Introduction

Relatively recent reviews of autonomic nervous system factors in criminal behavior (Hare, 1978; Schalling, 1978; Siddle, 1977) have covered many of the important aspects of this subject. It is useful, however, to take stock of the approaches that have been taken and to add, where appropriate, some new data. The study of criminal behavior, particularly when it involves psychophysiological investigation, appears to have developed along a broad front and is by no means exclusively the study of the offender. In consequence, we find studies on the adult criminal and the juvenile delinquent legally defined; the psychopath psychiatrically or psychometrically identified; the (as yet) normal children of criminals or psychopathic parents; the refractory child in a special school; and the child identified in a normal school as being “difficult,” aggressive, or unsocialized. The implication is, to some extent, that there is a thread, or at worst a limited number of threads, common to all these approaches.

The potential thread would appear to be socialization (or lack of it) and, underlying that, notions of relative lack of fear responsivity, relative lack of ability to appreciate fear-provoking cues, and relative lack of ability to develop conditioned avoidance responses and to generalize them. Running alongside this thread and not always clearly distinguished from it is the idea that there may be individual differences in aggressivity. In addition, data in certain instances link characteristics of hyperactivity and delinquency.