Crime and amnesia: A review

The present article reviews amnesia for criminal offenses. It discusses the organic disorders most likely to be implicated, and the nature and differentiation of psychogenic amnesia. With the exception of alcohol and drug intoxication, organic dysfunction is a rare (though important) cause of amnesia for crime. Likewise, fugue states may occasionally be triggered by an offence, but are a very rare cause of the amnesia claimed by offenders. Amnesia is most commonly seen in homicide cases, in which it is claimed by 25% to 45% of offenders, but it occurs also in other types of violent crime, and occasionally in nonviolent crime. It arises in states of extreme emotional arousal, in alcoholic intoxication, and in states of florid psychosis; and it is also associated with depressed mood. Various methods have been advocated for the differentiation of genuine amnesia from deliberate simulation: this distinction can be difficult, but it is noticeable that many amnesic subjects either have reported the crime themselves or have made no attempt to conceal it. The nature of the deficit in this type of amnesia, and its implications for assessment, are also discussed.     

Fearlessness in juvenile offenders is associated with offending rate

Poor fear conditioning is a correlate of violent offending in adults, but there is no evidence concerning juvenile offenders. Our aim was to compare emotional learning in juvenile offenders and controls and establish whether crime rate is related to seriousness of emotional learning problems. To this end, emotional learning was assessed in 42 juvenile offenders by measuring skin conductance responding (SCR) during fear conditioning. Compared to controls, juvenile offenders showed lower conditioned SCRs to visual stimuli associated with a subsequent aversive stimulus and the magnitude of the SCR during fear acquisition was inversely associated with the number of their recorded offences. These findings suggest that juvenile offenders have impairments in the neural systems that subserve emotional learning. The implication is that using punitive measures to control persistent offenders is unlikely to be effective in an identifiable group of juvenile offenders.     

Empathic deficits in sexual offenders: An integration of affective,social, and cognitive constructs

A number of researchers have suggested that lack of empathy is a critical feature in the assessment and treatment of sex offenders. However, difficulties with definitions of empathy and corresponding measures of that construct have led to limited and disparate empirical findings supporting this claim. Such findings may be due to a definition of empathy that fails to incorporate other key factors related to sexual offending. Factors such as inaccurate social perceptions, cognitive distortions, deficits in interpersonal intimacy, maladaptive emotional regulation abilities, and other socio-cognitive deficiencies thought to contribute to sexually assaultive behavior also share a number of core developmental features with affect and emotional responding. As socio-cognitive abilities tend to develop simultaneously at times as humans mature, it is suspected that social, cognitive, and affective skills impact one another's development and ultimately dictate the expression of empathy in adulthood. Accordingly, deficits in social skills, interpersonal intimacy, and cognitive processes necessary to emotional stability and appropriate social interaction may be critical to the development and expression of empathic deficits and subsequent efforts to treat or reduce such deficits in sexual offenders. This paper will review and integrate literature examining the relationship of various socio-cognitive factors to empathic deficits in sexual offenders.     

The functional neuroanatomy of emotion and affective style

Recently, there has been a convergence in lesion and neuroimaging data in the identification of circuits underlying positive and negative emotion in the human brain. Emphasis is placed on the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the amygdala as two key components of this circuitry. Emotion guides action and organizes behavior towards salient goals. To accomplish this, it is essential that the organism have a means of representing affect in the absence of immediate elicitors. It is proposed that the PFC plays a crucial role in affective working memory. The ventromedial sector of the PFC is most directly involved in the representation of elementary positive and negative emotional states while the dorsolateral PFC may be involved in the representation of the goal states towards which these elementary positive and negative states are directed. The amygdala has been consistently identified as playing a crucial role in both the perception of emotional cues and the production of emotional responses, with some evidence suggesting that it is particularly involved with fear-related negative affect. Individual differences in amygdala activation are implicated in dispositional affective styles and increased reactivity to negative incentives. The ventral striatum, anterior cingulate and insular cortex also provide unique contributions to emotional processing.     

