Course:COGS200/2017W1/FinalProjectGroup35BELS
Psychopathy and Emotional Word Processing in Adolecents
Introduction
Themes revolving around psychopaths have been a hot topic in and around media outlets. Crazy psychopathic killers going on a massive killing spree and psychopaths who blow up buildings for fun, we have seen or heard of these cheesy plots revolving around psychopaths at least once in our lives. Contrary to how they are portrayed in these corny Hollywood movies, not all psychopaths are simple-minded killers who kill for fun. Described as self-centred and lacking remorse and empathy, psychopaths can commit illegal antisocial acts or can show no behavioral signs of criminality. As they have incredibly low levels of sympathy for other people, it is hard for them to feel the same emotions as average humans do. Therefore, adolescents exhibiting psychopathic traits may encounter harsh challenges such as successfully entering a socially capable workforce that drives society. In order for these adolescents to successfully transition into adulthood, we hope to study their emotional reactivity and further research how to treat these behavioral issues.
For our proposed project, we plan on examining the emotional sensitivity of adolescents using a lexical decision task (LDT). We will conduct a LDT on adolescents who exhibit psychopathic traits and a control group with individuals who do not exhibit these traits. The adolescents will be presented with emotional words (both positive and negative), neutral words and non-words. Our proposed hypothesis is that adolescents with psychopathic traits have abnormalities in the processing of emotional stimuli. In order to fully understand the concepts of this project, background knowledge of terms is crucial. First and foremost, a lexical decision task or LDT is a procedure used in many psycholinguistic experiments which involves measuring how quickly participants classify stimuli as words or non words. Next, a psychopath can be defined as an individual who feels considerable less emotional sympathy and attachment to other social or human situations. The principle goal of this project is to examine whether psychopathic traits in adolescents are related to different patterns of emotional processing as measured by the LDT. We hope the data that we gather will allow us to characterize distinct subgroups of youth with antisocial behaviour problems. Our project is important as it conducts further research of how adolescents possessing psychopathic traits exhibit abnormalities in the processing of emotional stimuli. Furthermore, our proposed idea allows us to develop a better understanding of how these processes may lead to the potential of informing intervention efforts focused on changing the developmental trajectory of these adolescents into adulthood. In the course of time, we want this research to provide an empirical basis for designing treatment programs that are unique to these individuals.
Methods
We will develop a computerized lexical decision task for adolescents with a mean age of 16 years with psychopathic traits and a control group with individuals who do not exhibit psychopathic traits. Each participant will be presented with a series of letter strings. In the task, these letter strings will include emotional words (both positive and negative), neutral words and non-words. The non-words are formed by changing one letter of each real word contained in the task.
The task will only use words composed of 4 letters or less and will be presented horizontally instead of vertically. The words will not be repeated during the task and will be presented in a random order. The participants are given instructions on how to complete the task after they complete a rating scale inventory. This rating scale inventory will rate the emotionality of each word on a 1 to 5 Likert-type scale. A score of 1 represents an extreme negative rating, scores of 3 represent neutral emotional ratings, and scores of 5 represent an extreme positive rating. Word stimuli for the lexical decision task will be categorized on the basis of emotional content such as positive, negative or neutral. Some example positive words include: gold, tree, glad, cake, and cure. Some example negative words include: pain, flea, mad, limp and bomb. Finally, a few example neutral words include: snap, sale, call, mile, page, boot, and lift. The lexical decision task will consist of 30 practice trials and 180 experimental trials containing an equal number of words and non words.
Subjects will be drawn from a sample of 330 females and males, recruited from a private university institution. All subjects will provide informed consent and will be given instructions of the study. They will be told the purpose of the study is to assess their reactivity and speed of word identification. The experiment will begin after the subjects fully understand the task. Each individual will be instructed to first complete The Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) which is a self-report psychopathy measure. The PPI is a 187-item measure of psychopathic personality and uses a series of statements that are rated on a 1 to 4 scale (1 indicating “False” and 4 indicating “True”). The total score of the PPI is divided into eight subscales, where a different psychopathic trait is measured in each subscale. Participants that scored in the top 3% on the PPI and those that scored in the bottom 3% on the PPI were chosen for the study.
During the task, the participants are seated facing a computer and a keyboard with two keys that are labelled either “non-word” or “word”. They are directed to identify if each character string is an actual English word as quickly as possible and to respond either “word” or “non-word” by pressing the appropriate key on the keyboard. The stimuli will be presented in the middle of the computer display in white lowercase letters on a black background. The stimulus word is presented for 5 seconds and disappears after the participant responds or after the time ends. Each trial is followed by a 2 second break. The subjects are first presented with 2 blocks of 18 stimuli during the practice round. Then, they are given a short 30 second break before they move on to the actual task. After 10 blocks of 18 stimuli (180 trials) have been completed, the emotional processing of these words will be assessed. In order to assess the participants we will utilize a skin conductance test during the lexical decision task to further assess the reactivity of the participants. Measuring the skin conductance response of the participants will show what words the participants are most aroused towards. The lexical decision task assessment occurs by comparing the recognition time of emotional words to the recognition time for non-emotional words. The data is analyzed by calculating two scores: a positive difference score and a negative difference score. The positive difference score (NEU-POS) is determined by subtracting each subject’s average response time to positive words from her or his average response time to neutral words. Furthermore, the negative difference score (NEU-NEG) is calculated by subtracting the subject’s average response time to negative words from her or his average response time to neutral words. These two difference scores assess the recognition time exhibited in response to affective stimuli. After the study is completed, the participants will conduct a series of questionnaires and will be debriefed after the questionnaires are completed.
