Psychopathic callousness and perspective taking in pain processing: an ERP study.

Psychopathy is a multifaceted personality disorder characterized by distinct affective/interpersonal traits, including callousness-unemotionality/meanness, which are often considered the hallmarks of empathic deficits. It has been posited that the processing of others' pain could play an important role in empathy capabilities. This study aimed to investigate the influence of perspective taking on electrocortical responses during pain processing in relation to psychopathic callousness.

Attentional biases in abstinent patients with cocaine use disorder: rapid orienting or delayed disengagement?

Addiction-related attentional biases may play a central role in the development and maintenance of drug-seeking and drug-taking behaviors. However, evidence in cocaine dependence is limited and mixed. This study examined the time course and component processes of attentional biases for cocaine-related cues in a sample of 47 outpatients (38 men) with cocaine use disorder (CUD) with varying durations of current abstinence.

Low defensive cardiac reactivity as a physiological correlate of psychopathic fearlessness: Gender differences.

Affective/interpersonal features of psychopathy have been consistently associated with diverse psychophysiological indicators of low threat sensitivity, suggesting an underlying deficit in the reactivity of the brain's defensive motivational system. This study examined the Cardiac Defense Response (CDR) -a complex pattern of heart rate changes in response to an aversive, intense, and unexpected stimulus- and its second accelerative component (A2), as a new physiological indicator of the fearlessness trait component of psychopathy. The differential contribution of dispositional fearlessness, externalizing proneness, and coldheartedness to the CDR pattern elicited during a defense psychophysiological test was examined in a mixed-gender sample of 156 undergraduates (62% women) assessed by the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised (PPI-R).

Attention-affect interactions and triarchic psychopathy: New electrophysiological insights from the late positive potential.

One of the most prominent characteristics of psychopathy is a reduced processing of emotionally relevant information. However, it is still unclear how attentional mechanisms may modulate this deficit. The current study aimed to examine the impact of attentional focus on emotion processing in relation to the triarchic constructs of boldness, meanness, and disinhibition.

Psychopathy and heart rate variability: A new physiological marker for the adaptive features of boldness.

The boldness disposition of the triarchic model of psychopathy is theorized to entail, aside from mal-adaptive proclivities (narcissism, fearless risk-taking), some adaptive features (e.g., immunity to stressful events, high self-esteem, and emotional resilience) that seem to predispose high boldness individuals to an effective emotional regulation in response to environmental demands.

Latent variable modeling of item-based factor scales: Comment on Triarchic or septarchic?-Uncovering the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure's (TriPM) Structure, by Roy et al.

We critique Roy et al.'s (2020; this issue) approach to characterizing the item-level factor structure of the three scales of the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM), in light of the manner in which the TriPM scales were developed, the purposes they were designed to serve, and the growing body of evidence supporting their construct validity. We focus on three major points: (1) The TriPM scales are item-based factor scales - i.

Electrocortical measures of performance monitoring from go/no-go and flanker tasks: Differential relations with trait dimensions of the triarchic model of psychopathy.

This study examined associations of performance-monitoring event-related potentials (ERPs) from go/no-go and flanker tasks with one another, and with psychopathy-related traits of disinhibition, meanness, and boldness. A task-dependent relationship was evident between the error-related negativity (ERN) and trait disinhibition, with high-disinhibited participants showing reduced no-go ERN but not flanker ERN. Disinhibition was also inversely related to variants of the P3 and the error positivity (Pe) from these two tasks.

Response perseveration and the triarchic model of psychopathy in an undergraduate sample.

This study aimed to extend previously reported links between distinctive configurations of traits in the psychopathic personality and maladaptive response perseveration, by examining performance in the Card Perseveration Task (CPT) within the framework of the triarchic model of psychopathy in a mixed-gender undergraduate sample. A computerized version of the CPT was administered to 222 undergraduates (142 women) assessed for triarchic psychopathy dimensions using the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure. Maladaptive response perseveration (more cards played and less money earned) was uniquely associated with trait boldness scores for both women and men.

Identity and expression processing during classical conditioning with faces.

In classical conditioning, conditioned responses (CRs) to aversively paired (CS+) relative to unpaired (CS-) face images are often interpreted in terms of the specific individual displayed in the CS + face image having adopted an aversive emotional connotation. This interpretation requires conditioning to rely on an association between CS + face identity and the occurrence of the aversive event (UCS). Here, we tested this requirement assuming that if an association between CS + face identity and UCS occurrence is established, CRs to originally conditioned face images should transfer to novel images of same-identity faces.

Deficient aversive-potentiated startle and the triarchic model of psychopathy: The role of boldness.

This study examined the contribution of the phenotypic domains of boldness, meanness, and disinhibition of the triarchic conceptualization of psychopathy (Patrick, Fowles, & Krueger, 2009) to deficient aversive-potentiated startle in a mixed-gender sample of 180 undergraduates. Eyeblink responses to noise probes were recorded during a passive picture-viewing task (erotica, neutral, threat, and mutilation). Deficient threat vs.

