Automaticity of Early Sexual Attention: An Event-Related Potential Study

Abstract

A promising line of research on forensic assessment of paraphilic sexual interest focuses on behavioral measures of visual attention using sexual stimuli as distractors. The present study combined event-related potentials (ERPs) with behavioral measures to investigate whether detection of a hidden sexual preference can be improved with ERPs. Normal variants of sexual orientation were used for a proof-of-concept investigation. Accordingly, 40 heterosexual and 40 gay men participated in the study. Within each group, half of the participants were instructed to hide their sexual orientation. The results showed that a match between sexual orientation and stimulus delays responses and influences ERP before motor responses. Late ERP components showed higher potential in differentiating hidden sexual preferences than motor responses, thereby showing how ERPs can be used in combination with reaction time measures to potentially facilitate the detection of hidden sexual preferences.

Automatic Attention to Sexual Images of Men and Women in Androphilic, Ambiphilic, and Gynephilic Women

“…However, this study did not examine the response of non-heterosexual participants of either gender. It should be noted that the study of Ziogas, Habermeyer, Kawohl, Habermeyer, and Mokros (2021) also examined automatic spatial attention to images of men and women in both gynephilic and androphilic men and found no evidence for an attentional bias in either group.…”

Deep Learning in the Identification of Electroencephalogram Sources Associated with Sexual Orientation

“…For sample 3 ( n = 1,300), the mean age was 43.4 with 18.4 SD with 47% males [16]. Different personal variables and performances, including handedness, sexual desire, sexual excitation, and the attentional network task [47], were tested for differences between groups (homosexual males vs. HeMs) with no significant alterations between the groups (see [26] for details).…”

“…Subjects Sample 1 and Sample 2: EEG Recording Sample 1 consisted of 39 HeMs and 38 HeMs recruited from 2017 to 2019 in Zurich and was reported in another study [26]. Ten additional subjects had been recruited but needed to be excluded, four due to regular intake of medication.…”

Tower of Babel or Lighthouse? The State of Research on Neuroelectric Correlates of Human Sexuality: A Response to the Commentaries

“…With respect to one question that Huberman ( 2021 ) distilled from our review—“[Can] we conclude that neural responses differentiating sexual and nonsexual stimuli are specific to processing sexual stimuli?”—some of us (AZ, EH, and AM) attempted to provide an answer with a study using ERPs (Ziogas et al, 2022 ). Comparing 40 heterosexual and 40 gay men, half of whom were instructed to mimic the responses of the other sexual orientation, we noted a difference in the positive slow wave (PSW) depending on match between actual sexual orientation and stimulus content.…”

“…According to expectation, however, more explicit images (i.e., pictures of nude individuals) elicited more pronounced early posterior negativity (EPN). Incidentally, the ERP study by Ziogas et al ( 2022 ) included a rating of the stimuli in terms of valence, arousal, and sexual attractiveness by the participants themselves, thus incorporating a recommendation made in one Commentary (Ristow & Kärgel, 2021 ).…”