Latency-Based and Psychophysiological Measures of Sexual Interest Show Convergent and Concurrent Validity

Ciardha, Caoilte Ó; Attard-Johnson, Janice; Bindemann, Markus

doi:10.1007/s10508-017-1133-z

Cited by 15 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…It is most notable that the experiment of Rieger and Savin-Williams (2012) used videos lasting many seconds (and looked at pupillary responses across these long time periods) compared to the brief stimuli and response window used by Snowden et al and Aboyoun and Dabbs. Pupillary responses to these longer duration stimuli might be reflecting more controlled or deliberate processes outlined in the information processing model compared to the more immediate reaction to the stimuli when it is presented briefly. However, we note there is increasing evidence from other experiments to suggest that the pupillary responses to sexual images are correlated with other measures of sexual interest such as the IAT (Ó Ciardha, Attard-Johnson, & Bindemann, 2018). Further work is needed to understand the conditions under which these automatic cognitive appraisals are consistent or inconsistent with this general measure of sympathetic nervous system arousal.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Sexual Attraction to Both Genders in Ambiphilic Men: Evidence from Implicit Cognitions

et al. 2019

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Ambiphilic (or bisexual) men describe feelings of sexual attraction to both men and women. However, physiological measures of arousal have failed to show a consistent pattern of arousal to both genders. We measured men's automatic associations between the concept of sex (represented by words) and the concepts of men versus women (represented by images) via the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and a priming task. On the IAT, gynephilic men (N = 32) were faster for women-sex pairings, androphilic men (N = 18) were faster for men-sex pairings, while ambiphilic men (N = 20) showed no bias toward either gender. We then isolated the concepts of "men" and "women" by comparing them separately against neutral images. In contrast to both the gynephilic or androphilic men, ambiphilic men showed sexual associations to both men and women. On the priming task, ambiphilic men showed faster responses to sex words, but slower responses to not-sex words, when primed with pictures of either men or women compared to when primed by neutral images. The results from all the experimental tasks suggest that ambiphilic men have a pattern of sexual association that is different from both gynephilic and androphilic men and represents a sexual attraction to both men and women.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Sexual Attraction to Both Genders in Ambiphilic Men: Evidence from Implicit Cognitions

et al. 2019

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“…The current research is not without limitations. Although the indices of sexual arousal and sexual motivation used in Experiments 2 and 3 established that men respond to female chemosignals, future work would do well to examine a wider range of measurements of subjective and physiological sexual arousal (e.g., Ciardha, Attard-Johnson, & Bindemann, 2018;Janssen, Prause, & Geer, 2007;Kukkonen, Binik, Amsel, & Carrier, 2007;Laws, 2009;McPhail et al, 2019). In addition, while our studies did not take the donors' menstrual cycle into account, the recent findings of Hoffmann (2019) highlight that there is scope to further investigate the interaction between menstrual cycle phase and women's axillary chemosignals, and the influence of these signals on male sexual arousal (see Hoffmann, 2019, for a full discussion of the results).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sexual Chemosignals: Evidence that Men Process Olfactory Signals of Women’s Sexual Arousal

Wisman

Shrira

2020

Arch Sex Behav

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Research suggests that humans can communicate emotional states (e.g., fear, sadness) via chemosignals. However, thus far little is known about whether sexual arousal can also be conveyed through chemosignals and how these signals might influence the receiver. In three experiments, and a subsequent mini meta-analysis, support was found for the hypothesis that men can process the scent of sexually aroused women and that exposure to these sexual chemosignals affect the subsequent perceptions and sexual motivation of men. Specifically, Experiment 1 revealed that men evaluate the axillary sweat of sexually aroused women as more attractive, compared to the scent of the same women when not sexually aroused. In addition, Experiment 2 showed that exposure to sexual chemosignals increased the men's sexual arousal. Experiment 3 found support for the thesis that exposure to sexual chemosignals would increase sexual motivation. As predicted, men devoted greater attention to and showed greater interest in mating with women who displayed sexual cues (e.g., scantily dressed, in seductive poses). By contrast, exposure to the sexual chemosignals did not alter males' attention and mating interest toward women who displayed no sexual cues. It is discussed how sexual chemosignals may function as an additional channel in the communication of sexual interest and how contextual factors can influence the dynamics of human sexual communication.

