| In recent years,the number of serious violent crimes in China has gradually decreased,but extreme violent incidents by individuals occurred frequently all over the country,which have seriously affected the people’s sense of security,causing great concern of the whole society.As the perpetrators of violent crimes,the behavior problem of violent offenders is one of the key points in the reform of prison inmates.Previous researches have documented that negative emotions such as anger would impair the cognitive processing of violent offenders,and they were more likely to show impulsive behaviors such as aggressive behaviors in threatening situations.The generation of impulsive behaviors might be closely related to the deficit of individual response inhibition.Therefore,the aim of the present study was to discuss the impact of anger on response inhibition in violent offenders.Response inhibition,an important part of executive control function,refers to the inhibitory process of behaviors that does not meet the current need or inappropriate behaviors to achieve goal-oriented behaviors.It was always believed that the inhibitory control needed consciousness.This is because previous studies have demonstrated that the arousal and execution of inhibitory control depend on the function of the prefrontal cortex,which is correlated with conscious experience.So,many researchers naturally had thought of the concept of "conscious inhibitory control",as if "unconscious inhibitory control" was unimaginable.So far,the existing studies have effectively proved the existence of unconscious response inhibition from two aspects of behavioral and cognitive neuroscience,revealing its mechanism of neural activity.This finding indicates that the advanced processing of response inhibition is not completely affected by conscious stimuli,but can also be triggered unconsciously.The present study investigated the characteristics of conscious and unconscious response inhibition under different emotional-induced conditions and their relationships with impulsivity in violent offenders through two behavioral experiments.In our study of response inhibition,the emotional Go/No-go task paradigm and the masked Go/No-go task paradigm were mainly adopted,and the method of objective measurement was used to measure the response inhibition of violent offenders in both conscious and unconscious states.On this basis,the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale(BIS-11)was used to assess the individual impulsivity.The behavioral task performance(i.e.,Go reaction time and No-go error rate in Experiment 1;No-go reaction time,and RT-slowing value in Experiment 2)and the impulsiveness scale scores were correlated for analysis,so as to further examine the correlation between the deficits of conscious and unconscious response inhibition of violent offenders and their different dimensions of impulsivity.The experimental results suggested that:(1)In the non-emotional tasks,the Go reaction time of violent offenders was significantly shorter than that of the control group,but the difference in the No-go error rate between the two groups was not statistically significant;in the explicit emotional tasks,the Go reaction time of violent offenders was significantly shorter than that of the control group,and the No-go error rate of violent offenders was significantly higher than that of the control group.In addition,the No-go error rate of violent offenders in the non-emotional tasks was significantly lower than that in the explicit emotional tasks,while the difference in the No-go error rate of the control group in the two tasks was not statistically significant.(2)In the implicit emotional tasks,the Go reaction time of violent offenders was significantly shorter than that of the control group,and the No-go error rate of violent offenders was significantly higher than that of the control group.In addition,the No-go error rate of the two groups under implicit anger was significantly higher than that under implicit neutral emotion.(3)Under the condition of neutral emotions,the subthreshold No-go reaction time of violent offenders and the control group was longer than the subthreshold Go reaction time,and the subthreshold No-go reaction time of violent offenders was significantly shorter than that of the control group.(4)Under the condition of anger,the subthreshold No-go reaction time of the control group was significantly longer than the subthreshold Go reaction time,while there was no statistically significant difference between the subthreshold Go reaction time and the subthreshold No-go reaction time in violent offenders.In addition,the RT-slowing value of violent offenders was significantly lower than that of the control group.(5)The correlation analysis showed that the Go reaction time of violent offenders in the explicit emotional tasks was negatively correlated with their BIS-11 total scores and unplanned impulsivity dimension,while the No-go error rate in the explicit emotional tasks was positively correlated with their motor impulsivity dimension.The No-go error rate under implicit neutral emotion was negatively correlated with their attentional impulsivity dimension.The subthreshold No-go reaction time of anger was negatively correlated with their unplanned impulsivity dimension.In conclusion,we expanded the research subjects to the population with impaired executive function(i.e.,violent offenders)in our experiment.Surprisingly,we found that violent offenders were more susceptible to the stimulation of anger to exhibit defects in response to conscious and unconscious response inhibition,which were respectively correlated with different dimensions of impulsivity.This not only broadens our understanding of the potential breadth and depth of unconscious information processing,but also provides direct experimental evidences for the existence of unconscious response inhibition.Besides,it can help us to understand the mechanism of negative emotional stimuli in the conscious and unconscious executive control functions more systematically and accurately,and emphasize the importance of studying the impacts of anger and impulsivity on the conscious and unconscious response inhibition in violent offenders.Adjusting the process of inhibitory control in different states of consciousness through top-down emotional control training and bottom-up behavioral inhibition training can help us avoid many behavioral tendencies that are inconsistent with social norms,and may play a vital role in the adaptive goal-oriented behaviors of violent offenders. |
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