Assessment of emotion and language processing in psychopathic offenders: results from a dichotic listening task

Previous research has demonstrated that psychopaths exhibit abnormal language lateralization, and it has been proposed that psychopaths may be characterized by abnormal processing asymmetries in other domains as well [Hare, (1998). Psychopathy, affect, and behavior. In D. J. Cooke, A. E. Forth, & R. D. Hare (Eds.), Psychopathy: theory, research and implications for society (pp. 105-137). Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.]. The present study employed Bryden and MacRae's [Bryden, M. P., & MacRae, L. (1988). Dichotic laterality effects obtained with emotional words. Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology, and Behavioral Neurology, 1, 171-176] dichotic listening task to investigate language and emotion lateralization among criminal psychopaths. Contrary to expectations. psychopaths demonstrated a normal right-ear advantage for word targets. However, psychopaths did show a reduced left-ear advantage for emotion targets', which was driven by high right-ear accuracy. We propose that psychopaths' abnormal processing asymmetries are evident primarily on complex tasks and may be related to poor interhemispheric integraption. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.