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Revue de neuropsychologie

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Assessment of executive and sociocognitive abilities in sexual violence: a case study Volume 9, issue 3, Juillet-Août-Septembre 2017

Authors
1 Université d’Angers, Laboratoire de psychologie des Pays de la Loire (LPPL), EA 4638, 5 bis, boulevard Lavoisier, 49045 Angers, France
2 Association de recherche en criminologie appliquée, Observatoire des violences, 53, boulevard Jean-Royer, 37000 Tours, France
3 CHU d’Angers, Service de neurologie, Unité de neuropsychologie, 4, rue Larrey, 49933 Angers, France
* Correspondance

Good executive and sociocognitive abilities are essential for behavioral control and adaptation to social environment. Today, these skills are mainly assessed in neurological and psychiatric pathologies. They are less investigated in violent people, even if an interest to their neurocognitive and sociocognitive functioning appeared recently. Our study focuses on cognitive executive and sociocognitive abilities in a subject who has committed sexual violence. We compared the subject's results to those obtained by 14 healthy control matched by age, sex, and sociocultural level. Results indicated impairment in executive function and social cognition, including inhibition, mental flexibility, attribution of mental states, description of his own emotions and reading facial expressions of emotions disorders. Our study appears to be relevant, likely to provide some semiological elements on executive function and sociocognitive functioning in sexual offenders. This study contributes to the assessment of executive and sociocognitive disorders and to their consequences in everyday life.