Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, Vol. 23, No.

6, 1995

Personality and Antisocial Behavior in Children

and Adolescents: An Enquiry into Eysenck's and
Gray's Theories
A. C. Fonseca 1~ and W. Yule 2

Two studies were conducted to test the hypotheses derived from Eysenck's and
Gray's theories of personality regarding antisocial behavior. For this purpose
the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Junior) (EPQ-Junior) and a card task
aimed at measuring sensitivity to reward were used in each of the studies. The
first study compared a group of juvenile delinquents with a group of
nondelinquents and the second study compared a group o f severely
conduct-disordered children with a group of normal children. The results did
not support Eysenck's claim that delinquents score higher than their normal
counterparts on extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism. Some support was
found for the hypothesis derived from Gray's theory: Children and adolescents
with severe antisocial behavior were more sensitive to rewards than their
normal counterparts.

Personality factors have for a long time occupied an important role in re-
search on antisocial behavior (see Arbuthnot, Gordon, & Jurkovic, 1987;
Tennenbaum, 1977). Many of these studies, during the last 30 years, have
aimed at testing hypotheses d~rived from Eysenck's (1964) and, more re-
cently, Gray's (1972, 1987) theories of personality and learning. These theo-
ries emphasize delinquents' difficulty in inhibiting their behavior and relate
it to dimensions of personality which, in turn, are believed to reflect indi-
vidual differences in the functioning of specific areas of the brain. Eysenck's
hypotheses have been extensively tested in many studies on crime and ju-
venile delinquency, often leading to opposite conclusions (Farrington,

Manuscript received in final form August 16, 1994.

1Universidade de Coimbra, Coimbra,,Portugal.
2Institute of Psychiatry, London, England.
3Address all correspondence to A. C. Fonseca, Faculdade de Psicologia, Rua do Col6gio Novo,
3000 Coimbra, Portugal.

767
0091-0627/95/1200-0767507.50/0© 1995PlenumPublishingCorporation
768 Fonseca and Yule

Biron, & Leblanc, 1982; Perez, 1986). On the other hand, hypotheses de-
rived from Gray's theory have only recently started to be tested by several
authors interested in the study of psychopathy and impulsivity, generally
with encouraging results (Newman, 1987). Based on this evidence, one
would think that Gray's theory provides a better explanation of antisocial
behavior. So far, however, no effort has been made to assess both theories
in the same study. Moreover, research based on either theory has tradi-
tionally dealt with adult offenders, juvenile delinquents, adult psychopaths,
or even normal extraverts. There are, however, good reasons to believe
that they could also provide a useful framework for research into children
with conduct disorder, since antisocial behaviors at this age are considered
good predictors of later forms of psychological and social maladjustment
(Farrington, 1991; Loeber & Stouthamer-Loeber, 1987; Robins, 1966).

Eysenck's Theory

According to Eysenck's theory, three personality dimensions are as-

sociated with delinquent behavior: extraversion (E), neuroticism (N), and
psychoticism (P). Subjects with high scores on extraversion are more diffi-
cult to condition and consequently have more difficulties in inhibiting their
antisocial tendencies; subjects with high scores on neuroticism tend to re-
peat antisocial behavior since anxiety is believed to act as a drive which
multiplies habit or increases whichever drive is dominant; subjects scoring
high on psychoticism are more prone to delinquency because of their re-
duced sensitivity toward people's feelings and because of their lack of guilt.
These differences are believed to be related to specific neurological bases
in the case of the extraversion and neuroticism and to an imbalance be-
tween androgens and estrogens in the case of psychoticism (Eysenck, 1947;
Eysenck & Eysenck, 1976).
Results from studies testing these hypotheses have been inconsistent
with regard to extraversion and neuroticism. However, support has been
found for the hypothesis of a relationship between psychoticism and juve-
nile delinquency (Eysenck & Gudjonsson, 1989; Perez, 1986; Rutter &
Giller, 1983). Studies with children and preadolescents are still rare hut
generally present the same conflicting picture (AUsop & Feldman, 1976;
Powell, 1977). The only study reporting full support for Eysenck's theory
was conducted by Gabrys et al. (1988), who found that a group of American
conduct-disordered (CD) children referred to an outpatient facility run by
the Ministry of Health scored higher than the children with other diagnoses
on E, N, and P. However, this study was restricted to clinical referred sam-
ples and no effort has been made, so far, to replicate these findings in
Personality, Antisocial Behavior, and Children 769

other places by other researchers. One can, therefore, conclude that, as far
as conduct-disordered children are concerned, Eysenck's theory of antiso-
cial behavior has not yet been fully tested.

