Objective Youths with disruptive behavior disorders, including conduct disorder and oppositional defiant disorder, show major impairments in reinforcement-based decision making. However, the neural basis of these difficulties remains poorly understood. This partly reflects previous failures to differentiate responses during decision making and feedback processing and to take advantage of computational model-based functional MRI (fMRI). Method Participants were 38 community youths ages 10–18 (20 had disruptive behavior disorders, and 18 were healthy comparison youths). Model-based fMRI was used to assess the computational processes involved in decision making and feedback processing in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, insula, and caudate. Results Youths with disruptive behavior disorders showed reduced use of expected value information within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex when choosing to respond and within the anterior insula when choosing not to respond. In addition, they showed reduced responsiveness to positive prediction errors and increased responsiveness to negative prediction errors within the caudate during feedback. Conclusions This study is the first to determine impairments in the use of expected value within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and insula during choice and in prediction error-signaling within the caudate during feedback in youths with disruptive behavior disorders.

Psychopathy is conceptualized by the triarchic model as encompassing three distinct phenotypic constructs: boldness, meanness, and disinhibition. In the current study, the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ), a normal-range personality measure, was evaluated for representation of these three constructs. Consensus ratings were used to identify MPQ items most related to each triarchic (Tri) construct. Scale measures were developed from items indicative of each construct, and scores for these scales were evaluated for convergent and discriminant validity in community (N = 176) and incarcerated samples (N = 240). A cross the two samples, MPQ-Tri scale scores demonstrated good internal consistencies and relationships with criterion measures of various types consistent with predictions based on the triarchic model. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for further investigation of the triarchic model constructs in preexisting datasets that include the MPQ, in particular longitudinal and genetically informative datasets.

The Triarchic model of psychopathy characterizes this complex condition in terms of distinct phenotypic constructs of boldness, meanness, and disinhibition. The current study evaluated the coverage of these constructs provided by a well-established inventory for assessing psychopathy in adolescents, the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI). A consensus rating approach was used to identify YPI items relevant to each Triarchic model construct, and convergent and discriminant validity of the resulting YPI-Triarchic scales were examined in relation to criterion measures consisting of scores on other psychopathy measures and relevant personality trait variables (N = 618, M age = 18.8). The YPI-Triarchic scales showed good internal consistency and exhibited properties largely consistent with predictions based on the Triarchic model, aside from somewhat greater than expected covariance between boldness and other facet scales. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for interpreting scores on the YPI and for investigating distinctive components of psychopathy in youth.

Objectives The neural correlates of human cooperative behavior remain poorly understood. Previous work has suggested that increases in striatal activation while punishing unfair offers represents reward signaling. However, other regions are also implicated when punishing others, for example dorsomedial frontal cortex (dmFC), anterior insula cortex (AIC), and periaqueductal gray (PAG). Moreover, the response of other regions implicated in signaling reward, for example ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) or posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), has not been systematically examined. Experimental Design Functional magnetic resonance imaging utilizing parametric modulation was conducted on 21 healthy adults participating in a social exchange paradigm. Principal Observations Participants showed significant positive modulation of activity as a function of delivered punishment in caudate, dmFC, AIC, and PAG; that is, higher punishments by participants of unsatisfactory offers were associated with increasing activity within these regions. However, participants showed significant negative modulation of activity as a function of delivered punishment in vmPFC and PCC; increases in punishment level by participants were associated with decreases in activity within these regions. Conclusions The current data question whether caudate activity when punishing unfair offers should be considered to indicate the reward value of this punishment. Instead, this activity, in conjunction with activity within dmFC, AIC, and PAG, may represent the organization of an untypical, punishing response that represents a reactive aggressive response to provocation. Notably, an inverse, regulatory relationship between vmPFC and PAG activity has been previously implicated in the context of another stimulus for reactive aggression; looming threat (Mobbs et al. [2007]: Science 317:1079–1083).

