Executive Functions And Antisocial Personality disorder

From a neuropsychological point of view, individuals with an antisocial personality disorder may exhibit deficits in executive functioning (Kandel & Freed, 1989; Pennington & Ozonoff, 1996; Dolan, 2012). Executive functioning is the ability of an individual to engage in an independent, purposeful, self-directed, and self-serving behavior (Lezak et al., 2012) activated in unfamiliar circumstances, in opposition to routinized, automatic behavior (Shallice, 1990). In other words, executive functioning makes possible “playing with ideas; taking time to think before acting; meeting novel, unanticipated challenges; resisting to giving in to temptation; and staying focused” (Diamond, 2013, p.2). 

The three core components of executive functioning discussed in this study are inhibition, cognitive flexibility or shifting, and working memory (Diamond, 2013; Miyake et al., 2000). 

-Inhibition is the ability to inhibit dominant or automatic responses when necessary intentionally. It is the potential that an individual can stop themselves from any action that may have harmful or inappropriate repercussions. 

-Cognitive flexibility or shifting is the ability to shift from one cognitive task to another, from one behavior to another, considering the situation's requirements and thinking of multiple ways to resolve a given problem (Miyake et al., 2000). In simpler words, it is the ability to change one’s point of view when facing new situations. 

-Working memory is composed of four components: the phonological loop that preserves verbal information, the visual scratchpad that controls visual information, the central executive that allocates attention between the data (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974), and an episodic buffer that links information through sensory domains (Baddeley, 2000). 

The combination of inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and working memory are activated in other higher-order processes, like planning, problem-solving, and reasoning (Carey et al., 2015). It is believed that executive function is controlled by the premotor and prefrontal regions of the frontal lobe (Johnson-Greene et al., 2002). 

When it comes to the different components of executive functioning during the first years of one’s life, (Diamond, 2013) states that inhibitory control and working memory generally co-occur. Infant inhibition is predictive of working memory in toddlerhood (Johansson et al., 2016), and it predicts outcomes throughout one’s life (Diamond, 2013). “By the end of the third year, typically developing infants can selectively employ impulse control and cognitive flexibility to accomplish goal-directed responses to novel situations” (Hendry et al., 2016, p.2). Higher function processes into adulthood are built upon the foundation of the core components of executive functioning developed during infancy (Garon et al., 2008). 

Working memory supports inhibitory control and vice versa. (Diamond, 2013) states that holding information is an ability that develops very early in an infant’s life. Infants can hold one or two things in their minds for a long time and can update the contents of their working memory. 

She notes that cognitive flexibility is built on working memory and inhibition. Its primary function is to use inhibition and the new elements of the working memory to create new perspectives. 

Cognitive flexibility improves during child development. The flexibility shift is determined by environmental factors, such as novelty (Garon et al., 2008). It emerges between 18 and 24 months (Garon et al., 2008). 

Moreover, it has been demonstrated that there is a strong relationship between the central attention process and the executive function (Garon et al., 2008). The capacity to focus on important information and dismiss irrelevant information and the speed with which data is processed is the first required stage of goal-directed behavior and healthy cognitive abilities (Bell & Deater- Deckard, 2007; Garon et al., 2008). 

From late infancy throughout the preschool period, attention span and frequency of attention focus increase (Bell, & Deater-Deckard, 2007). Attention is vital in developing executive function components because it allows children to have more control over the information they receive (Garon et al., 2008). 

Like adults, children activate their prefrontal cortex when they perform cognitive shifting, inhibitory control, and working memory tasks (Moriguchi & Hiraki, 2013). However, this is one of the latest maturing brain areas (Garon et al., 2008). The cerebellum is another part of the brain that plays an essential role in neurodevelopment. “It participates in a network or ensemble of connected brain regions that drive very broadly defined sensorimotor procedural learning and ‘action control’”(Koziol et al., 2012, p. 520). One of the crucial roles of the cerebellum is to allow the cortex to retain the most efficient representations of behavior (Koziol et al., 2012). 

Mona Gebrael El Hachem, Psy.D., LMHC

Owner of

Like A Phoenix

Rising From The Aches

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Disclaimer: The content presented in this article is extracted 

From the March 2022 of the dissertation titled "Executive 

Functioning and Antisocial Personality Disorder", authored 

By Mona Gebrael El Hachem, Psy.D., LMHC.