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Response reversal and children with psychopathic tendencies: success is a function of salience of contingency change
Author(s) -
Budhani S.,
Blair R.J.R.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
journal of child psychology and psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.652
H-Index - 211
eISSN - 1469-7610
pISSN - 0021-9630
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.00398.x
Subject(s) - psychology , contingency , salience (neuroscience) , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , philosophy , linguistics
Background: Previous work has inconsistently reported difficulties with response reversal/extinction in children with psychopathic tendencies. Method: We tested the hypothesis that the degree of impairment seen in children with psychopathic tendencies is a function of the salience of contingency change. We investigated the performance of children with psychopathic tendencies on a novel probabilistic response reversal task involving four conditions with gradated reward–punishment contingencies (100–0, 90–10, 80–20 and 70–30; i.e., for the 100–0 contingency, responding to one object is always rewarded while responding to the other is always punished). Results: In line with predictions, the impairment seen in the children with psychopathic tendencies was an inverse function of the salience of the contingency change. Conclusions: We suggest that this data is consistent with suggestions of subtle orbital frontal cortex impairment in children with psychopathic tendencies.