Theory of Mind in Men Who Have Sexually Offended Against Children: A U.K. Comparison Study Between Child Sex Offenders and Nonoffender Controls

Elsegood, Kelly J.; Duff, Simon

doi:10.1177/1079063209359926

Cited by 28 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…As with the Perspectives task and the MASC, difference in performance between the offender group and control group using the same covariates was analyzed with an ANCOVA and considered alongside other relevant studies using t-tests, including several small forensic samples (Elsegood & Duff, 2010;Richell et al, 2003) (male prisoners and psychopathic male prisoners: Richell et al, 2003; male child sex offenders: Elsegood & Duff, 2010). Contrary to the original study using this instrument (Baron-Cohen et al, 2001), correlations showed relationships between correct answers and IQ (WTAR) (p < .001).…”

Section: Reading the Mind In The Eyes Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Offenders With Antisocial Personality Disorder Display More Impairments in Mentalizing

Newbury-Helps

Feigenbaum

Fonagy

2017

Journal of Personality Disorders

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This study was designed to test the hypothesis that individuals with antisocial, particularly violent, histories of offending behavior have specific problems in social cognition, notably in relation to accurately envisioning mental states. Eighty-three male offenders on community license, 65% of whom met the threshold for antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), completed a battery of computerized mentalizing tests requiring perspective taking (Perspectives Taking Test), mental state recognition from facial expression (Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test), and identification of mental states in the context of social interaction (Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition). The results were compared with a partially matched sample of 42 nonoffending controls. The offender group showed impaired mentalizing on all of the tasks when compared with the control group for this study when controlling for demographic and clinical variables, and the offending group performed poorly in comparisons with participants in published studies, suggesting that limited capacity to mentalize may be part of the picture presented by individuals with histories of offending behavior. Offenders with ASPD demonstrated greater difficulty with mentalizing than non-ASPD offenders. Mentalization subscales were able to predict offender status and those with ASPD, indicating that specific impairments in perspective taking, social cognition, and social sensitivity, as well as tendencies toward hypomentalizing and nonmentalizing, are more marked in individuals who meet criteria for a diagnosis of ASPD. Awareness of these deficits may be helpful to professionals working with offenders, and specifically addressing these deficits may be a productive aspect of therapy for this "hard to reach" clinical group.

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Section: Reading the Mind In The Eyes Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Offenders With Antisocial Personality Disorder Display More Impairments in Mentalizing

Newbury-Helps

Feigenbaum

Fonagy

2017

Journal of Personality Disorders

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“…The absence of empathy can lead to destructive behaviors and adversely affect relationships. A lack of interpersonal empathy is associated with narcissism, bullying, violent crime, abusive parenting, spousal battering, and sexual offending (Covell, Huss, & Langhinrichsen-Rohling, 2007;Elsegood & Duff, 2010;Gini, Albieri, Benelli, & Altoe, 2008;Joliffe & Farrington, 2004;Ritter et al, 2011). In spite of so much compelling research on the value of empathy, definitions and conceptualizations vary greatly.…”

Section: The Value Of Interpersonal Empathymentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing the Social Empathy Index: An Exploratory Factor Analysis

Segal

Wagaman

Gerdes

2012

ASW

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Social empathy, the ability to understand people from different socioeconomic classes and racial/ethnic backgrounds, with insight into the context of institutionalized inequalities and disparities, can inspire positive societal change and promote social wellbeing. The value of teaching social empathy and creating interventions that promote social empathy is enhanced by the ability to measure and assess it. This article provides a validation of the Social Empathy Index, a tool that practitioners can easily use to assess individuals' levels of interpersonal and social empathy. An exploratory factor analysis was used to validate the instrument and confirm the conceptual model for social empathy.

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“…Sex offenders seem to show deficits in cognitive perspective taking as measured with so-called higher order cognitive theory of mind tasks (Castellino et al, 2011) as well as emotional perspective taking (Elsegood and Duff, 2010) measured via the reading the mind in the eyes task (Baron-Cohen et al, 2001). Regarding psychopathy, Dolan and Fullam (2004) reported no differences in cognitive perspective taking between psychopathic and non-psychopathic offenders and controls.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empathic competencies in violent offenders

Seidel

Pfabigan

Keckeis

et al. 2013

Psychiatry Research

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Violent offending has often been associated with a lack of empathy, but experimental investigations are rare. The present study aimed at clarifying whether violent offenders show a general empathy deficit or specific deficits regarding the separate subcomponents. To this end, we assessed three core components of empathy (emotion recognition, perspective taking, affective responsiveness) as well as skin conductance response (SCR) in a sample of 30 male violent offenders and 30 healthy male controls. Data analysis revealed reduced accuracy in violent offenders compared to healthy controls only in emotion recognition, and that a high number of violent assaults was associated with decreased accuracy in perspective taking for angry scenes. SCR data showed reduced physiological responses in the offender group specifically for fear and disgust stimuli during emotion recognition and perspective taking. In addition, higher psychopathy scores in the violent offender group were associated with reduced accuracy in affective responsiveness. This is the first study to show that mainly emotion recognition is deficient in violent offenders whereas the other components of empathy are rather unaffected. This divergent impact of violent offending on the subcomponents of empathy suggests that all three empathy components can be targeted by therapeutic interventions separately.

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Theory of Mind in Men Who Have Sexually Offended Against Children: A U.K. Comparison Study Between Child Sex Offenders and Nonoffender Controls

Cited by 28 publications

References 61 publications

Offenders With Antisocial Personality Disorder Display More Impairments in Mentalizing

Offenders With Antisocial Personality Disorder Display More Impairments in Mentalizing

Developing the Social Empathy Index: An Exploratory Factor Analysis

Empathic competencies in violent offenders

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