Stroop tasks reveal abnormal selective attention among psychopathic offenders

word and color were spatially separated (separated CW). Consistent with “overselective ” attention, offenders with psychopathy displayed reduced Stroop interference on the separated CW and PW tasks relative to offenders who were not psychopathic. However, offenders with psychopathy displayed normal Stroop interference on the standard CW Stroop. Further, the reduced interference of offenders with psychopathy on the separated CW Stroop was accompanied by normal facilitation. These findings suggest a circumscribed attentional deficit in psychopathy that hinders the use of unattended information that is (a) not integrated with deliberately attended information and (b) not compatible with current goal-directed behavior. People with psychopathy are known for persistent antisocial behaviors that they enact with no appreciable signs of guilt, re-morse, or responsibility. Strikingly, these behaviors persist despite good intelligence, intact judgment and reasoning abilities, and relatively low levels of anxiety or neuroticism. This apparent lack of cognitive or affective pathology has been referred to as a mask of sanity (Cleckley, 1976) and has led many to attribute the antisocial behaviors of psychopathic individuals to willful disobe-dience or maliciousness. Despite this mask of sanity, psychopathic individuals display subtle yet pervasive processing deficits that may underlie their disinhibited and antisocial behaviors. Psychopathic offenders are reliably distinguished from nonpsychopathic criminals by their poor passive avoidance (e.g., Lykken, 1957; Newman & Kosson, 1986), abnormal physiological responses to aversive cues (e.g.