Gavin, Amanda and Roche, Bryan and Ruiz, Maria R. and Hogan, Maria and O'Reilly, Anthony (2012) A Behavior Analytically Modified Implicit Association Test for Measuring Sexual Categorization of Children. The Psychological record, 62 (1). pp. 55-68. ISSN 0033-2933

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Abstract

The current study assessed the sexual categorization of children among a random sample of adults from the general population. Twenty-seven males and 27 females (N = 54) were exposed to a categorization task that assessed their ability to discriminate adult- from child-related words and sexual from non-sexual words. Then, in a modified Implicit Association Test they were required to respond with a particular key press to individual child- and adult-related stimuli paired with either sexual or nonsexual stimuli. In another block of testing the pairs of stimuli requiring a common key response were juxtaposed. There was more effective acquisition of common response functions for child/nonsexual than for child/sexual stimulus pairs for all participants combined. This effect was also observed for female participants separately but not for males. These findings support the utility of behavior-analytic variations of the Implicit Association Test but raise important considerations regarding their use as forensic and diagnostic tools. (Contains 4 figures and 1 table.)

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Implicit Association Test; implicit cognition; sexual categorization; pedophilia;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Science and Engineering > Psychology
Item ID:	6813
Depositing User:	Dr. Bryan Roche
Date Deposited:	15 Jan 2016 10:27
Journal or Publication Title:	The Psychological record
Publisher:	Springer Verlag
Refereed:	Yes
URI:
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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