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ABSTRACT: The behavior of psychopathic individuals is thought to reflect a core fear deficit that prevents these individuals from appreciating the consequences of their choices and actions. However, growing evidence suggests that psychopathy-related emotion deficits are moderated by attention and, thus, may not reflect a reduced capacity for emotion responding. The present study attempts to reconcile this attention perspective with one of the most cited findings in psychopathy, which reports emotion-modulated startle deficits among psychopathic individuals during picture viewing. In this study, we evaluate the potential effects of a putative attention bottleneck on the emotion processing of psychopathic offenders during picture viewing by manipulating picture familiarity and examining emotion-modulated startle and late positive potential (LPP). As predicted, psychopathic individuals displayed the classic deficit in emotion-modulated startle during novel pictures, but they showed no deficit in emotion-modulated startle during familiar pictures. Conversely, results for LPP responses revealed psychopathy-related differences during familiar pictures and no psychopathy-related differences during novel pictures. Important differences related to the two factors of psychopathy are also discussed. Overall, the results of this study not only highlight the differential importance of perceptual load on emotion processing in psychopathy, but also raise interesting questions about the varied effects of attention on psychopathy-related emotion deficits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
Journal of Abnormal Psychology 01/2013; · 4.86 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder (APD) have long been considered important risk factors for criminal behavior and incarceration. However, little is known about the psychobiological underpinnings that give rise to the disinhibited behavior of female offenders. Using an instructed fear-conditioning paradigm and a sample of incarcerated female offenders, we manipulated attentional focus and cognitive load to characterize and differentiate between the dysfunctional cognitive and affective processes associated with these syndromes. We used fear-potentiated startle (FPS) and event-related potentials as measures of affective and cognitive processing, respectively. After controlling for APD symptoms, psychopathic women displayed greater FPS while attending directly to threat-relevant stimuli and displayed less FPS while performing a demanding task that directed attention to threat-irrelevant information. Conversely, controlling for psychopathy, women with high APD symptoms displayed less overall FPS, especially when instructed to focus on threat-relevant stimuli. However, as the demands on cognitive resources increased, they displayed greater FPS. For both psychopathy and APD, analysis of the event-related potentials qualified these findings and further specified the abnormal cognitive processes associated with these two syndromes. Overall, simultaneous analysis of psychopathy and APD revealed distinct patterns of cognitive processing and fear reactivity.
Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience 08/2012; · 3.57 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Externalizing traits are characterized by exaggerated emotional (e.g., frustration, anger) and behavioral (e.g., drug seeking, reactive aggression) reactions to motivationally significant stimuli. Explanations for this exaggerated reactivity emphasize attention, executive function, and affective processes, but the associations among these processes are rarely investigated. To examine these interactions, we measure fear potentiated startle (FPS; Experiment 1) and neural activation (Experiment 2) in an instructed fear paradigm that manipulates attentional focus, demands on executive functioning, and emotion. In both studies, exaggerated emotional reactivity associated with externalizing was specific to conditions that focused attention on threat information and placed minimal demands on executive functioning. Results suggest that a crucial cognition-emotion interaction affecting externalizing is the over-prioritization and over-allocation of attention to motivationally significant information, which in turn, may impair executive functions and affective regulation.
Biological psychology 05/2012; 91(1):48-58. · 4.36 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: According to the response modulation model, the poorly regulated behavior of psychopathic individuals reflects a problem reallocating attention to process peripheral information while engaged in goal-directed behavior (Patterson & Newman, 1993). We evaluated this tenet using male prisoners and an early event-related potential component (P140) to index attentional processing. In all task conditions, participants viewed and categorized letter stimuli that could also be used to predict electric shocks. Instructions focused attention either on the threat-relevant dimension of the letters or an alternative, threat-irrelevant dimension. Offenders with high scores on Hare's (2003) Psychopathy Checklist-Revised displayed a larger P140 under alternative versus threat conditions. Beyond demonstrating psychopathy-related differences in early attention, these findings suggest that psychopathic individuals find it easier to ignore threat-related distractors when they are peripheral versus central to their goal-directed behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).
