Evoked potential augmenting-reducing in psychopaths and criminals with impaired smooth-pursuit eye movements

Previous studies that have assessed a stimulation-seeking theory of psychopathy are open to the criticism that psychopaths may lie on self-report questionnaires. The present study uses event-related potential (ERP) augmenting-reducing as a psychophysiological analog of stimulation-seeking in psychopaths to test this theory. It is also hypothesized that "schizoid" criminals, as defined by poor eye tracking, would show nonaugmenting/reducing, a profile characteristic of schizophrenia. Schizoid criminals were found to be characterized by nonaugmenting/reducing, but psychopaths were not found to be characterized by augmenting. It is concluded that stimulation-seeking is a viable theory of criminality but not of psychopathy, and that the etiological basis to schizoid criminality may differ substantially from criminality, per se.