Discussion
The hypothesis of the experiment is that participants with psychopathic traits will show abnormality in emotional processing toward a linguistic stimulus. The anticipated research results needed to support the hypothesis are slower recognition times for positive words, thus a lower positive difference score (NEU-POS), and faster recognition times for negative words, thus a higher negative difference score (NEU-NEG), for adolescents with psychopathic behavior problems as compared to the controlled group of participants.
The method of employing lexical decision tasks was chosen to test the abnormality of adolescents possessing psychopathic traits through examining their emotional reactivity, and therefore better understand their underlying mental process, through a linguistic approach. Moreover, because LDT is widely used in psychology and psycholinguistics experiments, there are sufficient resources to be accessed and based upon, such as the word lists needed in this research, making our experimental design more valid and effective. The rating scale inventory that each participant completes prior to the LDT is used so that the lexicon is unique to each individual because the words are categorized on the basis of the participant’s rating of emotional content. Doing so avoids any errors that might occur because of the difference between each individual’s interpretation and reactivity to the same word due to the complex and varied nature of human beings. Additionally, the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI) is completed before the task along with the rating scale inventory of the words to determine whether the participants truly possess psychopathic traits, which assures them to fall correctly into the group they belong, avoiding errors in self-report. Lastly, another reason why we chose LDT is that the results can serve as an empirical basis for future studies, especially on psychopathy and antisocial behaviour as well as on how to help and treat people with psychopathic or antisocial traits, perhaps through a linguistic approach.
After the experiment is conducted, there are multiple ways to evaluate the performance of the software built. To evaluate the accuracy of the results and to test if the participants were honest in giving their responses, a skin conductance test could be used while they were completing the lexical decision task. A skin conductance response or electrodermal response means that the skin momentarily becomes a better conductor of electricity, because of sweat, when a physiologically arousing stimuli occurs. In this experiment, if the skin conductance test was used as well, the prediction is that the participants with antisocial behavior would be aroused faster when reacting to negative words. Moreover, the performance of the software can be evaluated by comparing the results and conclusions of our experiment with the results and conclusions of previously conducted experiments that might have taken a similar approach, which is Lexical Decision Task, or have studied a similar group of people, who are psychopaths or antisocial teenagers. Although psychopathy, which is described as self-centered, superficially charming individuals who lack empathy and remorse, is not a synonym with antisocial personality disorder, both of their traits coexist frequently. According to Long, approximately one third of individuals who meet diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder also meet criteria for psychopathy; on the other hand, psychopathy is often associated with the commission of antisocial acts. If the results, for example the positive difference scores and negative difference scores, or the conclusions, for example that the antisocial teens do exhibit differences in emotional reactivity to a stimuli or that they do react faster to negative words, match between ours and other studies’, then it means the software is feasible.
Conclusion
Psychopathic disorder has been a mystery in the scientific community for decades, as experts remain clueless on the specific causes that create the conditions for psychopathic disorder to become prominent in the human brain. Blair et al identified several factors contributing to the development of psychopathic disorder. Genetic code is identified as an influence that might allow the subject to acquire the disorder. The presence of physical or sexual abuse in the social surroundings of the subject increases the risk of acquiring psychopathic disorder. Anxiety level is positively associated with antisocial behavior. Brain damage acquired during birth or childhood affects whether an individual might develop psychopathic disorder. Finally, birth complications serve as risk factors for violent antisocial behavior. Moreover, Blair et al suggests that a dysfunctional amygdala in a psychopathic patient disrupts his ability to socialize and increases the risk for him to learn antisocial behaviors. (R. J. R. Blair et al, 2006).
The tragic nature of psychopathic disorders, when considered the aforementioned factors of the development of psychopathy, have inspired us to pursue this experiment in order to find a way to help treat these patients, and integrate our research with multiple studies from different fields on psychopathy to be able to find ways into treating psychopaths to reintegrate into society and stop the current trend of antagonizing psychopaths in media, as it is a medical condition that should be adopted and treated in society as other sociological and neurological disorders.
To summarize, we propose to evaluate the emotional reactions of adolescents diagnosed with a psychopathic disorder to words linked to an emotional stimuli utilizing lexical decision task while monitoring physical data from the subjects and analyze their responses to the words. This project will allow us to learn more about the direct effects of sociological disorders on the lives and even the everyday social interactions of psychopathic adolescents. After gaining a more profound understanding of the disorders, treatments such as treatment programs that are unique to these individuals can be designed using our results as an empirical basis. From this project, we learned about the relationship that psychology and linguistics has when it comes to social interaction, psychological health and how the psychological traits of psychopathic disorders manifest with speech and interaction. From this experience of proposing a research project, we learned how much background research is required for investigating even a small idea, as well as how much detail of each aspect, method, and procedure has to be taken into consideration especially when conducting a controlled experiment.
Bibliography
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