Posted on 11/16/2009 3:51:34 PM PST by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Children who don't show normal fear responses to loud, unpleasant sounds at the age of 3 may be more likely to commit crimes as adults, according to a new study.
Yu Gao and colleagues in the United States and the United Kingdom compared results from a study of almost 1,800 children born in 1969 and 1970 on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius to criminal records of group members 20 years later.
At age 3, the children were tested to gauge their level of "fear conditioning," or fear of consequences. The idea is that children who associate unpleasant sounds or other unpleasant experiences with fear will be less likely to commit antisocial acts because they will link such experiences with punishments for those acts.
Researchers tested the 3-year-olds' responses to unpleasant noises using a lie detector. When they looked at any criminal records among the participants 20 years later, 137 of them (131 male, 6 female) had at least one criminal conviction.
Compared to almost 300 participants with no criminal records, those 137 participants had a much lower response to the noises at the age of 3.
The findings could link previous studies suggesting that psychopaths and children with behavioral problems at the age of 11 have similar abnormalities in a part of the brain called the amygdala. That structure is largely responsible for directing fear of consequences.
Because this study controlled for social factors such as parents' education, number of parents in the home, socioeconomic status, and family size, biology is the likely reason for the "blunted emotions" registered in some of the 3 year olds, study co-author, Dr. Adrian Raine of the University of York in England, told Reuters Health in a telephone interview.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Sociopaths are not misbehaving kids. They have something wrong in the head and it can be seen when they are children. I’ve seen them too, the most accurate and disturbing sign is to see them inflict pain on animals with a calm demeanor.
You can’t beat it out of them. They are usually intellegent and punishing them only makes them crafty. All you can to is identify them and lock them away if they become dangerous to others.
It’s sad.
One of my ancestors was governor of Mauritius when it was a colony of France.
bookmark
One of my kids was like that. Spanked the crap out of him.
...no problem now.
—
Had a nephew or two like that including my Godson, he did a Minnesota NG tour and went back to being a peace officer and has a set of twins to boot.
His nickname was Creep. He took after his oldest brother whio followed his uncle into the Marines (or so I would have hoped not lol) and their cousin Goober.. nasty lil farts.. two words .. willow switches .. worked on me. ;-)
If this is right, then my daughter is destined to rob a bank. However, she is an honor student, an athlete, a musician, she volunteers in the community an is a very good girl. So those spankings must have helped. I told somebody if you don’t have your child under control by the time they enter school they are messed up for life. We got both of our children straight. (My son was born an angel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vXW66o15e0&feature=related
good answer :O) probably true also
There has never been a criminal that was beaten as a child.
Apparently most of you, judging by your comments, don’t realize what this is. This is another brick in the “we can arrest you for crimes you may commit” building. They are running several articles lately about how we should arrest people based on characteristics and not actual crimes. Just another way to arrest political enemies.
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