Predictions Based on Gray's Theory

Based on his research with rats, Gray (1970) identified two main
systems of learning: the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and the be-
havioral approach system (BAS). The two systems have different
neurophysiological substrates and are responsive to different types of
stimuli. The BIS is thought to inhibit behavior in response to cues of
punishment, frustrative nonreward, or novelty, while the BAS is
thought to activate behavior in response to cues of reward or nonpun-
ishment. Extrapolating from animals to humans, Gray suggested that
the dimension of anxiety reflects individual differences in the activity
of the BIS while the dimension of impulsivity reflects the activity of
the BAS. The first claim is based on the fact that, in rats, the BIS
responds to anxiety-reducing drugs, while the second is based on the
fact that impulsive people and psychopaths are generally motivated by
potential rewards in their environment and often appear unable to de-
lay gratification. Furthermore, Gray (1981) postulated that in normal
individuals the two systems are balanced, while in people with deficits
in passive avoidance (disinhibition syndrome) there would be a less
sensitive BIS coupled with a hyperresponsive BAS.
These ideas were subsequently developed by other researchers
(Gorenstein & Newman, 1980; Newman, 1987; Newman & Kosson, 1987;
Newman, Widon & Kosson, 1985; Quay, 1988) and applied to the em-
pirical study of different forms of antisocial behavior. Using tasks aimed
at measuring passive avoidance, Newman and collaborators found that
disinhibited individuals (e.g., psychopathic delinquents, and impulsive as
well as extraverted individuals) were more responsive than their cOntrols
to signals of reward than to the signals of punishment even when the
probability of the latter was higher than that of the former. In other
words, disinhibited individuals behaved as if their increased sensitivity to
rewards led to a decreased attention to the cues of punishments. Differ-
ences between the two groups were particularly evident in tasks pitting
rewards against punishments (Newman, Patterson, & Kosson, 1987).
More recently, similar results have been reported in studies with juvenile
delinquents (Scerbo et al., 1990), with severely emotionally disturbed ado-
lescents (Shapiro, Quay, Hogan, & Schwartz, 1988), with persistently con-
duct-disordered children in kindergarten sets (Kalantari, Yule, &
770 Fonseca and Yule

Gardner, 1991), and with conduct-disordered pupils (Daugherty & Quay,

1991) identified by their teachers in a normal school population on the
basis of their extreme scores in the Revised Behavior Problem Checklist
(Quay & Peterson, 1987). However, as the tasks used in these studies
involved both rewards and punishments, it becomes difficult to know
whether the response perseverance found in subjects with antisocial be-
havior resulted from an oversensitivity to reward or from an undersen-
sitivity to punishment. A study by Schachar & Logan (1990) throws some
light on this issue. Using a different experimental paradigm, they showed
that CD children did not make more commission errors (e.g., touching
a button when supposed not to) than their normal peers in a stop-sign
task which did not involve any reward. These findings seem consistent
with Quay's claim that children with conduct disorder have an overactive
BAS and with Newman's hypothesis that disinhibited people are oversen-
sitive to reward.
On the whole, it would seem that predictions derived from Gray's
theory have received more consistent empirical support than those put for-
ward by Eysenck. So far, however, these studies have focused only on very
specific subgroups of antisocial behaviors (e.g., psychopathic vs. nonpsycho-
pathic delinquents and hyperactives vs. nonhyperactives) and no effort has
been made to test the central hypotheses of both theories with the same
subjects. Furthermore, as conduct disorder and antisocial behavior can be
defined according to very different criteria at different age levels, one may
wonder whether the two models keep the same predictive power with dif-
ferent kinds of antisocial behavior in children and adolescents.
The two studies described in this article represent a first attempt to
address these issues. In Study 1, a group of juvenile delinquents from an
assessment center were compared with a group of nondelinquent adoles-
cents from an inner London area. In Study 2, the comparison was between
conduct-disordered children referred to special institutions and a group of
children attending normal elementary schools. To keep in line with previous
research in this field, the methodology and instruments used in these stud-
ies are similar to those employed by other authors on the assessment of
either model. Based on Eysenck's theory we predicted that children and
adolescents with antisocial behavior would score higher than their normal
counterparts on E, N, and P. Based on Gray's model and on subsequent
studies by Newman, Quay, and collaborators, we hypothesized that antiso-
cial children would be more sensitive to reward and less sensitive to pun-
ishment than their normal counterparts in a task pitting rewards against
punishments.
Personality, Antisocial Behavior, and Children 771

