Psychopathy, risk, and neural processing with relation to P3 in juvenile offenders

Abstract

Psychopathy is a serious personality disorder marked by grandiosity, callousness, impulsivity, and potentially antisocial behavior. Extensive research has examined the descriptive features and etiology of psychopathy. One way to further the knowledge regarding neural functioning related to psychopathic individuals is through electroencephalogram (EEG) research. EEG research offers an efficient method for examining brain functioning and has already been initiated in research on psychopathy. Previous research has supported the relation between P3 ERP and psychopathic traits, and this relation was most robust with impulsivity and externalizing behavior. Despite the potential usefulness of EEG research, the bulk of research on psychopathy and EEG has been conducted at the adult level where a number of confounds (e.g., substance abuse, fighting, legal contacts, etc.) that are related to age can affect interpretation. Given the potential importance of examining this association in adolescents and the limited research on this topic in youthful populations, the current study examined the relationship between psychopathy and the P3 ERP. It was hypothesized that adolescent offenders with higher psychopathy scores would have reduced P3 amplitude, which was assumed to be unrelated to a third variable. The sample for the current investigation consisted of 50 youth housed at a residential facility in a southeastern state. The participants were administered self-report measures of psychopathy, externalizing behavior, and conduct disorder. Afterward, participants’ performance on a series of tasks were monitored and assessed through an EEG visual oddball task. Although the current study hypothesized that psychopathy would be negatively associated with the P3, the findings did not show the purported difference in the P3 response either at the total score level or the dimension level. These findings may indicate that differences in orienting to novel stimuli are not expressed in adolescents with psychopathic traits. Thus, neural functioning with respect to the P3 does not differ between those elevated in psychopathic traits compared to those low in psychopathic traits. This signifies that the P3 ERP deficit is not robust in psychopathic individuals or alternately, that the deficit exhibited in adults may be due to the sequelae that are related to having a psychopathic condition.