Facial Emotion Recognition in Patients Who Committed Sexual Assault Against Children: an EEG Study

Sexual abuse is a major public health issue. Apart from medical care of victims, it appears essential to intervene with sexual offenders for prevention purposes (from primary prevention to avoid a first sexual abuse to secondary and tertiary prevention to avoid recurrence). In order to improve those prevention strategies, further understanding of offenders neuropsychological and cognitive processes is needed.

Facial emotion recognition capacities, that play a major role in social cognition and generation of appropriate social behavior, has been the subject of few studies in sexual offenders. These studies show heterogeneous results and only one of them specifically targets sexual offenders against children. Furthermore, no study has investigated facial emotion recognition in this population with an objective measurement of emotional processing, such as electroencephalographic (EEG) activity. LPP (late positive potential) amplitude, measured in EEG, is a marker of emotional processing and appears to be modified in particular populations (eg. psychopaths) in response to negative visual stimuli compared to positive stimuli.

The investigators aim to determine whether LPP amplitude in response to negative facial expressions is modified in sexual offenders against children compared to healthy volunteers and compared to amplitude in response to positive facial expressions.

Effect of facial emotion characteristics (type of emotion, age and sex of person expressing the emotion) on EEG response will be assessed.

Various neuropsychological and cognitive characteristics (facial emotion recognition, theory of mind, psychopathic traits, childhood trauma, and alexithymia) of patients and controls will also be measured through neuropsychological evaluation and completion of scales and questionnaires, in order to investigate the impact of those factors on facial emotion recognition performances.

Inclusion criteria

SUBJECTS - Sexual offenders against children:

• Right-handed ;
• Patient refered to the referral platform for treatment of sexual offenders in Le Vinatier Hospital Center for evaluation of child abuse ;
• Without any Axis 1 disorder ;
• Having given informed consent ;
• Affiliated to French social health care

Exclusion criteria

• Intellectual disability (identified during routine care in the referral platform for treatment of sexual offenders);
• Poor understanding of tests and scales instructions ;
• Neurological or neurodevelopmental history resulting in cognitive impairment with loss of autonomy ;
• Gardianship or other tutelage measure

Healthy controls :

Inclusion criteria

• Right-handed ;
• Without criminal background ;
• Without any DSM-5 psychiatric disorder (past or present, personal or familial in a first-degree relative) ;
• Non-caregiver employee of Le Vinatier Hospital Center.

Exclusion criteria

• Intellectual disability (using fNART if clinical suspicion during run-in period);
• Poor understanding of tests and scales instructions ;
• Neurological or neurodevelopmental history resulting in cognitive impairment with loss of autonomy ;
• Gardianship or other tutelage measure.