Psychological treatment of pedophiles

The main treatment problem of pedophilia is motivating the offender to change. Reasons for the perpetrator's resistance to therapy and strategies for motivating them to change are discussed. Current assumptions about the etiology of this sexual anomaly are examined. Results from a databank of sex offenders are reviewed to show that it is uncommon for pedophiles to be victims of sexual abuse, including incest, and few need pornography as stimulants. Therapeutic difficulties include the egocentric, egosyntonic, and erotically gratifying nature of pedophilia to the perpetrator, his unwillingness to give up his behavior, his tendency to rationalize his acts, and to see the child as consenting. Group therapy and a variety of clinical imagery procedures with case examples are discussed as ways of overcoming the poor motivational state of pedophiles for treatment.     

Relationship between perceptions of ageing and frailty in English older adults

Older adults’ negative beliefs about ageing are related to their health and functioning, but little is known about how perceptions of ageing (POA) relate to frailty status. This study aimed to explore the relationship between POA and frailty. Secondary analysis of data used were from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing Waves 2 and 5. A POA score was based on participants’ responses to 12 statements using a five-point Likert scale at baseline, and a Frailty Index (FI) score was calculated for each participant for both waves. Multiple linear regression models were conducted to assess the relationship between POA and frailty cross-sectionally and longitudinally in models controlled for age, gender, depression symptoms, and socioeconomic status. Older adults with more negative POA had greater frailty (β = .12, p < .001). Negative POA predicted greater frailty 6 years later (β = .03, p < .05). Future work regarding the mechanisms of this relationship is needed to identify ways of intervening to improve health.     

Short assessment of the Big Five: robust across survey methods except telephone interviewing

We examined measurement invariance and age-related robustness of a short 15-item Big Five Inventory (BFI-S) of personality dimensions, which is well suited for applications in large-scale multidisciplinary surveys. The BFI-S was assessed in three different interviewing conditions: computer-assisted or paper-assisted face-to-face interviewing, computer-assisted telephone interviewing, and a self-administered questionnaire. Randomized probability samples from a large-scale German panel survey and a related probability telephone study were used in order to test method effects on self-report measures of personality characteristics across early, middle, and late adulthood. Exploratory structural equation modeling was used in order to test for measurement invariance of the five-factor model of personality trait domains across different assessment methods. For the short inventory, findings suggest strong robustness of self-report measures of personality dimensions among young and middle-aged adults. In old age, telephone interviewing was associated with greater distortions in reliable personality assessment. It is concluded that the greater mental workload of telephone interviewing limits the reliability of self-report personality assessment. Face-to-face surveys and self-administrated questionnaire completion are clearly better suited than phone surveys when personality traits in age-heterogeneous samples are assessed.     

Manipulations of exposure-based therapy to reduce return of fear: a replication

Using exposure-based treatment for fear of heights, we tested two different manipulations, namely administering blocks of exposure trials on an expanding spaced schedule and varying the nature of the exposure, both of which have been shown to reduce return of fear [Rowe, M. K., & Craske, M. G. (1998a). Effects of an expanding-spaced versus massed exposure schedule on fear reduction and return of fear. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36, 701-718; Rowe, M. K., & Craske, M. G. (1998b). Effects of varied-stimulus exposure training on fear reduction and return of fear. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 36, 719-734.]. The samples for these two studies included 23 and 34 undergraduates, respectively. Fear was assessed before, immediately after and one month after treatment using self-report and physiological measures. Study hypotheses were not strongly supported, but the manipulations did lead to different responses during treatment. The data suggest that physiological habituation is not necessary for fear reduction. Expanding spaced treatment may have increased generalization, and those in the constant and varied conditions responded to different aspects of the exposure. Reasons for the failure to replicate previous research and ideas for future research are discussed.     

Parafoveal semantic processing of emotional visual scenes

The authors investigated whether emotional pictorial stimuli are especially likely to be processed in parafoveal vision. Pairs of emotional and neutral visual scenes were presented parafoveally (2.1 degrees or 2.5 degrees of visual angle from a central fixation point) for 150-3,000 ms, followed by an immediate recognition test (500-ms delay). Results indicated that (a) the first fixation was more likely to be placed onto the emotional than the neutral scene; (b) recognition sensitivity (A') was generally higher for the emotional than for the neutral scene when the scenes were paired, but there were no differences when presented individually; and (c) the superior sensitivity for emotional scenes survived changes in size, color, and spatial orientation, but not in meaning. The data suggest that semantic analysis of emotional scenes can begin in parafoveal vision in advance of foveal fixation.     

