Neuropsychological Findings in Sexual Offenders

Abstract

This chapter summarizes the findings on neurocognitive functioning among sexual offenders (SO). It demonstrates the importance of differentiating between subtypes of SO based on victim type, offense type, and paraphilic interest by showing a remarkable decrease in variance in neuropsychological findings when subgroups were examined separately. Recently, research has focused on comparing nonoffending individuals endorsing pedophilia to pedophilic SO in order to disentangle the sexual preference from the offending behavior in ways that previous studies including only sexual offenders could not. The chapter is therefore organized in terms of studied populations and comparison groups. It examines in order the prevalence of school difficulties and learning disorders among SO, intelligence, and neuropsychological findings. In addition, the chapter reviews findings on subgroups of sexual offenders.