Differences in social cognition between male prisoners with antisocial personality or psychotic disorder

Abstract

The objective of this work is to discriminate between different neurocognitive circuits involved in empathy, one ofthem linked to emotional processing and the other associated with cognitive function. This is evaluated throughthe use of neuropsychological tools (Hinting Task, Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test and Cambridge MindReading Test) empathic cognition and empathic emotion. In this study, 57 male prisoners were divided intothree groups: psychotic patients (20), antisocial patients (17), and a control group (20). Patients with psychosiswere found to have significantly lower scores than the antisocial and control groups in a social reasoning test,but using tests of emotional recognition, we found that both psychotic patients and antisocial subjects scoredsignificantly lower than the control group.