The Comparison of Executive Function in Prisoners with Antisocial Personality Disorder and Normal Individuals

One of the arguments about the antisocial personality disorder is executive function of these people. The purpose of this research was to make comparison the executive function in prisoners with and without the antisocial personality disorder. From among the prisoners diagnosed with the antisocial personality disorder by Semnan Prison’s Psychologist and Psychiatrist، 30 male prisoners were selected randomly as the experimental group displaying antisocial personality disorder using SCID II structured interview. Then the prisoners were asked to complete WCST test and four other subtest of WISC-R. Thirty other individual as the control group were selected from among self-employed male in Semnan using interviews based on DSM IV-TR. The two groups were matched on the basis of age and level education. The control group also completed WCST test and the four WISC-R subtests. In the present study Multivariate Covariance Analysis was used for data analysis. Results indicated those prisoners with antisocial personality disorder performed more poorly in WCST test compared to individuals without the antisocial personality disorder. That is to say antisocial prisoners had more preservative as well as more total errors compared to the control group. It is clarified that there are significant different between two groups about three indices of WCST test. In sum، findings of the present study showed that after controlling the effect of intelligence، prisoners diagnosed as having an antisocial personality disorder had poorer executive function compared to normal individuals.