"You Have to Separate the Sinner From the Sin": Clinician's Approaches to Psychological Assessments With Men who Have Sexually Offended.

Men who have sexually offended are often referred for presentence psychological assessments to determine factors which contributed to offending, identify risk of recidivism, and develop treatment recommendations. The accuracy of assessments is largely reliant on the cooperation of the assessee. Despite the significant legal and emotional consequences, how clinicians approach these assessments, attempt to engage assessees, and overcome resistance have not been investigated. This research sought to develop an understanding of the clinicians' experience of conducting the assessment. How clinicians approach interviews with men who have sexually offended and the techniques they use were explored. Six interviews were conducted with qualified psychologists, at a private practice, whose role included conducting psychological assessments across a range of forensic matters. The findings, reached using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, highlighted the relational/social nature of the interaction and the clinicians' experience of a somewhat blurred line in practice between forensic assessments and therapeutic endeavours.

Theory of mind in men who have sexually offended against children: a U.K. comparison study between child sex offenders and nonoffender controls.

Child sex offenders are typically characterized by empathy problems, cognitive distortions, and social skills deficits. It has been proposed that these characteristics may be attributable to an underlying impairment in the ability to attribute mental states to others (i.e., theory of mind).This study compared a group of nonincarcerated child sex offenders (n = 46) with a group of community controls ( n = 46) matched for age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and status as a parent. Both groups completed two measures of theory of mind: one that measures the ability to infer the mental states of adults and another that measures the ability to infer the mental states of children. Offenders were significantly worse than controls at inferring the mental states of adults. In contrast, there were no differences between offenders and controls in their ability to infer the mental states of children. The results are discussed with regard to psychological theory, clinical work, and future research.

Gradations of awareness in a modified sequence learning task.

We argue performance in the serial reaction time (SRT) task is associated with gradations of awareness that provide examples of fringe consciousness [Mangan, B. (1993b). Taking phenomenology seriously: the "fringe" and its implications for cognitive research. Consciousness and Cognition, 2, 89-108, Mangan, B. (2003). The conscious "fringe": Bringing William James up to date. In B. J. Baars, W. P. Banks & J. B. Newman (Eds.), Essential sources in the scientific study of consciousness (pp. 741-759). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.], and address limitations of the traditional SRT procedure, including criticism of exclusion generation tasks. Two experiments are conducted with a modified SRT procedure where irrelevant stimulus attributes obscure the sequence rule. Our modified paradigm, which includes a novel exclusion task, makes it easier to demonstrate a previously controversial influence of response stimulus interval (RSI) on awareness. It also allows identification of participants showing fringe consciousness rather than explicit sequence knowledge, as reflected by dissociations between different awareness measures. The NEO-PI-R variable Openness to Feelings influenced the diversity of subjective feelings reported during two awareness measures, but not the degree of learning and awareness as previously found with traditional SRT tasks [Norman, E., Price, M. C., & Duff, S. C. (2006). Fringe consciousness in sequence learning: the influence of individual differences. Consciousness and Cognition, 15(4), 723-760.]. This suggests possible distinctions between two components of fringe consciousness.

Fringe consciousness in sequence learning: the influence of individual differences.

We first describe how the concept of "fringe consciousness" () can characterise gradations of consciousness between the extremes of implicit and explicit learning. We then show that the NEO-PI-R personality measure of openness to feelings, chosen to reflect the ability to introspect on fringe feelings, influences both learning and awareness in the serial reaction time (SRT) task under conditions that have previously been associated with implicit learning (). This provides empirical evidence for the proposed phenomenology and functional role of fringe consciousness in so-called implicit learning paradigms (). Introducing an individual difference variable also helped to identify possible limitations of the exclusion task as a measure of conscious sequence knowledge. Further exploration of individual differences in fringe awareness may help to avoid polarity in the implicit learning debate, and to resolve apparent inconsistencies between previous SRT studies.