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Abstract:
Specific goals: The aim of the current work was to determine
whether children with psychopathic tendencies and adult psychopaths
show impairment on measures of orbitofrontal cortex functioning.
Methods: The participants were children with psychopathic
tendencies and a comparison group as defined by the Psychopathy
Screening Device (Frick & Hare, in press) and adult psychopaths
and a comparison group as defined by the Revised Psychopathy
Checklist (Hare, 1991); (N = 20 for all groups). Participants
performed two tasks that are sensitive to lesions of orbitofrontal
cortex: the four pack card playing task (Bechara et al., 1994) and
the Intradimensional-Extradimensional (ID-ED) task (Dias, Robbins,
& Roberts, 1994). Results: Children with psychopathic
tendencies and adult psychopaths were less likely to shift their
responses from the high risk packs to the low risk packs on the
card playing task but only adult psychopaths showed response
reversal impairment on the ID-ED task. Conclusions: The results
indicate orbitofrontal cortex in at least adult psychopathic
individuals. The selective impairment of the children with
psychopathic tendencies may be due to their known amygdala
dysfunction. In addition, the results indicate that there may be
developmental changes in the disorder such that any orbitofrontal
cortex dysfunction is exacerbated with age. Potential reasons for
this are discussed.
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