There is widespread concern within at least Western cultures of the potential damage that sex offenders may cause to society. The government statistics highlight a frightening pattern of sexual abuse in Australia, with the trend implicating that sexual assault is on the rise and that children are the predominant victims (ABS, 2003b). Specifically, 17,850 reports of sexual assault were recorded in 2002, a 6% increase since 2001. Further to this, there is still no universal agreement as to the extent to which treatment effectively reduces sexual recidivism. Therefore, there is an urgent need for research into this problem behaviour. Research examining the causes of sexual offending has examined a biological hypothesis that sex offenders have functional brain impairment. However, the results of neuropsychological
assessments of various sex offender populations are inconsistent and inconclusive. The aim of this study was to investigate the brain function of males convicted and incarcerated for sexual offences against children using neuropsychological assessment. Specifically, it was hypothesised that the sex offenders would show functional impairment in their frontal and temporal lobes. A battery of neuropsychological tests was compiled to assess the functions of these regions including four WAIS-Ill subtests (Arithmetic, Vocabulary, Block Design and Picture Arrangement), Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), Rey Complex Figure (RCF), Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) and the FAS Test. These tests were administered to 25
incarcerated male sex offenders, 25 incarcerated male non-sex offenders and 25 men with no criminal history. Although attempts were made to match these groups on age, level of education and level of intelligence, statistical analyses revealed that there were significant differences between the groups on these variables. These differences were statistically controlled using analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) and factorial analyses of variance (ANOVA).
The results indicated that the sex offenders performed significantly worse than the controls on all neuropsychological tests. However, statistically significant differences were only found between the sex offenders and control group on the immediate recall trials of the RAVLT and RCF. These observed differences did not change when age, level of education and level of intelligence were statistically controlled. It was concluded that there is insufficient evidence from this study to support the hypothesis that sex offenders have functional impairment in their frontal and temporal lobes. However, given the relevance of potential brain impairment to both the biological and social-cognitive perspectives of sexual offending, future research in this field is warranted.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/216571 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Deutsher, Megan Mary, deutsher@bigpond.com |
| Publisher | Swinburne University of Technology. Brain Sciences Institute |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.swin.edu.au/), Copyright Megan Mary Deutsher |
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