Citation

Gillespie SM, Rotshtein P, Beech AR, Mitchell IJ. Biol. Psychol. 2017; 128: 29-38.

Affiliation

School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.biopsycho.2017.07.003

PMID

28729022

Abstract

Research with developmental and adult samples has shown a relationship of psychopathic traits with reduced eye gaze. However, these relationships remained to be investigated among forensic samples. Here we examined the eye movements of male violent offenders during an emotion recognition task. Violent offenders performed similar to non-offending controls, and their eye movements varied with the emotion and intensity of the facial expression. In the violent offender group Boldness psychopathic traits, but not Meanness or Disinhibition, were associated with reduced dwell time and fixation counts, and slower first fixation latencies, on the eyes compared with the mouth. These results are the first to show a relationship of psychopathic traits with reduced attention to the eyes in a forensic sample, and suggest that Boldness is associated with difficulties in orienting attention toward emotionally salient aspects of the face.

Copyright © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Boldness; Emotion; Expression; Eye gaze; Eye scan paths; Fear; Psychopathy; Triarchic