Memory and Violent Crime among Delinquents

Abstract

This study, one of a series on violent crime, was designed to test whether good memory—traditionally an attribute of the psychopathic personality—might also appear among juvenile offenders unselected for psychopathy. It has been suggested that the type of superior memory that psychopaths enjoy may be limited to short-term memory for nonsense material, as reflected in the (nonverbal) Wechsler Digit Span subtest; but, on the other hand, juvenile offenders may actually score low on long-term, meaningful, verbal memory, as reflected in most of the other Wechsler Verbal IQ subtests. The present study tested juvenile offenders' Digit Span scores against Verbal IQ scores and found that, as hypothesized, Digit Span scores surpassed Verbal IQ scores. The effect was nonsignificantly more pronounced among more violent than among less violent offenders, indicating a need for further study. Suggestions are offered for laboratory research and further clinical study which might clarify the effect in regard to violence.