A new study has been published in the Journal of Sexual Aggression (see here) that explores the use of gaze patterns (via eye-tracking) to detect deviant sexual preferences in child abusers.
The authors – Dr. Charlotte Hall (University of Nottingham), Prof. Todd Hogue, and Dr. Kun Guo (University of Lincoln) – found that, when presented with images of (clothed) male and female children and adults, heterosexual child abusers (with female victims) exhibited longer fixations to the upper body region of female children than male children. In addition, child abusers showed different gaze patterns in relation to the upper body of female and male children, compared to non-offender controls.
This research adds to the growing body of research that aims to establish more sophisticated methods of assessing sexual deviant interests (a core research focus within the FCRG).