Speed-Accuracy Tradeoffs on an Affective Lexical Decision Task: Implications for the Affect Regulation Theory of Psychopathy

Evidence for performance deficits in psychopathic offenders on emotional processing tasks have been documented. However, studies that show performance improvements or elimination of anomalies under certain conditions are not consistent with a general insensitivity to emotion stimuli. The current study tests the hypothesis set forth by the Affect Regulation Theory (Penney and Kosson, manuscript submitted to Clinical Psychological Science) that psychopathic participants’ performance on an affective lexical decision task will reflect a speed-accuracy trade-off wherein accuracy on emotion-word trials correlates with response latency among psychopathic participants but not controls. Participants were 86 incarcerated male offenders divided into three groups using scores on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised and DSM-IV criteria for ASPD (non-ASPD/non-psychopathic, ASPD/non-psychopathic; and ASPD + psychopathic). There was a significant Group x Response latency interaction for negative word trials, with greater accuracy associated with slower response times on negative word trials for ASPD + psychopathic individuals but not for the other groups. The implications of these results for hypotheses about emotional functioning in psychopathic offenders and for the recently proposed ART are discussed.