Inhibitory control and negative emotional processing in psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder

The field of personality disorders has had a long-standing interest in understanding interactions between emotion and inhibitory control, as well as neurophysiological indices of these processes. More work in particular is needed to clarify differential deficits in offenders with antisocial personality disorder (APD) who differ on psychopathic traits, as APD and psychopathy are considered separate, albeit related, syndromes. Evidence of distinct neurobiological processing in these disorders would have implications for etiology-based personality disorder taxonomies in future psychiatric classification systems. To inform this area of research, we recorded event-related brain potentials during an emotional-linguistic Go/No-Go task to examine modulation of negative emotional processing by inhibitory control in three groups: psychopathy (n = 14), APD (n = 16), and control (n = 15). In control offenders, inhibitory control demands (No-Go vs. Go) modulated frontal-P3 amplitude to negative emotional words, indicating appropriate prioritization of inhibition over emotional processing. In contrast, the psychopathic group showed blunted processing of negative emotional words regardless of inhibitory control demands, consistent with research on emotional deficits in psychopathy. Finally, the APD group demonstrated enhanced processing of negative emotion words in both Go and No-Go trials, suggesting a failure to modulate negative emotional processing when inhibitory control is required. Implications for emotion-cognition interactions and putative etiological processes in these personality disorders are discussed.     

Reduced prefrontal and increased subcortical brain functioning assessed using positron emission tomography in predatory and affective murderers

There appear to be no brain imaging studies investigating which brain mechanisms subserve affective, impulsive violence versus planned, predatory violence. It was hypothesized that affectively violent offenders would have lower prefrontal activity, higher subcortical activity, and reduced prefrontal/subcortical ratios relative to controls, while predatory violent offenders would show relatively normal brain functioning. Glucose metabolism was assessed using positron emission tomography in 41 comparisons, 15 predatory murderers, and nine affective murderers in left and right hemisphere prefrontal (medial and lateral) and subcortical (amygdala, midbrain, hippocampus, and thalamus) regions. Affective murderers relative to comparisons had lower left and right prefrontal functioning, higher right hemisphere subcortical functioning, and lower right hemisphere prefrontal/subcortical ratios. In contrast, predatory murderers had prefrontal functioning that was more equivalent to comparisons, while also having excessively high right subcortical activity. Results support the hypothesis that emotional, unplanned impulsive murderers are less able to regulate and control aggressive impulses generated from subcortical structures due to deficient prefrontal regulation. It is hypothesized that excessive subcortical activity predisposes to aggressive behaviour, but that while predatory murderers have sufficiently good prefrontal functioning to regulate these aggressive impulses, the affective murderers lack such prefrontal control over emotion regulation. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Developing connections for affective regulation: age-related changes in emotional brain connectivity

The regulation of affective arousal is a critical aspect of children’s social and cognitive development. However, few studies have examined the brain mechanisms involved in the development of this aspect of “hot” executive functioning. This process has been conceptualized as involving prefrontal control of the amygdala. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated the brain mechanisms involved in the development of affective regulation in typically developing 5- to 11-year-olds and an adult comparison sample. Children and adults displayed differing patterns of increased anterior cingulate cortex and decreased amygdala activation during episodes in which emotion regulation was required. Specifically, amygdala activation increased in adults but decreased in children during recovery from a frustrating episode. In addition, we used effective connectivity analyses to investigate differential correlations between key emotional brain areas in response to the regulatory task demands. We found reliable increases in effective connectivity between the anterior cingulate cortex and the amygdala during periods of increased demand for emotion regulation. This effective connectivity increased with age.     

Editorial: Information Processing and the Emotional Disorders

Abstract

It is shown that emotions can usefully be considered as states produced by reinforcing stimuli. The ways in which a wide variety of emotions can be produced, and the functions of emotion, are considered. There is evidence that the amygdala is involved in the formation of stimulus-reinforcement associations, and the orbitofrontal cortex with correcting behavioural responses when these are no longer appropriate because previous reinforcement contingencies change. This evidence comes from the effects of damage to these structures, and from recording the activity of single neurons in these structures in the monkey during the formation and disconnection of stimulus-reinforcement associations. In so far as emotions can be defined as states produced by reinforcing stimuli, then the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex are seen to be of great importance for emotions, in that they are involved respectively in the elicitation of learned emotional responses, and in the correction or adjustment of these emotional responses as the reinforcing value of environmental stimuli alters. One of the theses advanced is that the changes in emotional behaviour produced by damage to the brain can be analysed and understood by considering how different parts of it function in reinforcement and in the formation and disconnection of stimulus-reinforcement connections. Another thesis is that there is a population of neurons in the amygdala and parts of the temporal lobe visual cortex specialised to respond to faces, and that these neurons may be involved in social and emotional resposes to faces.