Personality disorders. 10/2011;
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ABSTRACT: Problematic alcohol use and stress response dampening (SRD) are intimately interconnected. Recent evidence suggests that alcohol produces selective SRD during uncertain but not certain threat. We systematically varied shock probability in a novel task assessing alcohol SRD during low probable/uncertain threat, while holding temporal precision of threat constant. Intoxicated (0.08% target blood alcohol concentration) and placebo participants completed a cued shock threat task in which probability of shock administration at the offset of brief visual cues varied parametrically. High probability (100%) shock cues represented certain threat as used in earlier research, while lower probability (20% and 60%) shock cues provided novel uncertain threat conditions. Startle potentiation during cues and inter-trial intervals (ITIs) served as the measure of affective response. General linear model analysis indicated that alcohol SRD magnitude increased monotonically as threat uncertainty increased. Alcohol SRD was significantly greater during 20% and 60% shock threat relative to 100% shock threat. Alcohol also significantly reduced startle potentiation during distal threat in shock-free ITIs. Alcohol SRD magnitude during distal/uncertain threat was meaningfully moderated by individual differences in negative affectivity and weekly alcohol consumption. This work advances understanding of which properties of uncertainty are relevant to anxiety and anxiolytic effects of alcohol.
Journal of Psychopharmacology 09/2011; 26(2):232-44. · 3.04 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Implicit positive alcohol expectancy (PAE) processes are thought to respond phasically to external and internal stimuli-including mood states-and so they may exert powerful proximal influences over drinking behavior. Although social learning theory contends that mood states activate mood-congruent implicit PAEs, which in turn lead to alcohol use, there is a dearth of experimental research examining this mediation model relative to observable drinking. Moreover, an expectancy theory perspective might suggest that, rather than influencing PAEs directly, mood may moderate the association between PAEs and drinking. To test these models, this study examined the role of mood in the association between implicitly measured PAE processes (i.e., latency to endorse PAEs) and immediate alcohol consumption in the laboratory. Gender differences in these processes also were examined.
College students (N = 146) were exposed to either a positive, negative, or neutral mood induction procedure, completed a computerized PAE reaction time (RT) task, and subsequently consumed alcohol ad libitum.
The mood manipulation had no direct effects on drinking in the laboratory, making the mediation hypothesis irrelevant. Instead, gender and mood condition moderated the association between RT to endorse PAEs and drinking in the laboratory. For males, RT to tension reduction PAEs was a stronger predictor of volume of beer consumed and peak blood alcohol concentration in the context of general arousal (i.e., positive and negative mood) relative to neutral mood. RT to PAEs did not predict drinking in the laboratory for females.
The results show that PAE processes are important determinants of immediate drinking behavior in men, suggesting that biased attention to mood-relevant PAEs-as indicated by longer RTs-predicts greater alcohol consumption in the appropriate mood context. The findings also highlight the need to consider gender differences in PAE processes. This study underscores the need for interventions that target automatic cognitive processes related to alcohol use.
Alcoholism Clinical and Experimental Research 07/2011; 36(1):119-29. · 3.34 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Behaviorally, psychopathy and anxiety display opposite patterns of threat sensitivity and response inhibition. However, it is unclear whether this is due to shared or to separate underlying processes. To address this question, we evaluated whether the threat sensitivity of psychopathic and anxious offenders relates to similar or different components of Gray and McNaughton's (2000) Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory using a sample of 87 prisoners and a task that crossed threat onset with attentional focus. Psychopathy was associated with significantly weaker fear-potentiated startle (FPS) under conditions that presented threat cues after alternative, goal-directed cues. Conversely, anxiety was associated with significantly stronger FPS when threat appeared first and was the focus of attention. Furthermore, these differences were statistically independent. The results suggest that the abnormal sensitivity to threat cues associated with psychopathy and anxiety relate to different underlying processes and have implications for understanding the relationship between low- and high-anxious psychopathy.
Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience 05/2011; 11(4):451-62. · 3.57 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Clarification of alcohol's effect on stress response during threat is critical to understand motivation for alcohol use and related alcohol-use disorders. Evaluation of stress response dampening (SRD) effects of alcohol has been limited by nonsystematic use of varied experimental methods and measures.
This experiment parametrically varied alcohol dose and shock threat intensity among social drinkers to examine their effects on startle potentiation, a physiological measure of the affective component of the stress response.
Ninety-six participants were assigned to one of four beverage groups: placebo and target blood alcohol concentration (BAC) groups of 0.04%, 0.075%, and 0.11%. Participants viewed colored cues presented in shock and no-shock blocks. Distinct colored cues predicted imminent low, moderate, or high intensity electric shock administration. Startle potentiation during shock threat relative to no-shock cues indexed affective response.
High threat increased startle potentiation relative to moderate/low intensity threat. Startle potentiation decreased as BAC increased. Threat intensity moderated this BAC effect with the strongest BAC effect observed during high threat. Analysis of individual difference moderators revealed reduced effect of BAC among heavier, more problematic drinkers.
