If CI-1033 mouse punishment processing was the principle problem in psychopathy, then adults with psychopathy should not change their responding following punishment. Yet adults with psychopathy are as likely to change their response following punishment as comparison adults.40 The idea is that the individual’s choices are determined by the relative reward values of the responses available to them. The individual is more likely to stay with a new response following its reward because the expected reward value of this new response

is now stronger than the expected reward value of the old response.50 If there is deficient representation of expected value, the individual’s decision-making will be poorer; they Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical should be more likely to return to an old, now punished,

response rather than stay with the new rewarded response. This exact behavioral profile is seen in adults with Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical psychopathy; they are significantly more likely to change their response following a reward than comparison individuals.40 In other words, models of psychopathy stressing only impairment in punishment processing are insufficient. Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical From a cognitive perspective, it appears that individuals with psychopathy face two core difficulties with respect to emotional processing.10 First, they show impairment in stimulus-reinforcement learning (associating a reward or punishment value with a stimulus). This is most clearly manifested in their difficulty on aversive conditioning tasks.37 But it is also relevant to their impairment in processing both the distress (their fear, sadness, and pain) as well as the happiness of others.35,36 Emotional expressions can be considered to be reinforcers allowing humans to rapidly transmit valence information Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical on objects and actions between

one another; you regard actions resulting in fear and pain as bad and actions resulting in happiness as good.51 Indeed, it is argued that care-based transgressions Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical come to be regarded as “bad” because of the association of representations of these transgressions with the aversive feedback of the distress of the victims of these transgressions.10 In line with the position here, adults with psychopathy regard care -based transgressions as less bad than comparison adults.18,42-45 Tryptophan synthase Second, they show impairment in the representation of reinforcement outcome information.10 As noted above, impaired representation of reinforcement outcome information allows an explanation of why individuals with psychopathy are more likely to change their response following a reward for that response. The value of the new response is updated and represented more poorly resulting in another response being chosen, leading to an increased probability that the subject will change their response. Similarly, on the Ultimatum game, individuals with psychopathy will be more likely to reject offers,41 even though this will cost them money, because they less well represent the reward value of this money.

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