Cognitive‐behavioural rehabilitation of high‐risk violent offenders: Investigating treatment change with explicit and implicit measures of cognition

Abstract

Important as it is both to risk of re-offending and to cognitive behavioural treatment, violent cognition is seldom measured in rehabilitation programmes, and even more rarely linked to measures of violence risk. Most often, researchers measure violent cognition by having offenders complete transparent self-report questionnaires. This approach may be flawed both by socially desirable responding and by theoretical speculation that stronger links exist between automatic rather than explicit, consciously deliberated cognition and violent behaviour. We measured violent cognition in several ways; collecting data with two self-report scales, along with two Implicit Association Tests (IATs) from men commencing and completing an intensive cognitive-behavioural rehabilitation programme for high-risk violent prisoners. We addressed the questions of whether these two forms of assessment-explicit and implicit-are related, and which is most strongly linked to estimates of violence, based on the Violence Risk Scale. Explicit and implicit tests were not related to each other, although both self-report scales, and one of the IATs elicited significantly more pro-social responses following treatment. Further, the Aggression Questionnaire (AQ) scores were significantly correlated with dynamic risk both pre-and post-programme, while post-programme, scores on one of the two IATs was significantly correlated with dynamic and static risk, as measured pre-and postprogramme. These findings suggest that implicit and explicit measures may be assessing different aspects of cognition, and only some are related to violence risk.

Implicit attitudes toward violence and their relation to psychopathy, aggression, and socially adaptive behaviors in forensic psychiatric inpatients

“…Furthermore, as mentioned previously, an alternative explanation might be that self-report questionnaires of aggression are more susceptible to socially desirable response tendencies and depend on the motivation and capacity for introspection (Gannon et al, 2007). Note also that similar results have been found in other studies that explored the relation between the violence-related IAT and self-report instruments of aggression (Polaschek, Bell, Calvert, & Takarangi, 2010;Uhlmann & Swanson, 2004). Besides psychopathy and aggressive behavior, we also included indices of socially adaptive behavior in our study.…”

Examining the Presence of Anxiety in Aggressive Individuals: The Illuminating Role of Fight-or-Flight Mechanisms

“…For example, a substantial body of literature argues for the importance of treating anger in aggression (Lochman et al 2003(Lochman et al , 2010Paivio and Carriere 2007). Interestingly, the term ''anger'' in these interventions appears both to fall into the category of a specific type of thought pattern to be challenged (i.e., cognitive content specificity; Polaschek et al 2010), as well as an emotion to teach clients how to properly cope with (i.e., emotion regulation; Delaney 2009). Additionally, research also suggests that socialskills training demonstrates effectiveness in curbing aggressive behavior (e.g., Sukhodolsky et al 2005).…”

Holding on to our functional roots when exploring new intellectual islands: A voyage through implicit cognition research

“…Indeed the ability for people to edit their overt responding in order to correspond with overarching rules implemented by the verbal community -or their own privately generated rules -serves to reduce the predictive validity of direct procedures in many domains (see Nosek et al, 2011). For instance, people are often reluctant to self-report engagement with illegal or socially taboo behaviors (Ames et al, 2007) or their affinity for violence when seeking treatment (Polaschek, Bell, Calvert, & Takarangi, 2010). Similarly, child sex offenders are hesitant to report their attraction to children yet differ in their brief and immediate relational responding towards ''children as sexual'' compared to nonoffenders (Dawson, Barnes-Holmes, Gresswell, Hart, & Gore, 2009) and violent offenders with no sexual crimes towards children (Brown, Gray, & Snowden, 2009).…”