Two Clusters of Child Molesters Based on Impulsiveness
OBJECTIVE:
High
impulsiveness is a general problem that affects most criminal offenders and is
associated with greater recidivism risk. A cluster analysis of impulsiveness
measured by the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale - Version 11 (BIS-11) was performed
on a sample of hands-on child molesters.
METHODS:
The
sample consisted of 208 child molesters enrolled in two different sectional
studies carried out in São Paulo, Brazil. Using three factors from the BIS-11,
a k-means cluster analysis was performed using the average silhouette width to
determine cluster number. Direct logistic regression was performed to analyze
the association of criminological and clinical features with the resulting clusters.
RESULTS:
Two
clusters were delineated. The cluster characterized by higher impulsiveness
showed higher scores on the Sexual Screening for Pedophilic Interests (SSPI),
Static-99, and Sexual Addiction Screening Test.
CONCLUSIONS:
Given
that child molesters are an extremely heterogeneous population, the
"number of victims" item of the SSPI should call attention to those
offenders with the highest motor, attentional, and non-planning impulsiveness.
Our findings could have implications in terms of differences in therapeutic
management for these two groups, with the most impulsive cluster benefitting
from psychosocial strategies combined with pharmacological interventions.
...Nevertheless, our study confirmed our initial hypothesis
that a child molester subgroup with the highest impulsiveness levels had the
highest SSPI mean score; this was mainly due to individuals in this group
having a greater number of victims. Certainly, the BIS-11 does not replace the
usefulness of the SSPI, given that these instruments evaluate different
constructs. However, the BIS-11 can be used as an adjunctive instrument in
research on child molesters. Additionally, given that child molesters are an
extremely heterogeneous population, the “number of victims” item of the SSPI
should call attention to those offenders with the highest motor, attentional,
and non-planning impulsiveness. As the SSPI is an instrument used to evaluate
risk of recidivism, higher BIS-11 mean scores may indicate a higher risk of
recidivist child molestation.
Impulsiveness may reflect a characteristically impulsive
cognitive style or even a personality trait. This could predict vulnerability
toward diverse behavioral problems.12 Likewise, impulsiveness involves multiple
components, including rapid responding without thinking, lack of concern for
consequences, preference for immediate reinforcement, disregard for rules,
proneness to boredom, and failure to inhibit responses. Due to these myriad
factors that compose impulsiveness, several existing measures of impulsiveness
do not correlate significantly with one another, or show differences in content
and convergence. This suggests that each measure is likely investigating
different aspects of a multifaceted construct.30Additionally,
studies using comparable designs have failed to find correspondence between
questionnaire and behavioral measures of impulsiveness.31Despite
the importance of the concept of impulsiveness to sexual offenses, there have
been remarkably few studies on impulsiveness among child molesters as measured
by the BIS-11. In addition, when impulsiveness has been studied among
pedophilic child molesters, findings have been contradictory; this might be due
to different instruments investigating different facets of the same construct.
Therefore, more than one instrument is likely necessary to measure
impulsiveness in this population...32
- 1Sexual Disorders Outpatient Clinic, Department of Neurosciences, Faculdade de Medicina do ABC, Santo André, SP, Brazil.
- 2Centre for Applied Psychology, University of Canberra, Australia.
- Rev Bras Psiquiatr. 2015 Apr-Jun;37(2):139-45. doi: 10.1590/1516-4446-2014-1568. Epub 2015 May 1.
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