Cognitive Approaches to the Assessment of Sexual Interest in Sexual Offenders

New for the Wiley Series in Forensic Clinical Psychology, Cognitive Approaches to the Treatment of Sexual Offenders describes and evaluates the current methods of measuring sexual interest in sex offenders - namely penile plethysmography, the Abel Assessment for Sexual Interest, Affinity 2.1, the Implicit Association Test, the Stroop test and the polygraph. The book also discusses how established cognitive assessment methods such as the attentional blink and the startle probe reflex can be adapted for use with sex offenders. It therefore brings together in one volume all the latest research and practice in this area, along with critical commentary on the effectiveness of each method.

David Thornton is the treatment director for Wisconsin's program for sexually violent persons, and an Adjunct Professor in the department of Clinical Psychology at the University of Bergen, Norway. He is co-author of STATIC-99, the most widely used risk assessment instrument for sexual offenders in the world, and also of Risk Matrix 2000, the commonly used risk assessment instrument in the United Kingdom. He currently serves on the editorial board of Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, and is a member of the Executive Board of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers.

D. Richard Laws is co-director of the Pacific Psychological Assessment Corporation in Victoria, BC, Canada. He is an adjunct faculty member at Simon Fraser University and the University of Birmingham, UK. Dr. Laws is known in the research field of sexual deviance primarily for his development of assessment procedures. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, Journal of Sexual Aggression, Journal of Interpersonal Violence and Legal and Criminological Psychology.