The investigation of callous-unemotional (CU) traits has been central to contemporary research on child behavior problems, and served as the impetus for inclusion of a specifier for conduct disorder in the latest edition of the official psychiatric diagnostic system. Here, we report results from 2 studies that evaluated the construct validity of callousness as assessed in adults, by testing for affiliated deficits in behavioral and neural processing of fearful faces, as have been shown in youthful samples. We hypothesized that scores on an established measure of callousness would predict reduced recognition accuracy and diminished electocortical reactivity for fearful faces in adult participants. In Study 1, 66 undergraduate participants performed an emotion recognition task in which they viewed affective faces of different types and indicated the emotion expressed by each. In Study 2, electrocortical data were collected from 254 adult twins during viewing of fearful and neutral face stimuli, and scored for event-related response components. Analyses of Study 1 data revealed that higher callousness was associated with decreased recognition accuracy for fearful faces specifically. In Study 2, callousness was associated with reduced amplitude of both N170 and P200 responses to fearful faces. Current findings demonstrate for the first time that callousness in adults is associated with both behavioral and physiological deficits in the processing of fearful faces. These findings support the validity of the CU construct with adults and highlight the possibility of a multidomain measurement framework for continued study of this important clinical construct. (PsycINFO Database Record

The lexically based five-factor model (FFM) of personality has been a highly influential research framework for characterizing clinical-psychological conditions, including psychopathy, in lexical-trait terms. An alternative trait-descriptive framework, the triarchic model was formulated to characterize psychopathy in neurobehavioral-trait terms, in order to facilitate linkages with variables in the domain of neurobiology. The current study used data from a mixed-gender sample (N = 769; M age = 19.3) to establish an interface between the FFM and triarchic frameworks by identifying subsets of items from a widely used five-factor personality inventory, the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R), that effectively index the dimensional constructs of the triarchic model (boldness, meanness, and disinhibition). A consensus rating and psychometric refinement approach was used to select NEO-PI-R items for assessing each triarchic dimension, and the resulting NEO-Tri item-sets ("scales") were evaluated in relation to criteria including other scale measures of the triarchic constructs, reported antisocial behavior and drug/alcohol use, and an FFM-generated omnibus psychopathy measure, the Psychopathy Resemblance Index. The NEO-Tri scales were also evaluated for effectiveness as indicators of latent triarchic dimensions within a confirmatory factor analysis anchored by previously validated triarchic scale measures. Results of this work have implications for clarifying how the triarchic model dimensions relate to normal-range personality traits and FFM-based conceptions of psychopathy, and provide a foundation for further examining neurobiological correlates of the triarchic model dimensions using existing multidomain data-sets that include the NEO-PI-R. (PsycINFO Database Record

The current study examined whether Callous-Unemotional (CU) traits, a core component of psychopathy, modulate neural responses of participants engaged in a social exchange game. In this task, participants were offered an allocation of money and then given the chance to punish the offerer. Twenty youth participated and responses to both offers and the participant’s punishment (or not) of these offers were examined. Increasingly unfair offers were associated with increased dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) activity but this responsiveness was not modulated by CU traits. Increasing punishment of unfair offers was associated with increased dACC and anterior insula activity and this activity was modulated by CU traits. Higher CU trait participants showed a weaker association between activity and punishment level. These data suggest that CU traits are associated with appropriate expectations of other individual’s normative behavior but weaker representations of such information when guiding behavior of the self.

Using behavioral and blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) response indices through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the current study investigated whether youths with disruptive behavior disorders (conduct disorder and oppositional defiant disorder) plus psychopathic traits (DBD + PT) show aberrant sensitivity to eye gaze information generally and/or whether they show particular insensitivity to eye gaze information in the context of fearful expressions. The participants were 36 children and adolescents (ages 10–17 years); 17 had DBD + PT and 19 were healthy comparison subjects. Participants performed a spatial attention paradigm where spatial attention was cued by eye gaze in faces displaying fearful, angry, or neutral affect. Eye gaze sensitivity was indexed both behaviorally and as BOLD response. There were no group differences in behavioral response: both groups showed significantly faster responses if the target was in the congruent spatial direction indicated by eye gaze. Neither group showed a Congruence × Emotion interaction; neither group showed an advantage from the displayer’s emotional expression behaviorally. However, the BOLD response revealed a significant Group × Congruence × Emotion interaction. The comparison youth showed increased activity within the dorsal endogenous orienting network (superior parietal lobule and inferior parietal sulcus) for fearful congruent relative to incongruent trials relative to the youth with DBD + PT. The results are discussed with reference to current models of DBD + PT and possible treatment innovations.