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Citation |
Domes G, Mense J, Vohs K, Habermeyer E. Psychiatry Res. 2013; 209(1): 78-84. |
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Affiliation |
Department of Psychology, Laboratory for Biological and Personality Psychology, University of Freiburg, Stefan-Meier-Strasse 8, D-79104 Freiburg, Germany. Electronic address: domes@psychologie.uni-freiburg.de. |
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Copyright |
(Copyright © 2013, Elsevier Publishing) |
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DOI |
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PMID |
23261185 |
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Abstract |
Offenders with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) may be characterized by a lack in emotional functioning that manifests in irritability and a lack of remorse. The proposed link between ASPD and negative emotionality led to the question of emotional processing anomalies in ASPD. Furthermore, the effect of childhood maltreatment/abuse on emotional processing was tested in the present study. Violent and sexual offenders with ASPD (n=35), without ASPD (n=34), and healthy non-criminal controls (n=24) were compared in an Emotional Stroop Task (EST) using neutral, negative, and violence-related words. Secondary analyses focused on the effect of psychopathic traits and childhood maltreatment. Offenders with ASPD showed a stronger attentional bias to violence-related and negative words as compared to controls. Comparable results were obtained when grouping offenders to high, medium, and low psychopathic subgroups. Offenders with childhood maltreatment specifically showed stronger violence-related attentional bias than non-maltreated offenders. The data suggest that enhanced attention to violence-related stimuli in adult criminal offenders is associated with adverse developmental experiences and delinquency but to a lesser extent with antisocial or psychopathic traits. Language: en |