Some of the outputs of the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex are directed to the hypothalamus, which not only provides one route for these reinforcing environmental events to produce autonomic responses, but also is implicated in the utilisation of such stimuli in motivational responses, such as feeding and drinking, and in emotional behaviour. Other outputs of the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex which may enable them to influence behaviour are directed to the striatum, and also back towards some of the cortical regions from which they receive inputs. It is suggested that these latter projections are important in the effects which mood states have on cognitive processing.     

Are juvenile offenders extreme future discounters?

It has been the prevailing view that young offenders are more present oriented than their peers, but this view has little empirical basis other than the actions that have defined these youth as offenders. In the present study, we used a decision task with actual monetary consequences to assess the tendency of young offenders and a control group of high school students to discount the future. The young offenders were not significantly different from the students in discounting the future, even though the young offenders scored significantly higher on a sensation-seeking personality scale, were less likely to have lived with their fathers, and had changed schools more often. Young offenders and control participants were also similar in the extent to which they manifested a clear vision of the future by anticipating which future milestones would occur sooner, in a task pairing milestones with each other and with year markers.     

不同抑郁症状青少年调节不同强度情绪时策略选择的差异

最新研究发现,情绪强度会影响健康个体的情绪调节策略选择。然而,至今尚未有研究考察情绪强度对不同抑郁症状青少年策略选择的影响。对此,本研究通过流调中心用抑郁量表划分出无抑郁、阈下抑郁和抑郁症青少年,进而考察其在面对高-低强度积极-消极日常情绪事件时选择认知重评和认知沉浸的差异。结果发现：当面对高强度积极情绪、低强度积极情绪和低强度消极情绪时,三组被试的策略选择均无显著差异;当面对高强度消极情绪时,无抑郁青少年比阈下抑郁和抑郁症青少年更多选择认知重评而更少选择认知沉浸,但阈下抑郁和抑郁症青少年之间无显著差异。结果表明：不同抑郁症状青少年在面对不同强度和效价情绪时的情绪调节策略选择存在差异,表现为高强度消极情绪下抑郁症状越多的青少年越少选择认知重评而越多选择认知沉浸。这一发现有助于识别和干预青少年的抑郁症状。     

晚期正成分的时间-空间迁移模式在情绪调节发展研究中的应用

近二十年,使用认知神经科学手段探讨情绪调节成为了研究的热点。晚期正成分(Late Positive Potential,LPP)是情绪调节脑电研究中的一个典型成分,在不同的时间窗中分析LPP的波幅的变化及其优势激活脑区的迁移能够反映情绪调节加工过程中个体由对情绪刺激的感知到相应的认知调控过程的转变。LPP的时间-空间迁移模式被应用于情绪调节的发展研究,揭示从童年到青少年再到成年期个体情绪的潜在神经机制。研究者关注幼儿期、童年期、青少期、成人期个体在情绪调节加工过程中LPP波幅的变化及其时间-空间迁移模式特征,把不同年龄段个体情绪调节的发展特点与其大脑关键脑区(主要是前额叶)发育状况进行联系,为儿童身体发育和心理发展的主题提供更多的证据支持。未来的研究应加强对LPP在异常发展研究中应用,关注大脑发育与激素变化对LPP变化的影响,并加强对LPP调节效应的个体差异等问题的探讨。     

