Three hypotheses for cognitive deficits among psychopaths were tested:
executive dysfunction, left hemisphere activation, and an interaction
between the two. Twenty-one psychopathic and 23 nonpsychopathic criminal
offenders identified with the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised
participated in verbal and visual-spatial tasks during which the level of
executive processing demands was manipulated. Consistent with prior
research, psychopathic offenders made more errors than controls, but only
during the verbal task and only on trials with high executive demand.
Within those trials, most errors occurred when set-maintenance demands
were the highest. No response latency differences between groups were
found. (JINS, 2006, 12, 538–548.)This article is a replication and extension of
our previous study that was published in the JINS, volume 11,
2005. The article appeared as “State-dependent Executive Deficits
Among Psychopathic Offenders,” by Suchy & Kosson, 2005, JINS, 11:3, pp. 311–321. There
was no overlap in participants between the two studies.