STUDY 1. JUVENILE DELINQUENTS

Method

Subjects

A group of delinquents and a control group of nondelinquents from

the same inner city area took part in this study. The delinquent group con-
sisted of 44 boys, aged between 12 and 15 years (M = 14.6, SD = 12.4),
referred by the Court or Social Service Department to an assessment center
run by a Social Service Department in South London. Their mean IQ was
91 (SD = 10.28). According to their files they came from low socioeco-
nomic classes and had a long history of antisocial behavior, qualifying for
a diagnosis of conduct disorder. In addition, most of them had been in
several foster families or in children's homes before being referred to this
center. Following a distinction similar to that adopted for conduct disorder
in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (3rd ed.) (DSM-
III; American Psychiatric Association, 1980), the boys were subsequently
classified into two subgroups: aggressive and nonaggressive. Included in the
first group were boys with antisocial behaviors which were prominently vio-
lent such as murder, rape, assault, robbery, repeated injuries to people and
properties, fighting, or physical and verbal abuse. Included in the second
group,were boys with such behaviors as theft, shoplifting, absconding, lying,
and disobeying. According to their files none of the latter had been in-
volved in violent transgressions. The importance of using delinquent sub-
groups in order to test more accurately the relationship between antisocial
behavior and other variables has been stressed by several authors working
in this domain (Loeber & Schmalling, 1985; Quay, 1987). These two sub-
groups were matched for age and IQ.
The control group consisted of 20 boys aged between 11 and 15 years
(M = 13.8, SD = 16.3) attending two youth clubs and one scout group in
an inner city area of London. Their mean IQ was 94.7 (SD = 10.23). Most
of them came from families with low incomes. To our knowledge none of
them had been involved in severe antisocial behavior that required contact
with the police or with the courts.
In short, the groups of delinquents and nondelinquents who took part
in this study were equivalent on IQ, but the delinquents were, on average,
a year older than the nondelinquents. Subjects with IQs lower than 70 were
excluded from this study.
772 Fonseca and Yule

Instruments

Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Junior) (EPQ-Junior; Eysenck &