Emotion regulation choice: the role of environmental affordances

Which emotion regulation strategy one uses in a given context can have profound affective, cognitive, and social consequences. It is therefore important to understand the determinants of emotion regulation choice. Many prior studies have examined person-specific, internal determinants of emotion regulation choice. Recently, it has become clear that external variables that are properties of the stimulus can also influence emotion regulation choice. In the present research, we consider whether reappraisal affordances, defined as the opportunities for re-interpretation of a stimulus that are inherent in that stimulus, can shape individuals’ emotion regulation choices. We show that reappraisal affordances have stability across people and across time (Study 1), and are confounded with emotional intensity for a standardised set of picture stimuli (Study 2). Since emotional intensity has been shown to drive emotion regulation choice, we construct a context in which emotional intensity is separable from reappraisal affordances (Study 3) and use this context to show that reappraisal affordances powerfully influence emotion regulation choice even when emotional intensity and discrete emotions are taken into account (Study 4).     

Treatment of juvenile offenders: Study outcomes since 1980

Past reviews of the treatment of juvenile offenders have concluded that “nothing works.” More recently, some reviewers have concluded that treatment concepts are not necessarily ineffective, but, instead, research methodology and treatment integrity have been inadequate. The present review looks at the treatment of adjudicated juvenile offenders from a computer-data-based search of the literature published from 1980 to 1987. Research outcome and methodology are summarized and critiqued. The conclusions are that treatment outcomes were positive, but that serious methodological weaknesses still exist in the literature. Improvements still need to be made in sample sizes, use of appropriate and multiple measures of recidivism, random assignment and/or use of appropriate control groups, and long-term follow-up assessment.     

Emotion regulation in depression: Examining the role of cognitive processes

Sustained negative affect is a hallmark feature of depressive episodes. The ability to regulate emotional responses to negative events may therefore play a critical role in our understanding of this debilitating disorder. Individual differences in cognitive processes such as attention, memory, and interpretation may underlie difficulties in emotion regulation and numerous studies have identified cognitive biases and deficits that characterise depressed people. Few studies, however, have explicitly linked these biases to the difficulties in emotion regulation that are associated with depression. In this paper we discuss relations among cognitive processes and emotion regulation and review the depression literature to identify cognitive biases and deficits that may underlie maladaptive responses to negative events and mood states. Our review suggests that difficulties in the disengagement from negative material, memory biases, and deficits in cognitive control are frequently observed in depressive disorders and may be associated with the use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, such as rumination. These biases may also be related to difficulties implementing strategies that are effective for non-depressed people, such as recall of mood-incongruent material and reappraisal. Our review also suggests, however, that empirical studies linking cognitive biases and emotion regulation in depression are still largely missing and would present an important goal for future research in this area.     

自我关注重评和情境关注重评情绪调节策略及对随后认知控制的影响

认知重评作为高度适应性的情绪调节策略, 是否消耗随后任务所需的认知资源仍存在争议。以往研究把重评作为单一策略研究, 并未区分重评亚型对这一问题进行探索。本研究采用情绪调节与认知控制结合的任务, 考察自我关注和情境关注两种重评亚型调节情绪的效果, 以及对随后认知控制的影响是否存在差异。结果发现两种重评策略都能有效调节情绪, 但调节效果存在差异。从行为角度看, 与中性刺激相比, 负性刺激会引发更高的负性情绪水平, 对随后冲突任务的认知控制能力更差。进一步从神经机制水平来看, 增加负性情绪可能会进一步消耗随后任务可用的认知资源, 与自我关注重评相比, 采用情境关注重评降低负性情绪后, 对随后冲突任务的认知控制能力更强。说明两种重评亚型并不同质, 不仅在调节情绪的效果上存在差异, 而且会引发不同的认知控制后果; 同时, 负性情绪水平越高, 认知控制能力可能会越差。     

Ambivalence toward mothers who kill: an examination of 45 U.S. cases of maternal neonaticide

Public opinion about neonaticide (the killing of a newborn within the first 24 hours of life) has varied across time and cultures. Some nations have passed legislation on behalf of maternal offenders with the assumption that childbirth, a time of unique biological change, may lead to mental disturbance. The United States, however, makes no such distinction; offenders are prosecuted under general homicide laws. Nevertheless, U.S. courts often consider a mother's emotional and physical condition prior to and during delivery. This study includes 44 female offenders and 45 infant deaths and highlights society's ambivalence toward neonaticide offenders. The authors suggest that this ambivalence may be attributed to: (1) the perception that an offender's emotional and physical turmoil during the birth and homicide reduces her culpability; (2) the sentiment that neonaticide offenders are more "redeemable" than other offenders; and (3) the uncertainty about the personhood of a fetus or newborn.     

