Studies show that kids with conduct disorder,
delinquency have trouble reading expressions

Two new studies build on previous research indicating that problems in recognizing emotions may play a role in the antisocial behavior of many children and teens.

In the first study, Graeme Fairchild and colleagues evaluated 42 teens between 14 and 18 years of age with early-onset conduct disorder (CD), 39 with adolescence-onset CD, and 40 teens with no history of serious antisocial behavior or psychiatric problems. The researchers tested participants’ ability to recognize facial expressions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. In addition, they evaluated the teens’ ability to recognize unfamiliar faces. The study excluded participants with IQs lower than 75.

The researchers report, “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 adolescent-onset CD.” Participants with high scores on psychopathy were more impaired in recognizing fear, sadness, and surprise than those with few or no psychopathic traits. No differences were seen in the test measuring recognition of unfamiliar faces, showing that this skill did not affect participants’ ability to recognize expressions.

Fairchild and colleagues say their findings are consistent with suggestions that antisocial behavior may involve deficits in the function of the orbitofrontal cortex. The behavioral similarities between individuals with CD and those who develop sociopathic behaviors after injury to this brain region, they say, “suggest that subtle orbitofrontal damage or dysfunction may be present in the former group, which would potentially be reflected in deficits in anger and disgust recognition.”

In a related study, Wataru Sato and colleagues used a similar test to compare the facial recognition abilities of 24 incarcerated male delinquents to those of non-delinquent males. The researchers found that the delinquents were significantly more likely than the controls to misinterpret expressions of disgust as anger.

The researchers say their data and similar findings from other studies “suggest that delinquents might be projecting their own heightened angry emotions onto others when they misperceive others’ negative, but not hostile, emotional states as anger.” They note that while both angry and disgusted expressions cause negative reactions in observers, “angry expressions induce higher arousal than do disgusted expressions” and may imply that an attack is going occur. Thus, they say, the delinquents’ misinterpretation of expressions “might result in anticipation of relatively more dangerous behavior on the part of the sender than would accurate recognition.”

Editor's note: See related article in Crime Times, 2007, Vol. 13, No. 1, Page 5.