Eysenck, 1975). This questionnaire consists of 81 items distributed among
four scales: Extraversion (E), Neuroticism (N), Psychoticism (P), and Lie
(L) and has been widely used at testing Eysenck's theory of antisocial be-
havior with children and adolescents.
Cards Game Task. This was an adaptation of the computerized task
developed by Newman, Patterson, & Kosson (1987) and Shapiro et al.
(1988). It consisted of a small rectangular metallic box which the subjects
could hold in one hand while removing the cards, one at a time, with the
other hand from a thin opening at the bottom of the box. Inside the box
there were 100 normal playing cards arranged in such a way that the first
block of 10 cards contained nine face cards and one number card, the sec-
ond block of 10 contained eight face cards and two number c a r d s . . , and
so on until the last block of cards which contained only number cards. Boys
were told that the aim of the game was to see how much money they could
win. There were two rules: First, subjects would earn 2 pence (2p) for each
face card and lose 2p for each number card they sorted; second, they could
stop the game when they wanted and take with them the money they had
won. The dependent variables in this task were the number of cards played
and the total amount of money earned.
At the end of the game, subjects were asked to explain the rules of
the game, what they thought of it, and why they stopped when they did
so. Those who did not stop were asked why they did not stop, what they
thought when they started to lose, and if they believed they could recover
from the initial losses by the end of the game. These questions were aimed
at seeing if they forgot the rules, if they guessed how the cards were dis-
tributed in the box, if their strategies were guided by the hope of reward,
or whether they were simply interested in playing all the cards in order to
see the end of the game. This would help to clarify the psychological proc-
esses involved in the game, although no statistical analysis of these last
questions will be presented in this article.
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--Revised (WISC-R; Wechsler,
1974). A widely used (in the UK) short form of this test was employed to
assess subjects' intellectual levels. It consisted of the following subscales:
Information, Similarities, Vocabulary, Picture Completion, and Block De-
sign. These subtests were chosen in such a way that quick and economic
representations of both verbal and performance domains were provided. A
rather similar short form w/~s used by Clarizio and Veres (1984). The con-
version of the short-form scores to an IQ estimate was done by the pro-
cedure of simple prorating.
Personality, Antisocial Behavior, and Children 773

Procedure

Subjects in both delinquent groups filled in the EPQ-Junior, per-

formed the card task, and answered the WISC-R, individually, in a quiet
room of the institution where they lived. Following a custom established
in this center, each boy received £2 for his participation in the study.
Subjects from the control group were seen in a small room at their
youth centers, in the evening, and the procedure adopted was slightly dif-
ferent: The EPO-Junior was filled in by small groups of three or five in-
dividuals, depending on the places, but the cards game task and the
WISC-R were always administered on an individual basis. They also re-
ceived £2 for their participation. The three tasks were always administered
in the same order.

The Results and Discussion

Data for delinquents and nondelinquents on the EPQ-Junior and the

cards game task are shown in Table I. As can be seen from this table,
scores on the four scales of the EPQ-Junior were very similar for the three
groups. The results of a series of one-way analyses of variance followed by
post hoc comparisons (by the method of contrasts), where the three groups
were the independent variables and the scores on the four scales of the
EPQ-Junior the dependent variable, showed no significant differences be-
tween the three groups. This is not consistent with Eysenck's claim that
delinquents score higher than nondelinquents on psychoticism, extraver-

Table I. Means and Standard Deviations for the Three Groups on the EPQ-Junior and on
the Cards GamC
Delinquents
Aggressive Nonaggressive Controls
n m SD n m SD n m SD

Cardsb 22 80.50 23.28 22 80.68 22.40 20 62.85 27.41

Rewardsb 22 9.90 14.34 22 10.90 15.91 20 20.70 14.91
P 22 5.50 3.11 22 5.36 2.79 20 5.15 3.45
E 22 18.72 3.70 22 18.86 4.89 20 18.05 4.83
N 22 11.72 4.86' 22 12.27 3.56 20 11.40 3.77
L 22 5.00 3.51 22 6.59 4.86 20 6.80 4.90
aEpQ-Junior = Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Junior); Cards = number of cards played
in the cards game; Rewards = amount of money earned in the same game; P = Psychoticism;
E = Extraversion; N = Neuroticism; L = Lie.
bp < .05.
774 Fonseca and Yule

