The psychopath has long captured the imagination. A name such as Ted Bundy evokes a morbid curiosity. The crimes committed by Bundy are so cruel that it is hard to imagine how someone could do such things. In this review we discuss evidence that exaggeration in an attention bottleneck is one mechanism that makes it possible for psychopathic individuals to be adept at focusing on a single stimulus feature or goal but struggle to process multiple streams of information simultaneously. This exaggeration may partly explain the behavioral, affective, and social deficits that are apparent among psychopathic individuals. Further research on this attentional mechanism may promote a science that adequately captures the complexity of psychopathic behavior and offers new avenues for intervention.

精神病患者长期以来一直吸引着人们的想象力。像泰德邦迪这样的名字唤起了一种病态的好奇心。邦迪犯下的罪行如此残忍，很难想象有人会做出这样的事情。在这篇综述中，我们讨论的证据表明，注意力瓶颈中的夸大是一种机制，它使精神病患者能够擅长专注于单一刺激特征或目标，但难以同时处理多个信息流。这种夸大可能部分解释了精神病患者中明显的行为、情感和社会缺陷。对这种注意力机制的进一步研究可能会促进科学充分捕捉精神病行为的复杂性并提供新的干预途径。