Clear alcohol SRD effects were observed. These SRD effects were greatest at higher BACs and during more potent threat. Failure to account for these factors may partially explain inconsistent findings in past laboratory SRD research. Furthermore, they suggest greater reinforcement from alcohol at higher doses and among individuals with greater stress. Moderation of SRD effects by alcohol consumption and problems point to possible important risk factors.
Psychopharmacologia 04/2011; 218(1):217-27. · 4.08 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Our previous research demonstrated that psychopathy-related fear deficits involve abnormalities in attention that undermine sensitivity to peripheral information. In the present study, we specified this attention-mediated abnormality in a new sample of 87 prisoners assessed with Hare's Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (Hare, 2003). We measured fear-potentiated startle (FPS) under four conditions that crossed attentional focus (threat vs. alternative) with early versus late presentation of threat cues. The psychopathic deficit in FPS was apparent only in the early-alternative-focus condition, in which threat cues were presented after the alternative goal-directed focus was established. Furthermore, psychopathy interacted with working memory capacity in the late-alternative-focus condition, which suggests that individuals high in psychopathy and working memory capacity were able to maintain a set-related alternative focus that reduced FPS. The results not only provide new evidence that attention moderates the fearlessness of psychopathic individuals, but also implicate an early attention bottleneck as a proximal mechanism for deficient response modulation in psychopathy.
Psychological Science 02/2011; 22(2):226-34. · 4.43 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Attentional biases and executive control deficits may play a role in smoking cessation failure.
The object of this study was to determine whether smokers' pre-quit reaction times on a computerized modified Simon task (which assesses attentional biases and executive control deficits) predict abstinence following a quit attempt.
Participants (N = 365) in a larger smoking cessation clinical trial completed the modified Simon task twice (while 10-h nicotine-deprived vs. not deprived). In the task, two photographs (i.e., two digital slides) were displayed—one always neutral, the other positive, negative, smoking-relevant, or neutral. A probe (< or >) then appeared to the left or right of center, and participants indicated the arrow's direction (left or right) which was either congruent or incongruent with the arrow's location on the screen. The incongruency effect, a measure of executive control, was calculated by subtracting the reaction time to congruent probes from the reaction time to incongruent probes.
Greater impairment in executive control (i.e., greater probe incongruency effects) after viewing positive and smoking slides relative to negative slides predicted an inability to establish initial cessation and to maintain abstinence up to 8 weeks post-quit.
These effects may be because smokers who avoid/escape from processing negative affect are more likely to fail in a cessation attempt. Differences in relatively automatic responses to affective cues distinguish smokers who are successful and unsuccessful in their smoking cessation attempts, but effects were modest in size.
Psychopharmacologia 11/2010; 214(3):603-16. · 4.08 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Laboratory studies of psychopathy have yielded an impressive array of etiologically relevant findings. To date, however, attempts to demonstrate the generalizability of these findings to African American psychopathic offenders have been largely unsuccessful. The fear deficit has long been regarded as the hallmark of psychopathy, yet the generalizability of this association to African American offenders has not been systematically evaluated. In this study, we used an instructed fear paradigm and fear-potentiated startle to assess this deficit and the factors that moderate its expression in African American offenders. Furthermore, we conceptualized psychopathy using both a unitary and a two-factor model, and we assessed the constructs with both interview-based and self-report measures. Regardless of assessment strategy, results provided no evidence that psychopathy relates to fear deficits in African American offenders. Further research is needed to clarify whether the emotion deficits associated with psychopathy in European American offenders are applicable to African American offenders.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology 11/2010; 120(1):71-8. · 4.86 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Stress response neuroadaptation has been repeatedly implicated in animal addiction models for many drugs, including nicotine. Programmatic laboratory research that examines the stress response of nicotine-deprived humans is necessary to confirm that stress neuroadaptations observed in animal models generalize to humans.
Two experiments tested the prediction that nicotine deprivation selectively increases startle response associated with anxiety during unpredictable threat but not fear during imminent, predictable threat. Dependent smokers (n = 117) were randomly assigned to 24-hour nicotine-deprived or nondeprived groups and participated in one of two experiments wherein electric shock was administered either unpredictably (noncontingent shock; Experiment 1) or predictably (cue-contingent shock; Experiment 2).
Nicotine deprivation increased overall startle response in Experiment 1, which involved unpredictable administration of shock. Age of first cigarette and years of daily smoking were significant moderators of this deprivation effect. Self-reported withdrawal symptoms also predicted startle response during unpredictable shock. In contrast, nicotine deprivation did not alter overall or fear-potentiated startle in Experiment 2, which involved predictable administration of shock.
