The following is a summary of “Analysis of writing in personality disorders in prison population,” published in the May 2024 issue of Psychiatry by Muñoz-López et al.
The process of writing engages distinct cognitive mechanisms compared to those involved in reading comprehension. As a result, the level of cognitive activation fluctuates based on contextual factors and task demands.
Researchers conducted a retrospective study aiming to examine the profiles of incarcerated individuals, focusing on the coding proposed by PROESC for personality disorders in conjunction with gender violence crimes (GVC).
They studied 194 male participants, who were divided into two groups: Group 1, composed of 81 individuals with Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) and Drug Possession and Consumption Crimes (DPCC), and Group 2, composed of 113 individuals with Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) and GVCs. The primary focus was on participants completing the Demographic, Offense, and Behavioral Interview in Institutions, the International Personality Disorders Examination (IPDE), and the Writing Processes Evaluation Battery (PROESC).
The results showed that Group 2 exhibited a higher frequency of errors in narrative tasks than Group 1. The errors were categorized into Errors in Words and Paragraphs, Errors in punctuation marks and margins, Decoding Errors (number of Additions, Omissions, Inversions, and Rotations), Errors in Grammar, Revision Errors, and Vocabulary rules.
Investigators concluded that despite understanding phoneme-grapheme correspondence rules, people with compulsive tendencies may still face persistent language issues, like repeating the same mistakes repeatedly.
Source: frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1391463/full