From Knowledge-based Programs to Graded Belief-based Programs,Part I: On-line Reasoning<Superscript>*</Superscript>

Knowledge-based programs (KBPs) are a powerful notion for expressing action policies in which branching conditions refer to implicit knowledge and call for a deliberation task at execution time. However, branching conditions in KBPs cannot refer to possibly erroneous beliefs or to graded belief, such as “if my belief that φ holds is high then do some action α else perform some sensing action β”. The purpose of this paper is to build a framework where such programs can be expressed. In this paper we focus on the execution of such a program (a companion paper investigates issues relevant to the off-line evaluation and construction of such programs). We define a simple graded version of doxastic logic KD45 as the basis for the definition of belief-based programs. Then we study the way the agent’s belief state is maintained when executing such programs, which calls for revising belief states by observations (possibly unreliable or imprecise) and progressing belief states by physical actions (which may have normal as well as exceptional effects). ^* A premliminary and shorter version of this paper in the Proceedings of the 16th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-04), pp. 368–372 (Laverny and Lang 2004).     

Concurrent validity of the DSM-IV scales Affective Problems and Anxiety Problems of the Youth Self-Report

This study investigated the concurrent validity of the DSM-IV scales Anxiety Problems and Affective Problems of the Youth Self-Report (YSR) in a community sample of Dutch young adolescents aged 10-12 years. We first examined the extent to which the YSR/DSM-IV scales reflect symptoms of DSM-IV anxiety disorders and DSM-IV Major Depressive Disorder, assessed with the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS). Second, we examined whether the association between the YSR/DSM-IV scales and the RCADS scales was stronger than the association between the empirically derived YSR narrow-band scales Anxious/Depressed and Withdrawn and the same RCADS scales. Results showed that the YSR/DSM-IV scale Affective Problems had a stronger association with symptoms of DSM-IV Major Depressive Disorder than the YSR narrow-band scales Withdrawn and Anxious/Depressed. However, the YSR/DSM-IV scale Anxiety Problems had a weaker association with symptoms of DSM-IV anxiety disorders, compared to the YSR narrow-band scale Anxious/Depressed. It was concluded that the construction of the DSM-IV scales improved the correspondence with DSM-IV Major Depressive Disorder, but not with DSM-IV anxiety disorders.     

Deleterious effects of alcohol intoxication: diminished cognitive control and its behavioral consequences

The authors tested the hypothesis that impaired behavioral performance during intoxication results partly from alcohol's deleterious effects on cognitive control. The impact of alcohol on perseverative behavior was examined with an n-back working memory task that included manipulations of task complexity and prepotency of inclinations to respond or withhold responding. Thirty-two social drinkers (16 men) participated in either an alcohol (.075g/100ml) or a no-alcohol condition. Alcohol increased perseveration of prepotent, task-inappropriate response patterns only under cognitively demanding (heavy memory load) conditions. This effect was evident for both commission errors (response persistence despite contingencies altered to require restraint) and omission errors (failure to respond when contingencies were revised to encourage action). Findings suggested that alcohol-induced perseveration arises from impairments in cognitive control.     

A multisite comparison of actuarial risk instruments for sex offenders

Four actuarial instruments for the prediction of violent and sexual reoffending (the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide [VRAG], Sex Offender Risk Appraisal Guide [SORAG], Rapid Risk Assessment for Sex Offender Recidivism [RRASOR] and Static-99) were evaluated in 4 samples of sex offenders (N = 396). Although all 4 instruments predicted violent (including sexual) recidivism and recidivism known to be sexually motivated, areas under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) were consistently higher for the VRAG and the SORAG. The instruments performed better when there were fewer missing items and follow-up time was fixed, with an ROC area up to .84 for the VRAG, for example, under such favorable conditions. Predictive accuracy was higher for child molesters than for rapists, especially for the Static-99 and the RRASOR. Consistent with past research, survival analyses revealed that those offenders high in both psychopathy and sexual deviance were an especially high-risk group.