The American Journal of Psychiatry published an article this month entitled, “Association of Poor Childhood Fear Conditioning and Adult Crime.” I found it very interesting. Most previous studies looking at young children and whether they later became criminals have examined psychosocial factors of childhood, not neurodevelopmental ones as this one did.
Researchers assessed the fear response of 1,795 children at age 3. A shrill sound was administered, and the sweating response (indicating a fear reaction) was measured. Twenty years later, using court records, the researchers tracked down 137 of the study participants who had committed serious crimes. The young criminals had shown an absence of fear at age 3 whereas 274 non-criminal study participants had shown normal fear reactions.
Although a definite cause-and-effect relationship of the lack of fear in childhood and the later development of criminality cannot be made, this study does provide additional evidence that abnormal brain development puts children at risk of later criminal behavior.
So, other than this academic point, why does this matter?
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