Psychology Paper Review

Review of “Child Psychopathy and Protective Factors: IQ and Motivation to Change”

The main purpose of the study presented in the article by Salekin, Lee, Schrum, and Kubak (2010), was to get a closer idea on what behaviors children who grow up to be dangerous offenders present and the risk indicators involved. The study on psychopathy has been around for many years but over the last ten years has gained an increasingly amount of attention as it has been seen as very helpful on indicating who may grow up to be offenders.
The most recent study on child behavior was done on a group of 140 female and male children ages 9 to 17 (Salekin et al., 2010). Major issues that were viewed were the adolescent's intelligence levels and the amount of will-power and ambition each child had to change. Motivation to change served as a compensatory factor for psychopathy when examining high rates of violent offending (Salekin et al., 2010). Each child was rated with different levels on the psychopathy scale to act as a protective factor for not only general, but violent offending as well. Over studies during the last two decades of psychopathy the question of where it relates is always asked and more of the recent studies proves that child psychopathy is related to adult psychopathy. Understanding that child and adult psychopathy is related, it is important to test children early on who may be at risk so the outcome of his or her future can be changed before it is too late (Salekin et al., 2010).
The goal should be to examine those factors that buffer negative outcomes despite the presence of psychopathic characteristics (Salekin et al., 2010). If the two factors protective and compensatory are searched for and payed more attention to, it can modify the effects of the risk. More importantly, the developmental and socialistic aspects of youth is one of the highest concerns. If efforts on finding out which children are at risk for adult psychopathy as well as the triggered plans... [continues]

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