Changes in physiological and verbal responses of child molesters during aversion therapy.

Abstract

Ten child molesters were each given 20 classical conditioning type aversion therapy sessions and three assessment (generalization) test sessions (before, after 10, and after 20 treatment sessions). Shock was the unconditional stimulus. Larger skin conductance responses were made to child slides than to adult slides in all sessions. Penile circumference responses indicated a small positive shift in sexual preference in the assessment tests when averaged over subjects. Pre- and post-treatment semantic differential and slide ranking sexual preference measures also showed increases in sexual preference for adults relative to sexual preference for children.