These results provide evidence that startle response during unpredictable threat may be a biomarker of stress neuroadaptations among smokers in nicotine withdrawal. Contrast of results across unpredictable versus predictable shock experiments provides preliminary evidence that these stress neuroadaptations manifest selectively as anxiety during unpredictable threat rather than in every stressful context. Individual differences in unpredictable threat startle response associated with withdrawal symptoms, age of first cigarette, and years daily smoking link this laboratory biomarker to clinically relevant indexes of addiction risk and relapse.
Biological psychiatry 10/2010; 68(8):719-25. · 8.93 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Psychopathic individuals are generally unresponsive to motivational and emotional cues that facilitate behavioral regulation. A putative mechanism for this deficiency is Gray’s (1981) behavioral inhibition system (BIS). To evaluate the association between psychopathy and BIS functioning, we administered a laboratory-based assessment of BIS functioning to a group of psychopathic offenders assessed with the Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL–R; Hare, 2003). In addition, we tested the hypothesis that the effects of working memory load on BIS functioning would interact differentially with the PCL–R factors. Replicating previous results, psychopathic offenders were less sensitive to BIS-related cues than controls. As predicted, working memory load interacted with Factor 2 (antisocial/impulsive), with higher scores predicting weaker BIS functioning under high-load though not low-load conditions. Results suggest new insights concerning the relationship among working memory, reward sensitivity, and BIS functioning in psychopathy.
Personality disorders. 10/2010; 1(4):203-17.
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ABSTRACT: Psychopathic behavior is generally attributed to a fundamental, amygdala-mediated deficit in fearlessness that undermines social conformity. An alternative view is that psychopathy involves an attention-related deficit that undermines the processing of peripheral information, including fear stimuli.
We evaluated these alternative hypotheses by measuring fear-potentiated startle (FPS) in a group of 125 prisoners under experimental conditions that 1) focused attention directly on fear-relevant information or 2) established an alternative attentional focus. Psychopathy was assessed using Hare's Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R).
Psychopathic individuals displayed normal FPS under threat-focused conditions but manifested a significant deficit in FPS under alternative-focus conditions. Moreover, these findings were essentially unchanged when analyses employed the interpersonal/affective factor of the PCL-R instead of PCL-R total scores.
The results provide unprecedented evidence that higher-order cognitive processes moderate the fear deficits of psychopathic individuals. These findings suggest that psychopaths' diminished reactivity to fear stimuli, and emotion-related cues more generally, reflect idiosyncrasies in attention that limit their processing of peripheral information. Although psychopathic individuals are commonly described as cold-blooded predators who are unmotivated to change, the attentional dysfunction identified in this study supports an alternative interpretation of their chronic disinhibition and insensitive interpersonal style.
Biological psychiatry 09/2009; 67(1):66-70. · 8.93 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Recent theory and empirical research have suggested that fear and anxiety are distinct processes with separable neurobiological substrates. Furthermore, a laboratory procedure has been developed to manipulate fear versus anxiety independently via administration of predictable or unpredictable electric shock, respectively. Benzodiazepines appear to selectively reduce anxiety but not fear in this procedure. The primary aim of this experiment was to determine if alcohol produced a similar selective reduction in anxiety. Intoxicated (target blood alcohol concentration of .08%) and nonintoxicated participants viewed a series of colored squares separated by variable intertrial intervals (ITIs) in 3 conditions. In the predictable shock condition, shocks were administered contingently during every square. In the unpredictable shock condition, shocks were administered noncontingently during both squares and ITIs. In the no-shock condition, no shocks were administered at any time. Alcohol significantly reduced startle potentiation during cues signaling unpredictable but not predictable shock, consistent with the thesis that alcohol selectively reduces anxiety but not fear. In addition, alcohol's effect on startle potentiation during unpredictable shock was mediated by vigilance. This anxiolytic effect may clarify the nature of alcohol's reinforcing effects in social and problem drinkers.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology 06/2009; 118(2):335-47. · 4.86 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Cognitive-attentional factors may moderate emotion deficits associated with psychopathy (Newman & Lorenz, 2003). This study examined the role of these factors in moderating fear-potentiated startle (FPS) as a function of Fearless Dominance and Impulsive Antisociality-personality dimensions with links to psychopathy. University students performed a task that required them to focus on a (a) threat dimension under low working memory load, (b) threat-irrelevant dimension under low load, or (c) threat-irrelevant dimension under high load. Attentional focus, but not working memory load, moderated the relationship between Fearless Dominance and FPS. Fearless Dominance was negatively correlated with FPS only when attention was directed away from the threat. There were no significant findings for Impulsive Antisociality. Results provide evidence that reduced fear response associated with psychopathy may result from an attentional mechanism.