sion, and neuroticism. However, the groups significantly differed on the

two measures of sensitivity to rewards, number of cards played IF(2, 61)
= 3.64, p < .05] and amount of money won IF(2, 61) = 3.22, p < .05].
Post hoc comparisons, using the method of contrast, revealed that nonde-
linquents differed significantly from both aggressive delinquents [t(61) =
-2.36, p < .05] and nonaggressive delinquents [t(61) = -2.34, p < .05] in
the number of cards played. Similarly, they differed significantly from both
aggressive [t(61) = 2.10, p < .05] and nonaggressive delinquents [t(61) =
2.31, p < .05] in the amount of rewards (money) won. There was no dif-
ference between aggressive and nonaggressive delinquents on either meas-
ure. These results remained unchanged when age was introduced as a
covariate.
In short, no significant differences between the groups were found
for P, E, or N. The absence of any difference in psychoticism is particularly
surprising since such a difference has appeared rather consistently in pre-
vious studies in which this measure was used. However, as predicted, our
findings provide full support to the hypotheses derived from Gray's theory:
Delinquents, compared to nondelinquent boys, showed higher sensitivity to
rewards and failed more often to inhibit responding in a task which pitted
rewards against punishments. Finally, the fact that no significant difference
was found between aggressive and nonaggressive delinquents raises some
doubts about the utility of this distinction and stresses the need for more
research into the relationship between personality variables and subtypes
of antisocial behavior. A good point of departure for future studies on this
issue could be the distinction made by Loeber & Schmalling (1985) between
stealers and fighters.

STUDY 2. CHILDREN WITH CONDUCT DISORDER

It was not until recently that researchers became interested in ex-

tending Eysenck's and Gray's theories to the study of antisocial behavior
in children and preadolescents (Allsop & Feldman, 1976; Daugherty &
Quay, 1991; Gabrys et al., 1988; Powell, 1977; Powell & Stewart, 1983;
Shapiro et al., 1988). Such studies have provided initial support for those
two models but they are hardly comparable. In fact, each of them limited
its scope solely to the test of one or the other model. Moreover, few of
them dealt with children referred to a clinic because of their antisocial
behavior. It seems, therefore, that the extent to which the findings from
studies with adult offenders and juvenile delinquents can be replicated with
conduct-disordered children has not yet been fully assessed. To address
this issue the second study compared the performance, in the same tasks,
Personality, Antisocial Behavior, and Children 775

of a group of children with severe forms of antisocial behavior with that

of a group of children from the normal population.

Method

Subjects

The conduct-disordered group consisted of 27 boys whose ages ranged

from 7 to 11 years (M = 9.8, SD = 11.8). Fourteen of these boys attended
a special school for severely emotionally disturbed children, in a suburban
area of London. They were selected on the basis of the information avail-
able in their files regarding the main reasons for their referral to this
school; according to this information and to the information provided by
the head teacher, all of them qualified for a diagnosis of conduct disorder
on DSM-III-R (American Psychiatric Association, 1987). They were de-
scribed as aggressive, out of control, impulsive, showing poor concentration,
having poor interactions with peers, verbally and physically assaultive, poor
achievers at school, causing damage to property, disruptive of other chil-
dren's work, subject to periods of running away from home, and other simi-
lar c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s . M o s t of t h e m c a m e from m i d d l e - c l a s s and
lower-middle-class families. The other conduct-disordered children (n =
13) were children referred as outpatients to the Maudsley Hospital Chil-
dren's Department or were attending the inpatient unit of the same de-
partment. Most of them came from low-income families and lived with only
one parent or in foster families, although there were also a few living in
middle-class families. Their main reason for referral was their antisocial
behaviors and they all had received an ICD-9 diagnosis of conduct disorder
or, in some cases, a mixed diagnosis of conduct disorder and emotional
disturbance (World Health Organization, 1978). Furthermore, in order to
be included in this group they all had to score above the cutoff point for
antisocial behavior on a questionnaire filled in by teachers (Rutter, 1967).
In other words, children from the conduct-disordered group formed a very
homogeneous sample, presenting antisocial behavior as their dominant fea-
ture.
The control group consisted of 26 boys, aged between 7 and 11 years
(M = 9.7, SD = 1.1), from a primary school in the same suburban area.
They were selected from different classes and from different years within
the school. According to the information provided by the head teacher,
they were mainly from middle-class families, lived with their biological par-
ents, and had no particular difficulties in adapting to school. Their scores
in the Rutter Questionnaire for Teachers (Rutter, 1967) fell below the cut-
776 Fonseca and Yule

off point which is supposed to differentiate normal children from those

with behavior problems. In addition, the difference between the two groups
in the antisocial items of that scale was statistically significant [F(1, 44) =
13.78, p < .001]. As in Study 1, only boys with an IQ equal to or over 70
participated in this study but, in general, children with CD had lower IQs
(M = 95.0, SD = 13.6) than their normal counterparts (M = 107.4, SD =
13.4), and the difference was statistically significant [F(1, 51) = 11.21, p <
.05].

