Facial emotion recognition in male antisocial personality disorders with or without adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

ObjectiveWe aimed to investigate facial emotion recognition abilities in violent individuals with antisocial personality disorder who have comorbid attention deficient hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or not.MethodThe photos of happy, surprised, fearful, sad, angry, disgust, and neutral facial expressions and Wender Utah Rating Scale have been performed in all groups.ResultsThe mean ages were as follows: in antisocial personality disorder with ADHD 22.0 ± 1.59, in pure antisocial individuals 21.90 ± 1.80 and in controls 22.97 ± 2.85 (p > 0.05). The mean score in Wender Utah Rating Scale was significantly different between groups (p < 0.001). The mean accurate responses to each facial emotion between groups were insignificant (p > 0.05) excluding disgust faces which was significantly impaired in ASPD + ADHD and pure ASPD groups. Antisocial individuals with attention deficient and hyperactivity had spent significantly more time to each facial emotion than healthy controls (p < 0.05) while pure antisocial individual had more time to recognize disgust and neutral faces than healthy controls (p < 0.05).ConclusionStudy of complex social cognitive abilities in adults with ADHD and violent behaviors is lacking. This study is the first, investigating the differences according to social cognition cues in violent individual that revealed no significance within pure antisocial individuals and antisocial individuals with ADHD.