Abstract:
It has become apparent over the past century or so that a segment of anti-social or criminal behaviour - centering around the psychopathic or conscienceless character has as its basis a distortion of cognitive functioning resulting in a well-known but obscurely defined behavioural syndrome. Further, more recent studies have shown that there appear to be important links between certain types of childhood experience and the development of this characteristic mode of cognitive functioning.
It is believed that a child's transactions within his social environment will colour his subsequent conceptions of this environment and will have an important bearing on his later reactions to it. It would appear reasonable to suggest that these different "coloured" conceptions of the social world may be expressed in different shades of meaning attached to various aspects of it. The purpose of this thesis is to indicate that there is a significant difference between the meanings attached to certain social concepts by a group of "psychopathic delinquents" and those attached to the concepts by a "normal" population. A further group of "non-psychopathic delinquents" is used to establish that there will also be significant differences in meanings between two differently classified delinquent groups.
