title: Offenders with antisocial personality disorder show attentional bias for violence-related stimuli.
abstract: Offenders with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) may be characterized by a lack in emotional functioning that manifests in irritability and a lack of remorse. The proposed link between ASPD and negative emotionality led to the question of emotional processing anomalies in ASPD. Furthermore, the effect of childhood maltreatment/abuse on emotional processing was tested in the present study. Violent and sexual offenders with ASPD (n=35), without ASPD (n=34), and healthy non-criminal controls (n=24) were compared in an Emotional Stroop Task (EST) using neutral, negative, and violence-related words. Secondary analyses focused on the effect of psychopathic traits and childhood maltreatment. Offenders with ASPD showed a stronger attentional bias to violence-related and negative words as compared to controls. Comparable results were obtained when grouping offenders to high, medium, and low psychopathic subgroups. Offenders with childhood maltreatment specifically showed stronger violence-related attentional bias than non-maltreated offenders. The data suggest that enhanced attention to violence-related stimuli in adult criminal offenders is associated with adverse developmental experiences and delinquency but to a lesser extent with antisocial or psychopathic traits.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Laboratory for Biological and Personality Psychology, University of Freiburg, Stefan-Meier-Strasse 8, D-79104 Freiburg, Germany. domes@psychologie.uni-freiburg.de
authors.forename: Gregor
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Domes
authors.forename: Julia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mense
authors.forename: Knut
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Vohs
authors.forename: Elmar
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Habermeyer
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000987:Antisocial Personality Disorder / Q000150:complications* / Q000523:psychology*; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000209:etiology*; D015982:Bias; D057237:Criminals / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011329:Prisoners / Q000523:psychology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult