Impaired decision-making in child sexual offenders: Findings and prospects.

OBJECTIVE

Regarding the impairments in decision-making strategies as a predisposing factor to adverse behaviours and sexual violence, we hypothesize impairments on decision-making processes in Child Sexual Offenders (CSO) population. The aim of this study was to highlight these alterations and characterize them.

METHODS

We compared decision-making processes between sixty-four convicted CSO and sixty-four matched subjects without criminal history, using the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). A Bayesian computational model (ORL) was applied to assess different components of decision-making: reward learning, punishment learning, forgetfulness, win perseverance and deck perseverance.

RESULTS

Respecting the underlying processes of the IGT task, the ORL model revealed that reward learning (95% HDI [-0.299, - 0.099]) and punishment learning were lower in CSO compared to controls (95% HDI [-0.054, - 0.021]), while forgetfulness (95% HDI [0.168, 0.877]) and deck perseverance (95% HDI [0.659, 4.478]) were higher.

CONCLUSIONS

CSO display impairments in decision-making strategies in learning processes related to reward or punishment, and seem less prone to make long-term strategies with a strong preference toward perseverance. These findings have important potential applications for future research on sexual violence, management of CSOs cognitive vulnerabilities and adjusting strategies to reduce the risk of recidivism.

TRIAL REGISTRATION: ID-RCB 2011-A00402-39.