Sexual interest and sexual self-control in men with self-reported sexual interest in children – A first eye tracking study

Jordan, Kirsten; Fromberger, Peter; Müller, Isabel; Wernicke, Martina; Stolpmann, Georg; Müller, Jürgen

doi:10.1016/j.jpsychires.2017.10.004

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Further studies will have to examine, if attentional control to sexual distractors could be linked to clinically important aspects of controllability, the capacity of self-control, and the severity of a paraphilic disorder (120). Applying the same cognitive task, outpatients with a selfreported sexual interest in children (and self-reported sexual offenses) differed from pedophilic forensic inpatients with respect to attentional control but not with regard to sexual interest (121). They demonstrated significantly better attentional control than pedophilic forensic inpatients in the face of adult sexual stimuli, but not with respect to child sexual stimuli.…”

Section: Eye Trackingmentioning

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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Section: Eye Trackingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This might reflect a higher capacity for self-control and self-regulation in these patients. Nevertheless, child stimuli remain highly distracting for them (121).…”

Section: Eye Trackingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2020

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“…The third study by Jordan et al. [ 46 ] compared three groups: 11 outpatients with a sexual interest in children; 22 inpatients with a sexual interest in children (same sample as Fromberger et al. [ 36 , 43 ]); and 60 individuals in the control group, which was divided into eight forensic inpatients and 52 healthy controls (same sample as Fromberger et al.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the third study by Jordan et al. [ 46 ], images from the Not-Real-People picture set were also used. As in the studies by Fromberger et al.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Eye tracking and child sexual offenders: a systematic review

Godet

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2021

Forensic Sciences Research

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Eye tracking is used in sexology to identify attractiveness and sexual desire indirectly. This systematic review summarizes results of works that have used eye tracking to analyse paedophilic interest in order to investigate its potential as a useful forensic tool. Six studies met the inclusion criteria. Five of them concerned a large study project and used approximatively the same sample of paedophiles (inpatients), forensic patients (without a sexual interest in children) and healthy controls to make comparisons between the three groups. One study added 11 self-declared paedophiles (outpatients) for a comparison between inpatient paedophiles, outpatient paedophiles and controls (healthy and forensic inpatients). One study compared a group of child sexual offenders with non-offenders. All studies used static pictures of male and female subjects at different pubertal stages. Some studies divided every picture into a different area of interest. Dependent variables used are fixation latency (early attention) and relative fixation time, (later attention). Each study identified significant differences between the paedophile group versus other groups: shorter fixation latency on child pictures, longer fixation time on child pictures and number of fixation most important on child pictures. Two scores (age preference index and attentional control index) showed hight and/or moderate sensitivity and specificity. Although the results suggest the eye tracking can discriminate between paedophile interest and non-paedophile interest, there are too few studies on this specific topic and further research is needed with larger and different sample, carried out by different research teams. If these findings were confirmed, it remains unclear as to their impact in a forensic context when presented openly in Court.

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