Eye tracking and child sexual offenders: a systematic review

Abstract

Eye tracking is used in sexology to identify attractiveness and sexual desire indirectly. This systematic review summarizes results of works that have used eye tracking to analyse paedophilic interest in order to investigate its potential as a useful forensic tool. Six studies met the inclusion criteria. Five of them concerned a large study project and used approximatively the same sample of paedophiles (inpatients), forensic patients (without a sexual interest in children) and healthy controls to make comparisons between the three groups. One study added 11 self-declared paedophiles (outpatients) for a comparison between inpatient paedophiles, outpatient paedophiles and controls (healthy and forensic inpatients). One study compared a group of child sexual offenders with non-offenders. All studies used static pictures of male and female subjects at different pubertal stages. Some studies divided every picture into a different area of interest. Dependent variables used are fixation latency (early attention) and relative fixation time, (later attention). Each study identified significant differences between the paedophile group versus other groups: shorter fixation latency on child pictures, longer fixation time on child pictures and number of fixation most important on child pictures. Two scores (age preference index and attentional control index) showed hight and/or moderate sensitivity and specificity. Although the results suggest the eye tracking can discriminate between paedophile interest and non-paedophile interest, there are too few studies on this specific topic and further research is needed with larger and different sample, carried out by different research teams. If these findings were confirmed, it remains unclear as to their impact in a forensic context when presented openly in Court.

What can the eyes tell us about atypical sexual preferences as a function of sex and age? Linking eye movements with child-related chronophilias

“…A more comprehensive review of the results of research using eye-tracking to analyze pedophilic interest can be found in Godet and Niveau [ 88 ], who identified only six studies with this objective, including those mentioned above. The authors conclude that although the results suggest that eye-tracking is useful for discriminating between men with pedophilic sexual interests from non-pedophiles, there is limited research on this topic, with small and diverse samples, and more clarity is needed on its relevance in the forensic context.…”

Eye-Tracking as a Method for Legal Research

“…Eye-tracking has been used to observe if the accused's gaze patterns match those of patients with schizophrenia, to assess the validity of an insanity defense (Ales, Giromini et al 2021). In another example, eye-tracking was used to observe preferential attention to sexualized stimuli to identify pedophile intentions in sexual offenders (Godet and Niveau 2021). Finally, eye-tracking has been employed in an exploratory study to make the decision-making process of 39 active shop-lifters visible (Jacques, Lasky et al 2015).…”

“…Outside cyber crime, eye-tracking evidence might at most be used to probe the defendant on proclivity towards certain mental processes. The eye-tracking studies with convicted sexual offenders reported in the introduction go into that direction (Godet and Niveau 2021). But in criminal law there is the presumption of innocence.…”