Evoked potential augmenting-reducing in psychopaths and criminals with impaired smooth-pursuit eye movements.
Previous studies that have assessed a stimulation-seeking theory of psychopathy are open to the criticism that psychopaths may lie on self-report questionnaires. The present study uses event-related potential (ERP) augmenting-reducing as a psychophysiological analog of stimulation-seeking in psychopaths to test this theory. It is also hypothesized that "schizoid" criminals, as defined by poor eye tracking, would show nonaugmenting/reducing, a profile characteristic of schizophrenia. Schizoid criminals were found to be characterized by nonaugmenting/reducing, but psychopaths were not found to be characterized by augmenting. It is concluded that stimulation-seeking is a viable theory of criminality but not of psychopathy, and that the etiological basis to schizoid criminality may differ substantially from criminality, per se.
Raine
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A
Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles 90089-1061.
Venables
P H
PH
D000328:Adult; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004585:Electrooculography; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010556:Personality Tests; D011698:Pursuit, Smooth / Q000502:physiology; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted