Recognition of facial affect in psychopathic offenders

The authors examined the reliability of facial affect processing deficits found in psychopathic individuals (R. Blair et al., 2004) and whether they could be modified by attentional set. One hundred eleven offenders, classified using the Psychopathy Checklist--Revised (R. Hare, 2003) and Welsh Anxiety Scale (G. Welsh, 1956), performed a facial affect recognition task under 2 conditions. On the basis of research linking psychopathy, amygdala dysfunction, and deficits in facial affect recognition, the authors predicted that psychopathic offenders would display performance deficits when required to identify the emotional expression of particular faces. In addition, given evidence linking the affective processing deficits in psychopathy to focus of attention, the authors predicted that any deficits in facial affect processing would disappear when participants could anticipate which affective cues would be relevant on a given trial. Contrary to expectation, psychopathic offenders performed as well as controls in both conditions. The authors conclude that the conditions that reveal affective deficits in psychopathic individuals require further specification.     

Effects of comorbid psychopathy on criminal offending and emotion processing in male offenders with antisocial personality disorder

Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and psychopathy are two syndromes with substantial construct validity. To clarify relations between these syndromes, the authors evaluated 3 possibilities: (a) that ASPD with psychopathy and ASPD without psychopathy reflect a common underlying pathophysiology; (b) that ASPD with psychopathy and ASPD without psychopathy identify 2 distinct syndromes, similar in some respects; and (c) that most correlates of ASPD reflect its comorbidity with psychopathy. Participants were 472 incarcerated European American men who met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (4th ed., American Psychiatric Association, 1994) criteria for ASPD and Psychopathy Checklist criteria for psychopathy, who met the criteria for ASPD but not for psychopathy, or who did not meet diagnostic criteria for either ASPD or psychopathy (controls). Both individuals with ASPD only and those with ASPD and psychopathy were characterized by more criminal activity than were controls. In addition, ASPD with psychopathy was associated with more severe criminal behavior and weaker emotion facilitation than ASPD alone. Group differences in the association between emotion dysfunction and criminal behavior suggest tentatively that ASPD with and ASPD without prominent psychopathic features may be distinct syndromes.     

Beliefs About the True Self Explain Asymmetries Based on Moral Judgment

Past research has identified a number of asymmetries based on moral judgments. Beliefs about (a) what a person values, (b) whether a person is happy, (c) whether a person has shown weakness of will, and (d) whether a person deserves praise or blame seem to depend critically on whether participants themselves find the agent's behavior to be morally good or bad. To date, however, the origins of these asymmetries remain unknown. The present studies examine whether beliefs about an agent's “true self” explain these observed asymmetries based on moral judgment. Using the identical materials from previous studies in this area, a series of five experiments indicate that people show a general tendency to conclude that deep inside every individual there is a “true self” calling him or her to behave in ways that are morally virtuous. In turn, this belief causes people to hold different intuitions about what the agent values, whether the agent is happy, whether he or she has shown weakness of will, and whether he or she deserves praise or blame. These results not only help to answer important questions about how people attribute various mental states to others; they also contribute to important theoretical debates regarding how moral values may shape our beliefs about phenomena that, on the surface, appear to be decidedly non‐moral in nature.     

What does it take to have a positive impact on minority students' college retention?

This paper describes the Young Scholars Program (YSP), which seeks to expand the pool of African American and other underrepresented minority youth who aspire to attend college, and to help them meet entrance requirements and successfully obtain a college degree. Quarter-by-quarter data for the first two groups of YSP students entering The Ohio State University were promising. Their retention rates approximated university averages, while comparison groups showed lower levels of retention. It was concluded that the many facets of the Young Scholars Program, as well as the students' positive reputation among family members, peers, and teachers, produced strong motivation, ability, and determination to succeed.     

Differential effects of psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder symptoms on cognitive and fear processing in female offenders

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.     

Lessons Learned in Looking Back: Perspectives from Trailblazers

Although this is in many ways a good era for women, many things have yet to improve. Women continue to lag behind men with regard to salaries, are under-represented in position of leadership, and still take on greater responsibility for child rearing and family responsibilities. Careers dominated by women tend to be associated with lower salaries and lower prominence and by the same token, women tend to dominate leadership positions when the field becomes less prestigious. Although women now outnumber men in graduating classes, the feminization of clinical psychology brings new challenges. This special series comes out of the 2009 trailblazer panel held at the ABCT convention in New York City, which explored the experiences faced by pioneering women in behavior therapy and discussed ways to help women overcome the glass ceiling. This introductory paper summarizes the lessons learned by these trailblazers with a view toward helping women in academia today.     

A model-based cluster analysis of social experiences in clinically anxious youth: links to emotional functioning

Social difficulties are commonly associated with anxiety disorders in youth, yet are not well specified in the literature. The aim of this study was to identify patterns of social experiences in clinically anxious children and examine the associations with indices of emotional functioning. A model-based cluster analysis was conducted on parent-, teacher-, and child-reports of social experiences with 64 children, ages 7–12 years (M = 8.86 years, SD = 1.59 years; 60.3% boys; 85.7% Caucasian) with a primary diagnosis of separation anxiety disorder, social phobia, and/or generalized anxiety disorder. Follow-up analyses examined cluster differences on indices of emotional functioning. Findings yielded three clusters of social experiences that were unrelated to diagnosis: (1) Unaware Children (elevated scores on parent- and teacher-reports of social difficulties but relatively low scores on child-reports, n = 12), (2) Average Functioning (relatively average scores across all informants, n = 44), and (3) Victimized and Lonely (elevated child-reports of overt and relational victimization and loneliness and relatively low scores on parent- and teacher-reports of social difficulties, n = 8). Youth in the Unaware Children cluster were rated as more emotionally dysregulated by teachers and had a greater number of diagnoses than youth in the Average Functioning group. In contrast, the Victimized and Lonely group self-reported greater frequency of negative affect and reluctance to share emotional experiences than the Average Functioning cluster. Overall, this study demonstrates that social maladjustment in clinically anxious children can manifest in a variety of ways and assessment should include multiple informants and methods.     

Social Dominance and the Cultural Politics of Immigration

We argue that conflict over immigration largely concerns who bears the burden of cultural transaction costs, which we define as the costs associated with overcoming cultural barriers (e.g., language) to social exchange. Our framework suggests that the ability of native‐born citizens to push cultural transaction costs onto immigrant out‐groups serves as an important expression of social dominance. In two novel studies, we demonstrate that social dominance motives condition emotional responses to encountering cultural transaction costs, shape engagement in cultural accommodation behavior toward immigrants, and affect immigration attitudes and policy preferences.     

The impact of finger counting habits on arithmetic in adults and children

Here, we explored the impact of finger counting habits on arithmetic in both adults and children. Two groups of participants were examined, those that begin counting with their left hand (left-starters) and those that begin counting with their right hand (right-starters). For the adults, performance on an addition task in which participants added 2 two-digit numbers was compared. The results revealed that left-starters were slower than right-starters when adding and they had lower forward and backward digit-span scores. The children (aged 5–12) showed similar results on a single-digit timed addition task—right-starters outperformed left-starters. However, the children did not reveal differences in working memory or verbal and non-verbal intelligence as a function of finger counting habit. We argue that the motor act of finger counting influences how number is represented and suggest that left-starters may have a more bilateral representation that accounts for the slower processing.