Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Criminal behavior and related disorders have been associated with abnormal neural activity when experiencingor anticipating risks and rewards, as well as when exercising inhibition. However, behavioral and neural substrates of riskpreferences and criminality have received scant attention when unconfounded with experience, anticipation, and inhibition. Wetest predictions of fuzzy-trace theory (FTT) in two experiments using a risky-choice framing task. Behavioral results show thatindividuals with a greater history of criminal behavior are less likely to engage in simple meaning-based processing and areless confident when doing so. These findings are supported by fMRI results showing a greater history of criminal behavioris associated with increased activation in regions associated with cognitive control when engaging in simple meaning-basedprocessing. These results provide insight into the cognitive processes and brain mechanisms that are associated with criminalbehavior.