Childhood Trauma and Social Cognition in Sexual Offenders

Paper one is a literature review which aims to scope and evaluate published literature examining the link between both affective and cognitive social cognition and violent behaviours perpetrated by adult men. Ten relevant studies were identified following a systematic search of literature. The Crowe Critical Appraisal Tool (CCAT) was employed to critically review the studies. The review highlighted some evidence for the role of both affective and cognitive social cognition associated with violence, with more of the papers reporting a significant role of affective processes. However, some of the studies presented with methodological issues and poor quality which limit the impact of conclusions drawn. In particular, inconsistency in appropriate measures used is considered. Clinical and research implications are discussed. Paper two discusses a cross-sectional quantitative study investigating the predictive relationship between childhood trauma, when controlling for age and level of education, and three areas of social cognition in adult men who are serving a custodial sentence for a sexual offence. These three areas of social cognition include Theory of Mind (ToM), Emotion Recognition and Mentalising; subdivided into hyper- and hypomentalising. Forty-three men from HMP Stafford were recruited for this study. Four multiple regression analyses were conducted. The results found a significant predictive relationship between childhood trauma and mentalising in both directions; hyper- and hypomentalising within this population. Childhood trauma was not a significant predictor of ToM or emotion recognition. In the case of hypermentalising only, age was a significant covariate and it is recommended that this is controlled for in future studies examining this association. The findings present preliminary evidence of the relationship between childhood trauma and mentalising, requiring further research of well-designed studies with larger sample sizes. Recommendations for offender management programmes are considered, and implications for considering the impact of trauma and social cognition in the rehabilitation of male sexual offenders is discussed. The third paper is an executive summary of the research study completed for this thesis. It is written for people working with men who have committed a sexual offence, and anyone else interested in this area of research.