Specifying the attentional selection that moderates the fearlessness of psychopathic offenders

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.

Fig. 1

Trial structure in the four conditions used in the experiment. Every trial began with a fixation cross lasting 200 ms, after which participants saw two stimuli: a box (colored red or green) and a letter (an uppercase N or a lowercase n). The order of these two stimuli varied with condition. The first stimulus appeared alone at 200 ms, and then the second stimulus appeared concurrently with the first at 400 ms. In all four conditions, electric shocks were administered after some red boxes but never after green boxes. Following the offset of the stimuli, a blank screen appeared. White-noise startle probes were presented at 1,600 ms into the trial (i.e., during the blank screen) to measure fear-potentiated startle. At 1,800 ms, a descriptive word related to the color of the box or the case of the letter (i.e., “Green” or “Red” for threat-focus blocks; “Upper” or “Lower” for alternative-focus blocks) appeared on the screen. Participants had to indicate whether the word matched (or mismatched) the relevant feature presented during that trial.

Fig. 2

Fear-potentiated startle as a function of psychopathy (±1.5 SD from the mean) and condition (early-alternative-focus condition and the average of the three other conditions). Raw psychopathy scores, estimated from the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (Hare, 2003), were mean-centered and standardized (z scores). Error bars represent ±1 SE.

Fig. 3

Fear-potentiated startle (FPS) as a function of psychopathy (±1.5 SD from the mean) and working memory (low vs. high). Results are shown for the late-alternative-focus condition (left panel) and the two threat-focus conditions (right panel). Raw psychopathy scores, estimated from the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (Hare, 2003), were mean-centered and standardized (z scores). Scores for low and high working memory (±1.5 SD from the mean, respectively) were measured with the Digits Backward subtest of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Wechsler, 1997). Error bars represent ±1 SE.