Elsevier

Biological Psychology

Volume 132, February 2018, Pages 96-105
Biological Psychology

Investigating error-related processing in incarcerated adolescents with self-report psychopathy measures

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2017.11.009Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Evidence suggests interview-based and self-report measures of psychopathic traits should not be used interchangeably.

  • In a previous report, we found PCL:YV scores were negatively related to error-related positivity (Pe) amplitude.

  • In the current report, scores on self-report adolescent psychopathy measures were not associated with reduced Pe amplitude.

  • Results obtained in the current report support evidence that different assessment types should not be used synonymously.

Abstract

Disparate results have been found in previous reports when incorporating both interview-based and self-report measures of psychopathic traits within the same sample, suggesting such assessments should not be used interchangeably. We previously found Total and Facet 4 scores from Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV) were negatively related to amplitude of the error-related positivity (Pe) event-related potential (ERP) component. Here, we investigated using the same previously published sample whether scores on four different self-report measures of adolescent psychopathic traits (the Antisocial Process Screening Device [APSD], Child Psychopathy Scale [CPS], Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits [ICU], and Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory [YPI]) were similarly associated with reduced Pe amplitude. Unlike our previous results, adolescent self-report psychopathy scores were not associated with reduced Pe amplitude in multiple regression analyses. Results obtained in the current report support previous research observing incongruent findings when incorporating different assessment types within the same sample.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants included n = 142 incarcerated adolescent offenders recruited from a maximum security juvenile correctional facility who participated in a larger study (Southwest Advanced Neuroimaging Cohort − Youth (SWANC-Y)). Participants were excluded from analyses for meeting the following criteria: previous history of traumatic brain injury accompanied with a significant loss of consciousness (n = 4), significant movement during data collection, or behavioral performance (i.e., making less than

Behavioral results

Response times (RTs) and frequency for Hits and FA’s were analyzed and have been previously reported (Maurer, Steele and Cope et al., 2016). As expected, participants responded faster to NoGo stimuli (M = 381 ms, SD = 43 ms) than Go stimuli (M = 419 ms, SD = 51 ms), t(99) = 7.74, p < 0.001. Participants made significantly more errors (i.e., FA’s) to NoGo stimuli (M = 23.76, SD = 11.85) compared to Go stimuli (M = 12.61, SD = 14.65), t(99) = 17.89, p < 0.001. For the full sample, there was a main effect of post-error

Discussion

Psychopathic traits in youth samples are typically measured using either interview-based or self-report measures. Evidence suggests however, that these assessments should not be used interchangeably, as evidenced by poor classification agreement between measures (Cauffman et al., 2009, Fink et al., 2012, Lee et al., 2003, Skeem and Cauffman, 2003). Additionally, self-report measures of adolescent psychopathic traits show poor predictive utility of delinquency and antisocial indices compared to

Conclusions

In sum, scores on measures of adolescent psychopathic traits (i.e., Total and Factor scores from the APSD, CPS, ICU, and YPI) were not associated with ERN/Ne or Pe dysfunction, measured with traditional time-domain ERP or PCA analyses. Such results are inconsistent with a previous report from our laboratory, whereby PCL:YV Total and Facet 4 scores were negatively related to Pe amplitude within the same sample of n = 100 incarcerated male adolescent offenders (Maurer, Steele and Cope et al., 2016

Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) grant R01 MH071896 (K.A.K., PI), the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) grant K01 DA026502(G.M.V., PI), and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) grant R01 HD082257-01 (K.A.K., PI) and R01 HD092331-01 (K.A.K., PI). Mr. Maurer is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse through Grant Number F31DA043328 and Dr. Fink is supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational

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