Introduction to the Special Section: What Do We Know About the Psychophysiology of Child Psychopathy and Conduct Problems?

Various imaging techniques as well as parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system measurement methods have allowed for the increasingly sophisticated investigation of the psychophysiology that underlies the psychopathic personality and its dimensions including Conduct Disorder. With this special section, we were interested in whether the dimensions separately tell us anything different regarding the underlying mechanisms or processes involved in the specific phenotypic expression(s) of psychopathy. Seven empirical articles address this question by examining the psychobiology of psychopathy from a multicomponent perspective. Four articles examined the heart functioning and/or skin conductance of those with elevated psychopathic traits and two studies used EEG to index and image the brain. A single study tested heart functioning in relation to the environment. Findings from the papers indicate differences with respect to psychophysiology across the dimensions and thus signal benefits to examining the broader construct of psychopathy as well as its underpinning dimensions. Those with elevated GM traits appear to have aberrations with respect to self-referential processing and fealessness in adulthood but limited impairments otherwise, whereas those with elevated CU and DI traits show impairment in associative learning and potentially fear processing and arousal. Findings from the special section articles may have implications for the etiology, treatment, and eventually diagnostic manuals (i.e., DSM-5, ICD-11). We hope that these studies in this special section lead to additional multicomponent investigations that ultimately improve our understanding of the psychobiological mechanisms of psychopathy.