Abstract
Recent research has demonstrated that psychopathic offenders exhibit dynamic cognitive and behavioral deficits on a variety of lab tasks that differentially activate left hemisphere resources. The Left Hemisphere Activation (LHA) hypothesis is a cognitive perspective that aims to address these deficits by conceptualizing psychopathy as a disorder in which behavior and cognitive processing change dynamically as a function of the differential taxation of left hemisphere resources. This study aimed to investigate whether psychopathic traits are associated with electrophysiological anomalies under conditions that place differential demands on left hemisphere language processing systems. We examined in a sample of 43 incarcerated indivdiuals the evocation of the N320, an event-related potential (ERP) elicited by nontarget stimuli during a phonological/phonetic decision task that has been shown to elicit greater activation and cognitive processing within the left hemisphere than the right hemisphere. Findings for a subsample of 18 offenders low in psychopathic traits were generally consistent with previous findings in healthy individuals, suggesting similar electrophysiological activity during phonological processing. However, psychopathic traits impacted the amplitude of the N320. Higher levels of psychopathic traits were associated with reduced left-lateralization in phonological processing as well as enhanced ERP differentiation between pronounceable and nonpronounceable stimuli. These findings provide physiological evidence of a relationship between psychopathic traits and anomalous language processing at the phonological level of word processing.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 43-51 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | International Journal of Psychophysiology |
| Volume | 168 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 2021 |
Funding
The study reported here was supported in part by National Institute of Mental Health Grant R01 MH090169 to David Kosson. The authors are grateful to Elizabeth Sullivan for her help in setting up the rhyming task and in administering the task to participants. We are also grateful to Mr. Rick Riddle, Mr. G. Mark McCorley, Superintendant David Wathen, Chief Jennifer Witherspoon, and the officers of the Lake County Jail for their consistent cooperation in the conduct of this research. We also thank Amy Zalke, Marc Swogger, and Zach Walsh for their help in conducting psychopathy assessments. This work was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health , R01 MH090169 , to David Kosson.
Keywords
- Antisocial personality disorder
- Electroencephalography (EEG)
- Event-related potential (ERP)
- Language
- Left Hemisphere Activation (LHA) hypothesis
- N320
- Psychopathy
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology
- Physiology (medical)
- General Neuroscience