Title: What aspects of paedophilic sex offenders' neuropsychological profile differentiate them from other types of sex offender?
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Sexual offending is a major problem with over 50,000 sexual crimes recorded in England and Wales in 2010-2011. Two thirds of these offences were committed against women while the other third involve offences against children. Sex offenders often show specific personality characteristics. How these relate to the nature of their offending, however, is unclear. Our approach to resolving this issue is to study the performance of offenders, with different offence histories, on neuropsychological tests that are sensitive to these personality characteristics. This will be achieved by bringing together the combined expertise of a forensic psychologist, a neurobiologist and a cognitive neuroscientist. The motivations driving sex offending against women and children will vary greatly. We hypothesise that sexual offences against women may be committed by men who show characteristics of anti-social personality disorder or psychopathic traits. Sexual offences against children, by contrast, can be perpetrated by individuals with paedophilic tendencies, i.e., individuals with intense sexually arousing fantasies and urges involving sexual activity with children 13 years old or less. Paedophiles typically appear socially inadequate and may seem socially anxious. It is important to note, however, as few as 40% of child abusers may have a primary paedophilic sexual interest in children. Thus, the motivations to offend may vary greatly across child sex offenders and these need to be explored using objective measures. Generic treatment programmes based on CBT can reduce re-offending although recidivism rates of around 20% are reported, and the true incidence of reoffending may be higher. The effectiveness of treatment could potentially be increased by tailoring the programme to the psychological characteristics which underlie the drive to offend in individuals as expressed in the Risk, Needs Responsivity initiative of the Ministry of Justice. Consequently there is a need to be able to categorise sex offenders in a manner which goes beyond offence history. The current project aims to determine the psychological profile of a large sample of sex offenders using self-report questionnaires to assess personality traits in conjunction with more objective cognitive neuropsychological testing. We will use neuropsychological tests that are known to reveal differential patterns in response to psychopathic and social anxiety traits. Psychopathic traits are associated with deficits in identifying the facial expression of fear whereas highly socially anxious individuals tend to interpret neutral facial expression with a negative bias. Eye scan paths will also be analysed as high psychopathic traits are associated with avoiding the eyes when judging emotions whereas social anxiety is linked with focussing on the eyes. A distractor task, where the ability to identify a target is affected by its appearance being preceded by a potentially distracting image, will be used. Social anxiety is linked with difficulties in disengaging attention from distractors which are related to negative emotional faces, while those with high psychopathic traits show minimal distraction. The ability of the participant to look away from an emotional stimulus (make an antisaccade) will also be tested as social anxiety is linked with trouble looking away from negative stimuli. Our selected battery of tasks will thus allow offenders to be differentiated on the basis of objective measures that are directly related to the personality traits of relevance. The work will enable a rich description of the psychological profile of different types of sex offender to be established based on both personality traits and more object cognitive neuropsychology tests. This is an essential prerequisite to the tailoring of treatment programmes to match the drives to sexually offend in different individuals. The findings may, therefore, feed directly into treatment programmes for sex offenders.


Research activity codes: 2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH