Emotional modulation of the pupil in psychopathy: A test of the Response Modulation Hypothesis
Emotional modulation of the pupil in psychopathy: A test of the Response Modulation Hypothesis
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DOI：
10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2020.06.008
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发表时间：
2020-09-01
影响因子：
3
通讯作者：
Snowden, Robert J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Burley, Daniel T.;Deriu, Valerio;Snowden, Robert J.
精神病的某些方面可能是由于处理情绪信息的缺陷造成的，尽管有证据表明这种损害只有在情感线索不是持续的目标导向行为的核心时才会出现。然而，之前尚未探讨过与情绪刺激的自主反应有关的这一假设。当前的研究通过检查瞳孔直径的变化（衡量自主神经系统活动的指标），在大型（N = 174）社区样本中对此进行了调查，同时参与者观看内容中性或包含高度唤起/情感内容的图像。参与者的注意力焦点在两项任务中被操纵，使得参与者要么关注图像是否包含情感内容（情感焦点），要么关注图像中是否有人存在（交替焦点）。精神病态是通过大胆、卑鄙和抑制解除的三元模型来概念化的。正如预期的那样，与中性图像相比，激动人心的图像会引起更大的瞳孔扩张。然而，无论参与者的注意力焦点如何，这种扩张的程度都不受精神病的任何方面的调节。瞳孔对情绪刺激的反应性降低可能只在社区样本中通常不存在的高水平精神病态中表现出来，或者社区中具有高度精神病态特征的参与者仍然能够充分关注图像的情感成分，以克服任何自主神经缺陷，无论他们的注意力集中在哪里。需要进一步研究来探索这些可能性。
Some aspects of psychopathy may be underpinned by a deficit in processing emotional information, although there is evidence that this impairment only emerges when the affective cues are not central to ongoing goal-directed behaviour. However, this hypothesis has not been explored previously in relation to autonomic reactivity to emotional stimuli. The current study investigated this in a large (N = 174) community sample by examining changes in pupil diameter, a measure of autonomic nervous system activity, while participants viewed images that were either neutral in content or contained highly arousing/emotional content. Participants' attentional focus was manipulated across two tasks, such that participants either focused on whether the image contained emotional content (emotion-focus) or whether there were people present in the image (alternate-focus). Psychopathy was conceptualised via the Triarchic model of boldness, meanness and disinhibition. As expected, the arousing images caused greater pupil dilation compared to neutral images. However, the magnitude of this dilation was not moderated by any aspect of psychopathy regardless of the participant's attentional focus. It may be that reduced pupil reactivity to emotional stimuli is only expressed at high levels of psychopathy not normally found in community samples, or that participants with high traits of psychopathy in the community were still able to sufficiently attend to the emotional components of the images to overcome any autonomic deficits regardless of their attentional focus. Further research is needed to explore these possibilities.