Deficits in facial expression recognition in male adolescents with early‐onset or adolescence‐onset conduct disorder

Graeme Fairchild,Sarah J Stollery,Ian M Goodyer,Stephanie H.M Van Goozen,Andrew J Calder

doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2008.02020.x

Abstract

Background:We examined whether conduct disorder (CD) is associated with deficits in facial expression recognition and, if so, whether these deficits are specific to the early-onset form of CD, which emerges in childhood. The findings could potentially inform the developmental taxonomic theory of antisocial behaviour, which suggests that early-onset and adolescence-limited forms of CD are subject to different aetiological processes.Method:Male adolescents with either early-onset CD (n =42) or adolescence-onset CD (n =39), and controls with no history of serious antisocial behaviour and no current psychiatric disorder (n =40) completed tests of facial expression and facial identity recognition. Dependent measures were: (a) correct recognition of facial expressions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise, and (b) the number of correct matches of unfamiliar faces.Results:Relative to controls, recognition of anger, disgust, and happiness in facial expressions was disproportionately impaired in participants with early-onset CD, whereas recognition of fear was impaired in participants with adolescence-onset CD. Participants with CD who were high in psychopathic traits showed impaired fear, sadness, and surprise recognition relative to those low in psychopathic traits. There were no group differences in facial identity recognition.Conclusions:Both CD subtypes were associated with impairments in facial recognition, although these were more marked in the early-onset subgroup. Variation in psychopathic traits appeared to exert an additional influence on the recognition of fear, sadness and surprise. Implications of these data for the developmental taxonomic theory of antisocial behaviour are discussed.

Highlights

We examined whether conduct disorder (CD) is associated with deficits in facial expression recognition and, if so, whether these deficits are specific to the early-onset form of CD, which emerges in childhood
The present study had three key aims: (i) to examine whether facial expression recognition deficits are present in adolescents with CD; (ii) to investigate whether these deficits, if present, are developmentally sensitive, i.e., confined to participants with early-onset CD (EO-CD); and (iii) to assess the influence of variation in psychopathic traits on facial expression recognition
It is worth noting that Dolan and Fullam (2006) reported impaired happiness recognition in personality-disordered offenders, and that happiness recognition is positively correlated with amygdala volume (Kipps, Duggins, McCusker, & Calder, 2007), an area that is reduced in volume in individuals with EO-CD (Sterzer, Stadler, Poustka, & Kleinschmidt, 2007)

Summary

Background

We examined whether conduct disorder (CD) is associated with deficits in facial expression recognition and, if so, whether these deficits are specific to the early-onset form of CD, which emerges in childhood. Blair and colleagues have identified a number of parallels between psychopaths and patients with amygdala lesions (Blair, Peschardt, Budhani, Mitchell, & Pine, 2006) Both groups show deficient acquisition of fear conditioning (Lykken, 1957; Hare & Quinn, 1971; LaBar, LeDoux, Spencer, & Phelps, 1995), impairments in fear recognition (Adolphs, Tranel, Damasio, & Damasio, 1995; Calder et al, 1996; Blair et al, 2001), and reduced potentiation of the startle reflex by negative visual primes (Angrilli et al, 1996; Funayama, Grillon, Davis, & Phelps, 2001; Patrick, Bradley, & Lang, 1993). These similarities have led to the hypothesis that psychopathy is a developmental consequence of early amygdala dysfunction Supporting this view, a recent functional neuroimaging study showed reduced amygdala activation during fearful face processing in adolescents with disruptive behaviour disorders and high levels of psychopathic traits (Marsh et al, 2008).

Participants

Conclusions

Findings

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