Neuropsychological dysfunction in sex offenders?

Abstract

Flor-Henry (1987) proposed a neuropsychological theory which attempted to explain the aetiology of sexually deviant or paraphiliac behaviour. Flor-Henry (1987) postulated that sexual deviants have a left fronto-temporal dysfunction which interferes with left brain inhibitory regulation of the right hemisphere. Supportive evidence was presented from EEG studies, and also from the striking observation that as a group sexual deviants scored more than three standard deviations below control means on the Trail Making B Task, Coloured Progressive Matrices and Williams Verbal Learning Test. In the present study, a group of convicted child molesters were compared with a group of non-sex non-violent offenders and with a group of normal controls. When the effects of age, education and alcohol history were controlled for, no significant differences were observed between the groups on these three neuropsychological measures. When the two offender groups were divided into repeater and non-repeater subgroups, no significant differences were observed on any of the neuropsychological test scores.