2009/02/13 by David L. Dawson, Yvonne Barnes‐Holmes, David M. Gresswell +6 · 1 citation
Engineering · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Cognition #Cognitive psychology #Computer science #Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis #Developmental psychology #Human factors and ergonomics #Implicit attitude #Implicit bias #Implicit personality theory #Implicit-association test #Legal and Regulatory Analysis #Linguistic, Cultural, and Literary Studies #Military Technology and Strategies #Poison control #Psychology #Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending #Sex offense #Sexual abuse #Sexual assault #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Social psychology
paper · doi:10.1177/1079063208326928
openalex publication_date 2009/03/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
Researchers have proposed that the cognitive distortions of sexual offenders are underpinned by a number of implicit cognitive processes termed implicit theories. Until recently, however, the implicit theory hypothesis has received little empirical support due to broader limitations with standard forensic assessment procedures. The current research aimed to determine whether a new assessment methodology, the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP), could provide further evidence for Ward and Keenan's (1999) children as sexual beings implicit theory. The results indicated that the IRAP was significantly more effective at identifying core implicit differences between sexual offenders against children and nonoffenders than a cognitive distortion questionnaire. Furthermore, although both groups demonstrated an overall response bias towards adults as sexual and children as nonsexual, this bias was significantly impaired in the sexual offender group. The findings are discussed in relation to previous implicit theory research and recommendations for the development of implicit methodologies are made.