Neuropsychological executive functions of adolescent sex offenders and nonsex offenders.
A growing body of research now suggests that a substantial number of criminal offenders display neuropsychological deficits, especially frontal-executive dysfunctions. The present study investigated the possibility of similar deficits by comparing the performance of 60 adolescent sex offenders court-ordered to a residential treatment facility with the performance of 60 nonsexual delinquent offenders matched on several pertinent sociodemographic characteristics and scores on four neuropsychological tests: (1) the Trail Making Test, (2) the Controlled Oral Word Association test of the Multilingual Aphasia Examination, (3) the Tower of London, and (4) the Wisconsin Card-sorting Test. Analysis indicated a pattern of frontal-executive dysfunction in a subset of both groups of offenders; this pattern has both theoretical and treatment implications.
Veneziano
Carol
C
Department of Criminal Justice, Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau 63701, USA. cveneziano@semo.edu
Veneziano
Louis
L
LeGrand
Scott
S
Richards
Linda
L
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000503:physiopathology; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D007604:Juvenile Delinquency / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011340:Problem Solving; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012742:Sex Offenses / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*