Reduced electrodermal activity in psychopathy-prone adolescents.
This study tests the hypothesis that psychopathy-prone adolescents show reduced anticipatory skin conductance responding. Electrodermal activity was recorded while participants anticipated and responded to a 105 dB signaled or unsignaled white-noise burst. Using an extreme groups design, the authors used Child Psychopathy Scale (D. R. Lynam, 1997) scores from a community sample of 335 male adolescents (age 16) to form control (n = 65) and psychopathy-prone (n = 65) groups. Significantly more psychopathy-prone participants were nonresponders in the signaled anticipatory (p = .014), signaled responsivity (p = .037), and unsignaled responsivity (p = .003) conditions compared with controls. Anticipatory hyporesponsivity of psychopathy-prone adolescents similar to the electrodermal hyporesponsivity found in psychopathic adults suggests that this autonomic impairment is present by adolescence and may predispose individuals to adult psychopathy.
Fung
Michelle T
MT
Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-1061, USA. mfung@usc.edu
Raine
Adrian
A
Loeber
Rolf
R
Lynam
Donald R
DR
Steinhauer
Stuart R
SR
Venables
Peter H
PH
Stouthamer-Loeber
Magda
M
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000523:psychology; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology; D004198:Disease Susceptibility / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007604:Juvenile Delinquency / Q000523:psychology; D008297:Male; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects; D000297:Psychology, Adolescent; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology*