Sexual Interest and Arousal in Males Who Are Civilly Committed: Exploring Overlap and Distinctions

Abstract Accurate assessment of sexual deviance is critical for treatment planning and risk management among individuals who have committed sexual offenses. Penile plethysmography (PPG) is often regarded as the most specific measure of male physiological sexual arousal, though concerns about invasiveness and standardization have prompted interest in less intrusive alternatives. Viewing time (VT) paradigms index sexual interest through differences in cognitive processing latency when evaluating stimuli, yet few studies have directly compared VT outcomes to PPG findings. This study examined the relationship between PPG-derived deviance differentials (DD) and VT mean rank scores in 146 civilly committed adult males. Participants were classified into child arousal, undifferentiated arousal, or adult arousal groups based on PPG DD scores, and VT category-level mean rank scores were compared across developmental and gendered stimulus categories. Significant group differences emerged for female stimuli only. Individuals in the child arousal group exhibited longer viewing times for images of small child and pre-juvenile female images, whereas those in the adult arousal group exhibited longer viewing times for adult women. These findings provide converging evidence that VT aligns with PPG-derived classifications, supporting a multi-method assessment framework.