Abstract

Research on non-offending heterosexual participants has indicated that men’s gaze
allocation reflects their sexual preference. In this exploratory pilot study we investigated whether
naturalistic gaze behaviour is sensitive to deviant sexual preferences. We compared gaze patterns
of convicted heterosexual child sex offenders (CSOs; n = 13) with female victims to heterosexual
non-offending men (n = 13) in a task of free-viewing images of clothed male and female figures aged
10, 20 and 40 years. CSOs dedicated more fixations to the upper body of the female child than male
child figures. The pattern was different for the control sample, whose gaze pattern to male and female
figures could only be differentiated when viewing adult figures. CSOs showed significantly greater
difference in their gaze towards the upper body of male and female children than non-offenders. Our
findings provide preliminary evidence for eye-tracking as a potential method of assessing deviant
sexual interest.