Psychophysiology 06/2009; 46(5):913-21. · 3.29 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Previous research indicates that drug motivational systems are instantiated in structures that process information related to incentive, motivational drive, memorial, motor/habit, craving, and cognitive control processing. The present research tests the hypothesis that activity in such systems will be powerfully affected by the combination of drug anticipation and drug withdrawal. Event-related fMRI was used to examine activation in response to a preinfusion warning cue in two experimental sessions that manipulated withdrawal status. Significant cue-induced effects were seen in the caudate, ventral anterior nucleus of the thalamus, the insula, subcallosal gyrus, nucleus accumbens, and anterior cingulate. These results suggest that withdrawal and nicotine anticipation produce (1) different motor preparatory and inhibitory response processing and (2) different craving related processing.
Psychophysiology 05/2009; 46(4):681-93. · 3.29 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Drug motivation models postulate that attention biasing toward smoking-related cues is a cognitive mechanism supporting continued or renewed drug use, and they predict that drug use history, deprivation, and distress should modulate the extent of this bias. The present study used the modified Stroop paradigm to extend past research regarding attention biasing toward smoking and unpleasant, pleasant, and neutral words among adult nonsmokers and daily smokers. Both nonsmokers and smokers showed differential attention toward unpleasant and pleasant cues, particularly pleasant cues, but did not show a unique bias toward smoking-related stimuli. Results suggested that, among smokers, nicotine deprivation and exogenous stress (threat of electric shock) have a nonadditive effect on attention toward pleasant cues but no effect on attention to smoking cues specifically. Similarly, instructing smokers that they would have an opportunity to smoke did not significantly increase the bias of nicotine-deprived smokers' attention toward smoking-related cues, relative to arousing unpleasant and pleasant cues. Overall, results suggest that smokers' attention may be biased toward both smoking-related and other salient cues when deprived of nicotine and anticipating an opportunity to smoke. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).
Psychology of Addictive Behaviors 04/2009; 23(1):77-90. · 2.09 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Impersonal stressors, not only interpersonal provocation, can instigate aggression through an associative network linking negative emotions to behavioral activation (L. Berkowitz, 1990). Research has not examined the brain mechanisms that are engaged by different types of stress and serve to promote hostility and aggression. The present study examined whether stress exposure elicits more left than right frontal brain activity implicated in behavioral approach motivation and whether this lateralized brain activity predicts stress-induced aggression and hostile/aggressive tendencies. Results showed that (a) participants in the impersonal (assigned to stress by a computer) and interpersonal (assigned to stress by a provoking confederate) stress conditions both showed more left than right frontal electroencephalogram activity after condition assignment and stress exposure and (b) the 2 stress groups exhibited subsequent increases in aggression relative to the no-stress group. Importantly, left frontal asymmetry in response to stress exposure predicted increases in subsequent aggressive behavior, a finding that did not emerge in the no-stress condition. Thus, both the interpersonal and impersonal stressors impacted state changes in brain activity related to behavioral approach, suggesting that stress reactivity involving approach activation represents risk for behavioral dysregulation.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology 03/2009; 118(1):131-45. · 4.86 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Context may differentially influence expectancy dimensions, in turn affecting drinking behavior. The present study examined alcohol cue and mood contextual influences on expectancy activation, controlling for more stable self-reported expectancy endorsement. We were particularly interested in the specific effects of negative mood on affect-relevant (tension reduction) expectancies.
Regularly drinking undergraduates (N = 140; 64 female) underwent a mood (stress or neutral) induction procedure and then were presented with alcohol or nonalcohol beverage cues. Participants next completed a computerized expectancy response time task (ETASK), and self-report measures of drinking variables.
Individual difference analyses generally replicated previous reports on the inverse relationship between alcohol involvement and ETASK response time. However, examination of contextual effects revealed a different pattern of ETASK responding. Participants exposed to alcohol cues were slower to respond to expectancy items than those in the nonalcohol cue condition. Mood and expectancy type moderated this effect; response time after alcohol cues slowed selectively for those in the stress mood condition and only for tension-reduction expectancy items.
These data highlight the dimensionality of expectancies that comes into relief when contextual factors are considered. Expectancy response times index both facilitation, when examined in the context of drinking expertise, and interference, in response to motivationally relevant stimuli. Our data also support the specificity of contextual effects on those expectancies that are context relevant (i.e., mood). Further consideration of these contextual effects on dynamic expectancy processes may improve prediction of drinking behavior in real-world settings.
Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs 10/2007; 68(5):759-70. · 2.25 Impact Factor
