Behaviour dysregulation and Borderline Personality Disorder
Martina Giuliano, Gioia Bottesi, Silvia Cerea, Elena Prunetti, Marta Ghisi
Impulsivity represents the core feature of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). The dimensional transnosographic
approach called «compulsive-impulsive spectrum» hypothesises that psychopathologies
sharing common phenomenological, clinical, and neurobiological aspects might be included in the
same continuum; compulsivity and impulsivity are supposed to be dimensions located on the two
extremes of such a continuum. The main aim of the study was to test the utility of this approach in the
conceptualization of BPD by making use of self-report questionnaires and two cognitive tasks assessing
the main abilities underlying behavioural regulation: the Go/Nogo task to measure motor inhibition
ability and the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) to evaluate decision-making processes.
Eighteen female in-patients suffering from BPD (clinical group) and 18 unaffected women matched by
age (control group) entered the study. As regards assessment through self-report questionnaires, the
clinical group showed higher levels of both compulsivity and impulsivity than the control group (p <
0,05). As far as cognitive tasks are concerned, patients performed more omission errors (p = 0,004)
and were slower than healthy controls (p = 0,001) on the Go/Nogo task; furthermore, patients were
characterised by dysfunctional decision-making processes as measured by the IGT since they chose
cards from the disadvantageous decks more often than healthy individuals (p < 0,01).
Taken as a whole, these results support the utility of the compulsive-impulsive spectrum hypothesis for
the conceptualization of BPD.
Keywords
Borderline Personality Disorder, Behavioural Dysregulation, Impulsivity,
Aggressiveness, Compulsivity.
