Masking procedures can influence priming effects besides their effects on conscious perception.

Masked priming has been employed to study the role of consciousness for different levels of visual processing. However, masking procedures differ systematically between studies. To examine these procedural differences we contrasted priming effects with metacontrast masking, which is often applied in the context of perceptual priming, and priming effects with sandwich pattern masking, frequently used in studies on semantic priming.

Sexual interest and sexual self-control in men with self-reported sexual interest in children - A first eye tracking study.

Sexual child abuse is one of the most destructive events for child development. One possible approach to avert it is the preventive treatment of individuals with a sexual interest in children. The aim of the current eye tracking study was to compare people with a self-reported sexual interest in children who participate in the outpatient preventive treatment project "PsM", pedophilic forensic inpatients, and a non-pedophilic control group.

Neural correlates of subliminally presented visual sexual stimuli.

In the context of forensic psychiatry, it is crucial that diagnoses of deviant sexual interests are resistant to manipulation. In a first attempt to promote the development of such tools, the current fMRI study focusses on the examination of hemodynamic responses to preferred, in contrast to non-preferred, sexual stimuli with and without explicit sexual features in 24 healthy heterosexual subjects. The subliminal stimulus presentation of sexual stimuli could be a new approach to reduce vulnerability to manipulation.