Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Warneford Hospital, Headington, Oxford OX3 7JX, UK.
Biol Psychol. 2013 Mar;92(3):541-8. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2012.06.011. Epub 2012 Oct 16.
Emotion processing is known to be impaired in psychopathy, but less is known about the cognitive mechanisms that drive this. Our study examined experiencing and suppression of emotion processing in psychopathy. Participants, violent offenders with varying levels of psychopathy, viewed positive and negative images under conditions of passive viewing, experiencing and suppressing. Higher scoring psychopathics were more cardiovascularly responsive when processing negative information than positive, possibly reflecting an anomalously rewarding aspect of processing normally unpleasant material. When required to experience emotional response, by 'getting into the feeling' of the emotion conveyed by a negative image, higher factor 1 psychopathic individuals showed reduced responsiveness, suggesting that they were less able to do this. These data, together with the absence of corresponding differences in subjective self-report might be used to inform clinical strategies for normalising emotion processing in psychopathic offenders to improve treatment outcome, and reduce risk amongst this client group.
情绪处理在精神病态中已知受损，但对驱动这种情况的认知机制知之甚少。我们的研究检查了精神病态中的情绪处理的体验和抑制。参与者为具有不同程度精神病态的暴力罪犯，在被动观看、体验和抑制的条件下观看积极和消极的图像。当处理负面信息时，得分较高的精神病态者的心血管反应比处理正面信息时更强，这可能反映了处理正常不愉快材料的异常奖励方面。当需要体验情绪反应时，通过“感受”消极图像所传达的情绪，较高的因子 1 精神病态个体表现出较低的反应性，表明他们不太能够做到这一点。这些数据，以及主观自我报告中没有相应的差异，可用于为精神病态罪犯的情绪处理正常化提供临床策略，以改善治疗效果，并降低该患者群体的风险。
