Identifying deviant sexual interest in a sex offender sample using dual-target rapid serial visual presentation task

Abstract

To investigate the dual-target rapid serial visual presentation (dtRSVP) task as a measure of deviant sexual interest (i.e. a sexual interest in children), we administered a dtRSVP with gender- and age-specific pictorial stimuli to child sex offenders (n = 69), other sex offenders (n = 43), non-sex offenders (n = 14), and community controls (n = 88). We hypothesized that (1) stimuli belonging to the preferred gender and age group presented as targets (both T1 and the subsequent T2) in the serial sequence would be more accurately detected than non-preferred stimuli and that (2) this increased detection would reduce the detection of targets later in the serial sequence (T2) due to an attentional blink. Our findings supported hypothesis 1 and partly supported hypothesis 2. Although we found group differences, individual indices based on detection rates did not allow for individual-level diagnostic categorization of participants.

Keywords:

• Deviant sexual interest
• pedophilia
• Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP)
• attentional blink (AB)
• pop out
• attention-based measures

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the participants and the forensic hospitals and prisons that partook in the study. The first author expresses his gratitude to the Director and all the staff of the Casa Circondariale of Biella and to Michèle Grace Bal for her collaboration during the research. Finally, we thank Teemu Laine from the University of Turku, Finland, for programming the Presentation scripts.

Funding

This research was supported by a Finnish Academy [grant number 121232] and was part of the MiKADO project supported by the German Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In VS paradigms, the participant is asked to search for a target (an object or feature) among distractors (other objects or features).

2. With the term ‘forensic sex offender population,’ we refer to individuals that have characteristics that are relevant to a legal decision in sex offense cases.

3. The Tanner stages describe physical development in children, adolescents and adults and was created by James Tanner, (Marshall & Tanner, 1969, 1970; Tanner, 1962). The scale defines physical measurements of development based on external primary and secondary sex characteristics, such as the size of the breast, genitalia, and development of pubic hair.