Measures

The subjects performed the same tasks in the same order as in Study
1. There were, however, two small differences. First, they were not paid
for their participation in this experiment and second they could win sweets
instead of money in the cards game task.

The Procedure

All the tasks were administered during school hours in a class at the
subjects' own schools. The WISC-R and the cards game were always ad-
ministered on an individual basis while the EPQ-Junior was administered
in small groups of six individuals in the normal school and on groups of
two or three individuals in the school for severely emotionally disturbed
children. Children with some reading difficulties and those attending the
Maudsley Hospital always filled in the EPQ-Junior individually. Three chil-
dren from the conduct-disordered group did not complete this question-
naire, although they performed the cards game task. The reasons for this
were that (1) the children lacked time to fill in every measure, (2) they
left the hospital or the school, or (3) they were ill at home.

Results and Discussion

As expected, in the cards game conduct-disordered children played

significantly more cards IF(l, 51) = 5.69 p < .05], and earned significantly
fewer sweets [F(1, 51) = 5.95, p < .05] than their peers from the compari-
son group (see Table II). The differences remained significant when IQ
and age were controlled through a covariance analysis. Such results are in
line with previous findings from studies with severely emotionally disturbed
adolescents with conduct disorder (Shapiro et al., 1988) and with adult of-
fenders (Newman, 1987), and seem to support the idea that antisocial be-
Personality, Antisocial Behavior, and Children 777

havior is associated with oversensitivity to rewards and insensitivity to pun-

ishment. Also as predicted, conduct-disordered children had significantly
higher scores than their normal counterparts on the neuroticism scale [F(1,
48) = 5.35, p < .05]. However, contrary to Eysenck's hypotheses, no sig-
nificant differences were found between the two groups in E and P, al-
though differences between groups were in the expected direction.
All in all, these findings revealed that children with conduct disorders
performed in a way very similar to the juvenile delinquents on the cards
task, in spite of differences in the nature of rewards used. Indeed, they
systematically played more cards and won fewer sweets than children in
the control group. This confirms that people with persistent antisocial be-
havior are hypersensitive to rewards, failing to inhibit responding in a mixed
incentive schedule. Moreover, the data show that such a pattern of behavior
can be detected from an early age. What remains to be demonstrated is
if such a pattern of behavior is the consequence of an overactive BAS cou-
pled with an underactivated BIS and if such a process is genetically biased
or if, on the contrary, it can be better explained by other factors such as
age, social learning, and affective or physical deprivation.
Although both possibilities are consistent with Gray's model, they do
not have the same implications for the explanation and treatment of anti-
social behavior. In contrast with this, Eysenck's theory of criminality re-
ceived only partial support. Indeed conduct-disordered children were
higher than children from the control group on N but no difference was
found in P or in E. In particular, the results recently obtained by Gabrys
et al. (1988) in their study with conduct-disordered children were not rep-
licated.

Table lI. Scores (Means and Standard Deviations) on the EPQ-Junior and on
"the Cards Gamea
Controls CD
n M SD n M SD

Cardsb 26 57.73 36.29 27 79.62 30.38

Rewards/' 26 8.46 9.65 27 3.00 6.36
P 26 4.65 3.24 24 5.91 3.06
E 26 17.92 3.74 24 18.54 3.45
Nb 26 10.88 3.80 24 13.37 3.79
L 26 10.57 3.54 24 10.25 5.39
a E P Q - J u n i o r = E y s e n c k P e r s o n a l i t y Q u e s t i o n n a i r e ( J u n i o r ) ; CD =
conduct-disordered; Cards = number of cards played before stopping the game;
Rewards = number of sweets earned; P = Psychoticism; E = Extraversion; N
= Neuroticism; L = Lie.
bp < .05, two-tailed test.
778 Fonseca and Yule

