateral amygdala and the cortical and central nuclei.
more abnormalities in convicted than unconvicted psychopaths.
*bilateral damage to the amygdala creates domain- specific deficits in fear responding.
failure to experience fear causes…
struggles in recognition of fear in others, empathy and leads to more antisocial responding.
