Scerbo A, Raine A, O'Brien M, Chan C J, Rhee C, Smiley N
Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, University Park, Los Angeles 90089.
J Abnorm Child Psychol. 1990 Aug;18(4):451-63. doi: 10.1007/BF00917646.
This study tests predictions that adolescent psychopaths are hyperresponsive to rewards (Quay, 1988) and deficient in passive avoidance learning (Newman & Kosson, 1986). Forty male adolescent juvenile offenders were divided into psychopaths and nonpsychopaths using cluster analysis. Subjects were administered a passive avoidance learning task which required learning when to respond to cards associated with either reward or punishment. Results showed a greater responsivity to reward in psychopaths, with no group differences in passive avoidance errors. Results lend support to the view that psychopaths tend to focus on the prospect of reward under conditions of mixed incentives and, when sufficiently motivated, are capable of improved performance. Together with findings of recent psychophysiological studies, these results suggest that adolescent psychopaths may have latent abilities which could have treatment implications.
青少年精神病态者对奖励反应过度（奎伊，1988年）且在被动回避学习方面存在缺陷（纽曼和科索恩，1986年）。通过聚类分析将40名男性青少年少年犯分为精神病态者和非精神病态者。对受试者进行了一项被动回避学习任务，该任务要求学习何时对与奖励或惩罚相关的卡片做出反应。结果显示，精神病态者对奖励的反应性更强，在被动回避错误方面没有组间差异。结果支持了这样一种观点，即精神病态者在混合激励条件下倾向于关注奖励前景，并且在有足够动机时能够提高表现。与近期心理生理学研究的结果一起，这些结果表明青少年精神病态者可能具有潜在能力，这可能对治疗有启示意义。