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“…Additionally, convergent and concurrent validity was shown for latency-based measures and pupil-dilation. Combined indices of sexual preference for adult stimuli predicted 75% of the variance in self-reported sexual interest in adults (137).…”

Section: Behavioral Approachesmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…The authors argued that besides the relatively small sample size (N = 56), a gender-related IAT probably would yield better results than the neutral one that they had used in the study. Recently, several latency-based measures of sexual interest (VT measures, CRT, pictorial modified Stroop task, modified IAT) were combined with psychophysiological measures, i.e., pupillary responses, and sexual fantasy questionnaires, in order to assess sexual interest in 102 community men (137). Correlations between measures were positive, albeit effect sizes varied from small to large.…”

Section: Behavioral Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, as aforementioned, convergent validity was not always tested, and effects were small. Multimodal approaches have shown that combining self-reports, latency-based measures, and psychophysiological measures could enhance reliability, validity, and discrimination accuracy (135)(136)(137). Although those multimodal approaches have to be replicated and tested for susceptibility to manipulation in large groups of pedophilic and non-pedophilic men with and without sexual offenses as well as healthy controls, they provide a first step in the development of the aforementioned "composite biomarkers," i.e., composite measures of several parameters.…”

Section: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Penile Plethysmographmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Are There Any Biomarkers for Pedophilia and Sexual Child Abuse? A Review

et al. 2020

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The use of biomarkers in medicine is a common and valuable approach in several clinical fields. Understanding the relationship between measurable biological processes and clinical outcomes not only is indispensable in the face of understanding physiological processes in healthy as well as in diseased organisms but also for understanding and evaluating treatment effects. Therefore, also in the context of forensic psychiatry, biomarkers and their potentially beneficial effects are of growing interest. The objective of this review is to examine if there are biomarkers that may serve as a tool to support diagnostic process, treatment evaluation, and risk assessment of pedophilic individuals and child sexual offenders. In the first part, we present an overview of the current neurobiological, as well as physiological and psychophysiological approaches to characterize pedophilia and child sexual offending. Secondly, we discuss and evaluate the impact of these approaches on the development of biomarkers for diagnosis, therapy, and risk assessment in pedophilic subjects and child sexual offenders. We conclude that a lot of research has already enhanced our neurobiological knowledge about pedophilia and child sexual offending. Although there surely exist promising parameters and approaches, in our view currently none of these is ready yet to serve as a clinically applicable diagnostic, response, or predictive biomarker for pedophilia and child sexual offending. Therefore, further work remains to be done. The development of a composite diagnostic biomarker to assess deviant sexual interest, combining several measures like functional magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalogram, eye tracking, and behavioral approaches seems to be most promising. A valid and reliable measurement of deviant sexual interest, insensitive to manipulations could significantly support clinical diagnostic process. Similarly, regarding therapy evaluation and risk assessment, a composite biomarker to assess inhibitory control functions seems to be promising. Furthermore, the application of the Research Domain Criteria-approach, a new approach for investigating and classifying mental disorders, offers the possibility to take research to a new level.

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Latency-Based and Psychophysiological Measures of Sexual Interest Show Convergent and Concurrent Validity

Cited by 15 publications

References 57 publications

Sexual Attraction to Both Genders in Ambiphilic Men: Evidence from Implicit Cognitions

Sexual Attraction to Both Genders in Ambiphilic Men: Evidence from Implicit Cognitions

Sexual Chemosignals: Evidence that Men Process Olfactory Signals of Women’s Sexual Arousal

Are There Any Biomarkers for Pedophilia and Sexual Child Abuse? A Review

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