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VICARIOUS SENSITIZATION boy

A conditioning method to reduce deviant arousal in adolescent sex offenders

Northwest Media Inc.


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Vicarious Sensitization
Developed for teenage boys, this behavioral technique has elements of cognitive restructuring, fear induction, satiation, and aversive conditioning. In Vicarious Sensitization (VS) the aversive stimuli are videotaped portrayals of adolescent sex offenders who must contend with the negative social, emotional, physical, and legal consequences of their crimes against younger children. Clients are exposed to a tailor-made audiotaped crime scenario designed to evoke arousal to children, followed immediately by presentation of an aversive video vignette. The videotapes have little or no sexual content. They are designed to elicit anxiety in the viewer. As with other conditioning procedures, many trials are necessary for cues associated with illicit sexual activity to evoke anxiety rather than deviant fantasies or actual abuse. treatment model

Deviant sexual arousal has been identified as a key characteristic of teenage recidivists.(1). A recent Safer Society survey showed that over 90 percent of adolescent offender programs endorse the reduction of deviant sexual arousal as a treatment objective.(2) In spite of this, fewer than half of the programs surveyed utilized direct methods to counter deviant arousal, because they are considered either too intrusive or ineffective. Vicarious Sensitization raises few of the political, ethical, and motivational objections commonly associated with conditioning methods.



(1) Schram, D.D., Milloy, C.D., and Rowe, W.E. (1991) Juvenile Sex Offenders: A Follow-Up Study of Reoffensive Behavior. Washington State Institute for Public Policy.
(2) Nationwide Survey of Juvenile and Adult Sex Offender Treatment Programs and Models. 1992. Brandon, VT: Safer Society Press.


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