Recognition of facial expressions of emotion by adults with intellectual disability: Is there evidence for the emotion specificity hypothesis?

This study aimed to evaluate the emotion recognition abilities of adults (n=23) with an intellectual disability (ID) compared with a control group of children (n=23) without ID matched for estimated cognitive ability. The study examined the impact of: task paradigm, stimulus type and preferred processing style (global/local) on accuracy. We found that, after controlling for estimated cognitive ability, the control group performed significantly better than the individuals with ID.

Individuals with developmental delay and problematic sexual behaviors.

The field of sex offenders with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) has attracted a significant amount of research in the last 5 to 10 years. This research has included theoretical work on the reasons why men with IDD might engage in problematic sexual behaviours, work on the assessment of risk for future incidents, research investigating the pathways into and through services for sex offenders with IDD and a considerable amount of work developing and evaluating effective treatments. This paper will review the recent research on each of these areas in turn.

Screening for offenders with an intellectual disability: the validity of the Learning Disability Screening Questionnaire.

The study assessed the validity of an intellectual disability screening tool, the Learning Disability Screening Questionnaire (LDSQ), in three forensic settings: a community intellectual disability forensic service; a forensic in-patient secure unit and a prison, using data for 94 individuals. A significant positive relationship was found between full scale IQ and LDSQ score, indicating convergent validity. Discriminative validity was indicated by, firstly, a significant difference in the LDSQ scores between those with and without an intellectual disability, with those with a diagnosis of intellectual disability, scoring significantly lower.

A test of counterfeit deviance: a comparison of sexual knowledge in groups of sex offenders with intellectual disability and controls.

Several authors have suggested that lack of sexual knowledge is a primary reason for inappropriate sexual behaviour in men with intellectual disabilities. This hypothesis, counterfeit deviance, is tested in the current report with two separate cohorts comparing sex offenders and controls, both with intellectual disability. The Socio-Sexual Knowledge and Attitudes Test was completed on all participants and any significant differences between groups indicated that the sex offender cohort had a higher level of knowledge.