Prospects for the use of a binocular eye tracking system for the diagnosis of pedophilic disorder

Abstract

The assessment of pedophilic disorder is one of the most complicated problems in forensic psychiatric practice. To evaluate the use of eye tracking to identify pedophilic disorder. One hundred people were stratified into a group of men with pedophilic disorder (n=43) and a group of people without clinical signs of pedophilia (n=57). Clinical, psychopathological, sexological and psychophysiological methods were used. Within the framework of a psychophysiological method, normative and deviant erotic stimuli were presented with simultaneous eye gaze recording. Methodological requirements to create the diagnostic visual tests, in the development of which the stimulus material should be highly standardized and take into account the color spectrum, size, content, as well as the emotional richness of the images, were suggested. Moreover, it was found that for the detection of paraphilic interest, it was very important to assess attention (involuntary and voluntary), based on the study of fixation activity: high rates of the total stimulus viewing time, duration of the first fixation, average duration of fixations and index of fixation activity indicate a high level of attention to the exposed deviant stimuli in subjects with pedophilic disorder, which shows their greater importance in comparison with normative stimuli. However, the individual analysis of the data should take into account not only individual physiological indicators, but also their combination, since an oculomotor activity is significantly influenced by internal and external factors. The obtained data suggest that eye tracking is a very promising diagnostic method to identify paraphilic disorders.