Summary: Forensic Psychology

Read the summary and the most important questions on Forensic Psychology

• Neurobiology of Crime

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• What are 4 types of developmental risk factors?

  • Prenatal factors
  • Perinatal factors (during birth e.g complications during the birth)
  • Postnatal factors
  • Genetics

  ---> these factors contribute to neurobiological development which put the individual at great risk of anti-social behaviour

• What did Brennan et al. 1997 find? What does this finding show?

  Male children of parents with psychiatric disorders with more MPAs AND family adversity had high rates of violent offending 
  
  --> combination of environmental factors and neurobiology predict antisocial behaviour

• What did Haverson and Victor (1976) find?

  MPAs are associated with behavioural problems in school-aged boys

• What did Waldrop et al. (1978) find?

  MPAs are associated with aggressive behaviour in children as young as 3 years

• What did Arsenault et al. (2002) study?

  MPAs predicting violent and nonviolent delinquency
  
  They found that MPAs predict violent delinquency but not nonviolent delinquency (largest effect was the anomalies of the mouth)
  = fairly robust finding

• How is maternal smoking a risk factor?

  Risk factor for later antisocial behaviour
  - Smoking while pregnant is detrimental to the baby's health, neurodevelopment = which in turn predicts antisocial behaviour
  
  An abundance of evidence that show that smoking whilst pregnant correlates with atypical neurotypical development which leads to antisocial behaviour
  
  Maternal smoking is linked with antisocial behaviour by neurodevelopment of the fetus and association with MPAs

• What did Wakschlag et al. (2002) find?

  Maternal smoking is linked to children developing antisocial behaviour

• What did Maughan et al. (2004) find?

  Without smoking - girls are much lower than boys in developing conduct disorders
  Introducing a mother that smokes affects girls more than boys 
  Boys are more aggressive, this is amplified when they are exposed to heavy smoking

• Where does smoking cause damage?

  Byproducts of smoking may affect:
  

  • dopaminergic and noradrenergic systems
  • glucose metabolism  
    
  • basil ganglia
  • cerebral and cerebellar cortices

  
  
  = these areas of the brain (basil ganglia + cerebral and cerebellar cortices) are implicated in violent offenders (Raine, 2002)
  
  From a correlational perspective, we are seeing multiple correlations in deficits in neurodevelopment in babies that are exposed to smoking and violent offenders

• How is maternal alcohol consumption a risk factor?

  Prenatal exposure to alcohol increases the risk of antisocial behaviour in childhood (Murray et. 2016)
  
  Prenatal exposure to alcohol = effects the neurobiology of the child’s development