Schweiger, Cathy;
(2002)
Are boys with psychopathic tendencies impaired at emotion priming?
Doctoral thesis (D.Clin.Psy), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
This study investigated the sensitivity of boys with psychopathic tendencies to priming using emotion words and facial expressions. This paradigm provided a test between different theories of the development of psychopathy, namely between executive (general or emotion executive) theories and basic emotion processing theories. Boys with psychopathic tendencies were delineated using the Psychopathic Screening Device (Frick and Hare, in press). Fourteen targets (PSD < 23) and seventeen controls (PSD < 15) were drawn from two schools for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. Levels of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (DuPaul Rating Scale, DuPaul, Power, Anastopoulos & Reid, 1998), age and IQ (British Picture Vocabulary Scale 11, Dunn, Dunn, Whetton & Burley, 1997) were controlled for. Targets and controls were presented with a computerised slideshow of both faces priming words and words priming faces using a counterbalanced ABBA design. The results were analysed using repeated measures ANOVAs with response time and error rate as the dependent variables. The results indicated that boys with psychopathic tendencies showed significantly greater interference than controls on incongruent trials for faces priming words in the error data. There was a trend for the same finding in the error data for words priming faces. These results were interpreted as supporting the response modulation hypothesis of psychopathic deficit (Patterson & Newman, 1993), that psychopaths have problems processing secondary information once a dominant response set is established. In particular, the difficulty on the emotion priming task may be due to impulsivity and problems with error-monitoring. The roles of the orbito-frontal cortex and the anterior cingulate in error-monitoring are discussed.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | D.Clin.Psy |
| Title: | Are boys with psychopathic tendencies impaired at emotion priming? |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Thesis digitised by ProQuest. |
| Keywords: | Psychology; Psychopathy |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10099188 |
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