Cognitive and emotional influences in anterior cingulate cortex

Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is a part of the brain's limbic system. Classically, this region has been related to affect, on the basis of lesion studies in humans and in animals. In the late 1980s, neuroimaging research indicated that ACC was active in many studies of cognition. The findings from EEG studies of a focal area of negativity in scalp electrodes following an error response led to the idea that ACC might be the brain's error detection and correction device. In this article, these various findings are reviewed in relation to the idea that ACC is a part of a circuit involved in a form of attention that serves to regulate both cognitive and emotional processing. Neuroimaging studies showing that separate areas of ACC are involved in cognition and emotion are discussed and related to results showing that the error negativity is influenced by affect and motivation. In addition, the development of the emotional and cognitive roles of ACC are discussed, and how the success of this regulation in controlling responses might be correlated with cingulate size. Finally, some theories are considered about how the different subdivisions of ACC might interact with other cortical structures as a part of the circuits involved in the regulation of mental and emotional activity.     

Emotional experience and regulation across the adult lifespan: comparative analysis in three age groups

The studies focused on age-related differences in emotional experience are still scarce, and most of them have been conducted with North-American samples. This study explores the presence of age-related differences in some facets of emotional experience (subjective well-being and emotional intensity), as well as in variables related to emotion regulation (subjective emotional control and three emotion-regulation mechanisms: situation selection, emotion suppression, rumination) in the Spanish population. One hundred and sixty people from three age groups (younger, middle-aged and older adults) participated in the study. Older participants reported lower levels of life satisfaction and positive emotional intensity than younger ones, as well as higher levels of perceived emotional control, emotional maturity and leveling of positive affect, and more use of emotion suppression. The results partially support the emotional maturity hypothesis of emotional functioning in old age, but also suggest that older adults' emotional regulation may present important peculiarities which have not yet been addressed in the extant literature, such as the moderation or limitation of emotional experience, especially positive emotions.     

Offending Patterns,Control Balance,and Affective Rewards among Convicted Sex Offenders

We present results from a survey of 125 incarcerated sex offenders enrolled in a residential sex offender treatment program that reveal their offending behaviors, reasons for offending, and the affective states they say they experienced while committing their crimes. We supplement this survey information with qualitative data from audio-taped focus groups with these same offenders. Results provide a unique glimpse of the self-reported offending patterns of these offenders, as well as characteristics of their victims and the relationship of the offenders to their victims. Employing concepts from locus of control and control balance perspectives, we argue that many sex offenders, particularly high-volume and high-frequency offenders, are motivated to commit crimes due to an externalized locus of control (a control deficit), which reflects a perceived lack of control over events in their own lives. Their crimes can be viewed as a strategy or device that allows them to experience positive affect and sensations of power and control—even if only temporarily. Findings with regard to offending patterns, motivations, and affective rewards common to these offenders lend qualified support to control balance theory and the locus of control concept and help us understand what drives people to commit sex offenses.     

Emotional states preceding and following acts of non-suicidal self-injury in bulimia nervosa patients

Bulimia nervosa and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) co-occur at high rates, and both have been conceptualized as maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. Treatments focusing on emotion regulation have been designed for both problem behaviors, yet, there exists very little research examining the temporal emotional states surrounding acts of NSSI. Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methodology, the current study examined the temporal association between positive and negative emotional states prior to and consequent to acts of NSSI within a subset of bulimia nervosa patients. Results indicate significant increases in negative affect, and decreases in positive affect, prior to an NSSI act. Post-NSSI, positive affect significantly increased while negative affect remained unchanged. The findings offer partial support for an emotion regulation paradigm to understanding NSSI within bulimic populations and implications for treatment are discussed.