Review articleP3 event-related potential impairments in antisocial and psychopathic individuals: A meta-analysis
Section snippets
Literature searches
Studies were identified using three methods. First, PsycInfo (1887–2007), MEDLINE (1966–2007), and Web of Science (1900–2007) databases were searched using the following key words: P300, P3, late positive component, late positive complex, event-related potential (ERP), evoked potential (EP), brain potential, electroencephalograph (EEG) and cross-referenced with the following: aggression, violence, psychopathy, sociopathy, conduct disorder, conduct problems, antisocial, oppositional, child abuse
Overall effect sizes
Individual effect sizes (d), their 95% confidence interval (CI), and p-value for P3 amplitude and latency are presented in Table 3. For amplitude, a significant mean effect of 0.252 (CI = 0.186–0.318, p < .001) was obtained, indicating that antisocial individuals have significantly smaller P3 amplitudes than controls. For latency a significant effect size of 0.130 (CI = 0.021–0.239, p = .019) was observed, indicating longer P3 latencies in antisocial individuals than in controls. There was significant
Discussion
The main findings from this meta-analysis are that antisocial behavior in general is associated with both reduced P3 amplitudes (d = 0.252, CI = 0.186–0.318, p < .001) and longer latencies (d = 0.130, CI = 0.021–0.239, p = .019). An important caveat is that these findings were less in evidence for psychopaths. In particular, psychopaths failed to show amplitude decrements for more complex tasks that diverged from the standard oddball paradigm and failed to show any latency effects.
It is worth noting that
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Lance Bauer, Kent Kiehl, and Gillian Munro for kindly providing helpful information for this meta-analysis. This research was supported by a grant to the second author from NICHD (1 RO1 HD42259).
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References marked with an asterisk indicate studies included in the meta-analysis.