Differentiating Psychopathy from General Antisociality Using the P3 as a Psychophysiological Correlate of Attentional Allocation
PLoS ONE 7:e50339-e50339 (
2012)
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Abstract
Recent studies have shown that while psychopathy and non-psychopathic antisociality overlap, they differ in the extent to
which cognitive impairments are present. Specifically, psychopathy has been related to abnormal allocation of attention, a
function that is traditionally believed to be indexed by event-related potentials (ERPs) of the P3-family. Previous research
examining psychophysiological correlates of attention in psychopathic individuals has mainly focused on the parietally
distributed P3b component to rare targets. In contrast, very little is known about the frontocentral P3a to infrequent novel
events in psychopathy. Thus, findings on the P3 components in psychopathy are inconclusive, while results in nonpsychopathic
antisocial populations are clearer and point toward an inverse relationship between antisociality and P3
amplitudes. The present study adds to extant literature on the P3a and P3b in psychopathy by investigating component
amplitudes in psychopathic offenders (N = 20), matched non-psychopathic offenders (N = 23) and healthy controls (N = 16).
Also, it was assessed how well each offender group was able to differentially process rare novel and target events. The
offender groups showed general amplitude reductions compared to healthy controls, but did not differ mutually on overall
P3a/P3b amplitudes. However, the psychopathic group still exhibited normal neurophysiological differentiation when
allocating attention to rare novel and target events, unlike the non-psychopathic sample. The results highlight differences
between psychopathic and non-psychopathic offenders regarding the integrity of the neurocognitive processes driving
attentional allocation, as well as the usefulness of alternative psychophysiological measures in differentiating psychopathy
from general antisociality.