One of us

Many parents are concerned that their child may be headed toward a life devoid of empathy for others. I’ve been interested in finding out about the emotional world of people with psychopathy, and how that emotional world might develop from early childhood. In this talk, I will present anecdotes, research findings, and personal experiences. I hope to paint a picture for you about how psychopaths feel and how they fail to “read” other people’s feelings. Of importance, I argue that early childhood is an opportune time for change.

Often, our actions depend on explicit recall of information stored in memory. Our memories, however, also have a subtler, unconscious effect on behaviour, changing the way we respond to and feel about events that we encounter. These effects of memory can be studied in non-verbal animals, as well as humans. I will discuss current work in animals that begins to reveal the psychological and neurobiological basis of the effect of memory on spontaneous behaviour.