Psychopathology and emotional response

精神病态人格的临床综合征为研究情绪与注意之间的相互作用提供了一个重要的模型。 精神病被认为是认知表征和情感反应之间的脱节，实证研究揭示了精神病患者的恐惧反应和注意力处理的异常。最近对男性囚犯使用图片观看范式进行的研究表明：（a）精神病患者从刺激导向到防御的转变阈值高于正常阈值，（相对于非精神病患者）令人厌恶的前景必须更强烈，以产生防御激活和惊吓反射增强，和（B）精神病患者早期表现出情感和中性前景之间惊吓反应差异的缺乏（即，300 ms），表明动机性注意不足（Lang，布拉德利和Cuthbert，1997）。 利用最近的发展，在使用惊吓和脑ERP的措施，指数的影响和注意力在图片处理，一系列的三个实验提出了直接测试的假设，即精神病涉及一个提高厌恶阈值，并检查中介作用的注意力在这种情感偏差。 为了检验研究对象中现象的普遍性，研究对象将包括女性和男性囚犯，以及具有精神病人格特征的非囚犯男性。 研究一比较了精神病和非精神病女性罪犯在不同强度的厌恶图片期间的惊吓探测反应。 研究二比较了情绪激活和注意力分配的愉快和不愉快的图片不同强度的大学男性或高或低的精神病特征，使用惊吓和ERP措施。 研究三探讨了大脑和眨眼指数的早期注意力处理的情感和中性的图片在精神病，非精神病，和反社会的囚犯男子。 这项研究应该有助于我们理解精神病背后的病理过程，也有助于我们对情绪-注意力相互作用以及人格和行为的正常变化的基本理解。

The clinical syndrome of psychopathic personality offers an important model for studying the interplay between emotion and attention. Psychopathy is theorized to involve a disconnection between cognitive representations and affective response, and empirical studies have revealed abnormalities in fear reactivity and in attentional processing in psychopathic individuals. Recent research with male prisoners using a picture-viewing paradigm suggests that: (a) psychopaths have a higher than normal threshold for the transition from stimulus orienting to defense, such that (in relation to nonpsychopaths) an aversive foreground must be more intense to produce defensive activation and startle reflex potentiation, and (b) psychopaths show an absence of startle response differentiation between affective and neutral foregrounds early (i.e., 300 ms) after picture onset, suggesting a deficiency in motivated attention (Lang, Bradley, and Cuthbert, 1997). Drawing on recent developments in the use of startle and brain-ERP measures to index affect and attention during picture processing, a series of three experiments is proposed to directly test the hypothesis that psychopathy involves a heightened aversion threshold, and to examine the mediating role of attention in this affective deviation. To examine the generality of the phenomena under study participants will include female as well as male prisoners, and also nonprisoner men with personality traits of psychopathy. Study I compares the startle-probe reactions during aversive pictures of varying intensity in psychopathic and nonpsychopathic women offenders. Study II compares emotional activation and attention- allocation to pleasant and unpleasant pictures of varying intensity in college men either high or low in features of psychopathy, using startle and ERP measures. Study III examines brain and blink indices of early attentional processing of affective and neutral pictures in psychopathic, nonpsychopathic, and antisocial prisoner men. This research should contribute to our understanding of pathological processes underlying psychopathy, and also to a basic understanding of emotion- attention interactions and normal variations in personality and behavior.