Citation

Franke I, Seipel S, Vasic N, Streb J, Nigel S, Otte S, Dudeck M. Int. J. Law Psychiatry 2019; 64: 137-141.

Affiliation

Department of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Ulm University, Germany.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ijlp.2019.03.002

PMID

31122623

Abstract

Child sexual offenders have been found to have a lower average IQ than the general population. Several studies indicate that they also exhibit executive dysfunction, but the specificity of this dysfunction is unclear; the inconclusive results have been attributed to methodological problems and the heterogeneity of the population. Our study aimed to describe the neuropsychological profiles of convicted child sexual offenders with pedophilia (n = 15). To control for IQ-related effects on neuropsychological performance, we compared the sample with an IQ-matched control group (n = 15). Test scores in both groups were significantly lower than the norms, but we did not find significant differences between the two study groups. The findings of our pilot study indicate that the neuropsychological deficits of pedophilic sexual offenders are unspecific rather than the result of a pedophilia-specific brain dysfunction.

Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Child sexual offending; Executive function; IQ; Neuropsychology; Pedophilia