Sexually Assaultive Adolescents: Cue Perception, Interpersonal Competence and Cognitive Distortions

Abstract

ABSTRACT The social skills, cognitive distortions, sexual knowledge, and cue perception of adolescent sex offenders and adolescents convicted of non-sexual offenses were examined. A battery of tests was given to 36 adolescent sex offenders and 38 non-sex offenders, which included the Interpersonal Perception Task-15, the Receptive Facial Expression Subtest, the Survey of Heterosexual Interactions, Abel and Beeker's Cognition Scale, and a sexual knowledge questionnaire. Subjects also rated characteristics of adolescent females based on photographs of couples involved in heterosexual interactions. Community non-sex offenders performed significantly better on the facial expression identification task than the other three offender groups. There was also a difference in the way the groups perceived the demeanor of a female based on the type of clothing she was wearing. Sex offenders were more likely to rate the female as “Sexy” when she was wearing non-revealing clothing than when she was wearing revealing clothing. Adolescent sex offenders reported very low levels of cognitive distortions about sexual contact with children. Sex offenders and non-sex offenders were found to be similar on the other measures included in this study.