GENERAL DISCUSSION

The two studies reported in this article were aimed at testing the main
predictions of Eysenck's and Gray's theories regarding different types of
antisocial behavior in children and adolescents. The results showed that
predictions based on the first theory were less often supported than those
based on the second one. In spite of the large amount of research they
have inspired, Eysenck's hypotheses on delinquency and crime still await
confirmation. Indeed, only one of these predictions was confirmed, and in
only one study: Children with conduct disorders scored significantly higher
than children from a control group on N. Such findings are in sharp con-
trast with those obtained by Gabrys et al. (1988).
Instead our findings provide considerable support for the hypotheses
derived from Gray's model. As predicted, severely conduct-disordered chil-
dren and juvenile delinquents are more sensitive to rewards than their nor-
mal counterparts, that is, they play more cards and win fewer rewards. This
difference appeared both in juvenile delinquents and in conduct-disordered
children and remained even when IQ and age were partialed out through
covariance analysis. Furthermore, children's behavior in the cards game
task did not seem greatly affected by the type of rewards used (money or
sweets), although the evidence gathered on this point is only indirect. On
the whole, these results confirm and extend those obtained in previous stud-
ies with several types of disinhibited behavior.
Newman (1987) and Quay (1988) have interpreted this difficulty in
inhibiting a pattern of maladaptive behavior in terms of Gray's theory of
two systems of learning and more specifically in terms of overactivation of
the approach system. According to them, it would be a characteristic com-
mon to different manifestations of the disinhibition syndrome, ranging from
criminal psychopathy to normal extraversion. However, such an interpre-
tation should not be accepted without some qualifications. Indeed, prelimi-
nary data from a study with a small number of delinquents identified
through self-report measures of antisocial behavior in a normal population
(Fonseca, 1990) failed to show any significant difference between self-re-
port delinquents and their well-adjusted counterparts. This suggests that
the oversensitivity to rewards, reported here, is a characteristic which ap-
pears only in the more severe and persistent forms of antisocial behavior.
Furthermore, it was found "in this same study that the number of rewards
won increased with age, which suggests that social learning and cognitive
development play a more important role than previously thought in human
inhibition deficits. In some respects juvenile delinquents and individuals
with CD perform on the cards game task more like younger children, con-
tinuing to play even when the odds are dearly against them.
Personality, Antisocial Behavior, and Children 779

Another interesting finding is that subjects may use different strate-

gies in this game and still end up with the same results. In the debriefing
that followed the cards game we found that although the great majority of
the subjects said the reason they continued to play was that they thought
they could recover the lost rewards by the end of the game, there were
some who gave other justifications (e.g., because of their interest in seeing
how the game would end or simply because they did not care about the
rewards involved in the game). Unfortunately, this information was not col-
lected in a systematic, exhaustive way, which makes any statistical compari-
son impossible. Nevertheless, it suggests that additional cognitive factors
may have affected their performance on the task in ways that are not yet
well established and this requires further investigation.
Finally, one can speculate that the oversensitivity to rewards found
among delinquents and conduct-disordered children reflects, to a great ex-
tent, an overvaluation of money which in turn might be the consequence
of repeated experiences of material and emotional deprivation. Such an
interpretation is consistent with the results reported many years ago by
Brunner and Goodman (1947), and could explain why conduct-disordered
children--who often come from broken and poor families--are excessively
motivated to get material rewards and, as a consequence, do not pay
enough attention to the cues of punishments involved in the same tasks.
One way of testing this hypothesis would be to compare in the same cards
game the performance of subjects living in children's homes (but not de-
linquents) with a control group. Some preliminary data on this issue are
currently being analyzed. If children in care also present oversensitivity to
rewards, then explanations of" antisocial behavior based on Gray's theory
of the two models of learning would be less plausible.
In conclusion, the findings from these two studies provide additional
evidence that severely and persistently conduct-disordered children are
oversensitive to rewards but, at the same time, the findings suggest that
the explanation of such a pattern of behavior in terms of an overactive
BAS and/or an underactive BIS should not be unequivocally accepted be-
fore other alternative explanations, of a more cognitive nature, have been
ruled out.

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