Binding neutral information to emotional contexts: Brain dynamics of long-term recognition memory.

There is abundant evidence in memory research that emotional stimuli are better remembered than neutral stimuli. However, effects of an emotionally charged context on memory for associated neutral elements is also important, particularly in trauma and stress-related disorders, where strong memories are often activated by neutral cues due to their emotional associations. In the present study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate long-term recognition memory (1-week delay) for neutral objects that had been paired with emotionally arousing or neutral scenes during encoding.

Facing Challenges in Differential Classical Conditioning Research: Benefits of a Hybrid Design for Simultaneous Electrodermal and Electroencephalographic Recording.

Several challenges make it difficult to simultaneously investigate central and autonomous nervous system correlates of conditioned stimulus (CS) processing in classical conditioning paradigms. Such challenges include, for example, the discrepant requirements of electroencephalography (EEG) and electrodermal activity (EDA) recordings with regard to multiple repetitions of conditions and sufficient trial duration. Here, we propose a MultiCS conditioning set-up, in which we increased the number of CSs, decreased the number of learning trials, and used trials of short and long durations for meeting requirements of simultaneous EEG-EDA recording in a differential aversive conditioning task.

Emotional reactivity during anticipation and perception of affective pictures.

The focus of the present study was on further exploring anticipatory responses to emotional stimuli by measuring the eyeblink startle reflex in a variation of the picture-picture affective learning procedure. Participants (113 undergraduate women) were not explicitly instructed before the experiment began. Instead, they had to learn the specific relations between cues (geometrical shapes) and emotional pictures based on pairings during the first part of the task.

FFM description of the triarchic conceptualization of psychopathy in men and women.

This study examined differential associations between phenotypic domains of the triarchic conceptualization of psychopathy (boldness, meanness, and disinhibition; Patrick, Fowles, & Krueger, 2009), as assessed by the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (Patrick, 2010b), and the five-factor model (FFM) of normal personality, as indexed by the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992; Spanish version, Costa & McCrae, 1999), in 349 undergraduates (96 men). Distinctive patterns of correlations for psychopathy components did not differ significantly across gender, although relations between Meanness and Agreeableness were stronger for men than for women. Our findings are largely consistent with the conceptualization of psychopathy in terms of FFM constructs and provide discriminant evidence in support of all 3 triarchic domains.

Deficient fear conditioning and self-reported psychopathy: the role of fearless dominance.

The role of the two dimensions of psychopathy-dispositional fearlessness (theorized to reflect variations in reactivity of the brain's defensive system) and externalizing proneness (presumed to reflect variations in function of anterior regulatory systems)-in fear learning was examined in a sample of undergraduates assessed using the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised (PPI-R) who participated in a differential aversive conditioning task. Only scores on self-reported "fearless dominance," irrespective of scores on "impulsive antisociality," were related to diminished acquisition of physiological fear. Consistent with dual-process accounts of psychopathy proposing divergent etiological pathways for the interpersonal/affective and the social deviance features of the disorder, our results lend support to the existence of a deficit in reactivity of the brain's defensive system underlying the fearlessness dimension of psychopathy.

Cardiac defense response as a predictor of fear learning.

Prior studies have demonstrated that differences in activation of the defensive motivational system - as indexed by cardiac responses to the CS+ during aversive conditioning - are related to differences in the acquisition of two-levels-of-learning: cognitive (contingency learning) and emotional (fear learning). Here we further explored these differences using an independent psychophysiological test to assess cardiac reactivity - Cardiac Defense Response (CDR) - prior to the aversive conditioning task. Participants were then classified as accelerators or decelerators based on the CDR second accelerative component.

Affective picture perception: emotion, context, and the late positive potential.

Event-related potentials (ERP) were measured when pleasant, neutral or unpleasant pictures were presented in the context of similarly valenced stimuli, and compared to ERPs elicited when the same pictures were viewed in an intermixed context. An early ERP component (150-300 ms) measured over occipital and fronto-central sensors was specific to viewing pleasant pictures and was not affected by presentation context. Replicating previous studies, emotional pictures prompted a larger late positive potential (LPP, 400-700 ms) and a larger positive slow wave (1-6 s) over centro-parietal sensors that also did not differ by presentation context.

Response perseveration in psychopaths: Interpersonal/affective or social deviance traits?

In order to clarify the role of the two broad components of psychopathy (interpersonal/affective and social deviance; R. D. Hare, 2003) in explaining maladaptive response perseveration in psychopaths, as well as the role of reflection after punished responses in this deficit, the authors administered a card perseveration task to 47 Spanish male inmates assessed using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; R.

Startle reflex modulation, affective ratings and autonomic reactivity in incarcerated Spanish psychopaths.

Startle probe modulation during affective picture viewing was assessed in a Spanish prison population. As for North American inmates, psychopaths failed to display normal blink potentiation during unpleasant slides even though their evaluative judgments and autonomic reaction to affective stimuli paralleled those of other inmate and noninmate participants. The results suggest that diminished defense activation characterizes psychopaths despite cultural differences.