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His partner is this person: Dr Caoilte Ó Ciardha Ó Ciardha, Caoilte (2010) The use of implicit cognitive measures in the assessment of sexual offenders. Doctor of Philosophy PhD thesis https://kar.kent.ac.uk/36089/1/%C3%93%20Ciardha%20%28thesis%2C%202010%29.pdf Ó Ciardha, Caoilte (2010) The use of implicit cognitive measures in the assessment of sexual offenders. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) thesis, Trinity College Dublin. Kent Academic Repository Downloaded from https://kar.kent.ac.uk/36089/ The University of Kent's Academic Repository KAR Summary Not all sexual offenders against children have a sexual interest in children. Establishing an individual offenders’ degree of sexual interest in children is important as it has implications for risk of re-offence and for treatment. In addition some offenders have distorted cognitions (or implicit theories) surrounding children and their understanding of and willingness to engage in sexual activity. The relationship of such implicit theories and deviant sexual interest has not been adequately explored in the theoretical literature. A reason for this is a lack of available procedures to effectively measure the cognitive structure and processes relating to sexual interests and cognitive distortions relating to sex. This thesis explores the potential utility of two such tasks, a pictorial modified Stroop task using potentially sexually salient stimuli and the Implicit Association Test (IAT). It is hypothesised that the IAT is a measure of schematic associations and could therefore potentially correspond to the cognitive distortions of offenders. The pictorial Stroop task on the other hand was hypothesised to measure an attentional component of the sexual arousal response. Two studies using non-offending control participants demonstrated that both the IAT and the pictorial Stroop task could tap into sexual interest. Both measures were significantly correlated in both studies. The results of the tasks were taken to indicate that while the tasks may measure distinct cognitive processes, both were indirectly measuring sexual orientation. When versions of both tasks were used with a sample of sexual offenders against children there was no agreement between the tasks. The pictorial Stroop task was again demonstrated to tap into sexual interest towards adults, and showed promise in demonstrating group differences in response times to child stimuli between offenders considered likely to have deviant sexual interest compared with other offenders and control participants. Both IATs used, one exploring gender-sex associations, the other age-sex associations, demonstrated an effect of order that is likely to have masked any clear influence of sexual schema on the results. A second study involving offending participants, conducted in a separate institution, again found the pictorial Stroop task to tap into sexual interest towards adult stimuli (for those cases where a clear indication of sexual orientation was available) but was unable to find group differences between rapists and child molesters in their responses. Additionally the pictorial Stroop task used in that study correlated with arousal levels as measured by penile plethysmography when a gender preference index was calculated but not using an age preference index. Methodological differences between the pictorial Stroop task used in that study and the pictorial Stroop tasks in the rest of the thesis make a direct comparison between the measures problematic. To explore methodological questions relating to the pictorial modified Stroop task a study was designed where three versions of the task were compared. The study found that a pictorial Stroop task where images of each trial type were grouped together in a single large block significantly outperformed a version of the task using smaller ‘clusters’ of matching stimuli and that both outperformed a completely random version of the task. These results suggested that higher order rumination relating to the stimulus types was driving the pictorial Stroop effect. A further study found that a Gender-Sex IAT that used pictures of men and women instead of names to illicit the gender categories and that used a nonsexual versus sexual contrast rather than a sex versus furniture (neutral) contrast yielded better discrimination between gay and straight participants. This final study also found that a choice reaction time (CRT) paradigm adopting a blocked design bore no relationship to a blocked pictorial Stroop task (or to the Gender-Sex IAT). These results were taken to indicate that a blocked design is not appropriate for a CRT task and that the task may measure a different component of the arousal process to the blocked pictorial Stroop task. Taken as a whole the thesis found that while the Implicit Association Test and the pictorial modified Stroop task are both paradigms that offer clear potential for use in the assessment of sexual offenders, both need to be further tested and validated. Future research should test the methodological recommendations made in this thesis. Additionally a clear understanding of the processes measured by each task should be established so that the emerging field involving cognitive or indirect approaches to forensic assessment can establish clear best practices and a framework by which to explore the cognitive processes of sexual offenders. She is an "anti" and has drunk the Kool-Aid. M. What use is it to ask her partner, "kentpg" what their attidues are and the reasons for their latest study? Just look up what they've published before, and it all becomes clear, doesn't it? MORE PUBLICATIONS BY HER ABOUT SEX OFFENDERS: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Dr+Caoilte+%C3%93+Ciardha+offenders&btnG= [@nonymouse] [Guardster] [Proxify] [Anonymisierungsdienst] |