Somatic aphasia: Mismatch of body sensations with autonomic stress reactivity in psychopathy. 


Author: Gao Y, Raine A, Schug RA.

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, United States. 
Conference/Journal: Biol Psychol.
Date published: 2012 Apr 2
Other:
  Word Count: 147  
    BACKGROUND:

Although one of the main characteristics of psychopaths is a deficit in emotion, it is unknown whether they show a fundamental impairment in appropriately recognizing their own body sensations during an emotion-inducing task.

METHOD:

Skin conductance and heart rate were recorded in 138 males during a social stressor together with subjective reports of body sensations. Psychopathic traits were assessed using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) 2nd edition (Hare, 2003).

RESULTS:

Nonpsychopathic controls who reported higher body sensations showed higher heart rate reactivity, but this verbal-autonomic consistency was not found in psychopathic individuals. This mind-body disconnection is particularly associated with the interpersonal-affective factor of psychopathy.

CONCLUSIONS:

Findings are the first to document this body sensation-autonomic mismatch in psychopaths, and suggest that somatic aphasia - the inaccurate identification and recognition of one's own somatic states - may partly underlie the interpersonal-affective features of psychopaths.

Copyright © 2012. Published by Elsevier B.V.

PMID: 22490763