Corrigendum: Individuals under voluntary treatment with sexual interest in minors: what risk do they pose?

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1277225.].

Individuals under voluntary treatment with sexual interest in minors: what risk do they pose?

Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) and the production, use, and distribution of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) are key threats to children's mental health. From the perspective of indicated prevention, it can be assumed that some persons with a sexual interest in children commit such unreported crimes. Accordingly, the German Network kein Täter werden (meaning do not offend) has implemented a confidential treatment service for persons with a sexual interest in minors who voluntarily seek therapy, might or might not have offended but have not yet been detected or have fulfilled all legal requirements (here referred to as non-forensic individuals). However, this offer has been questioned for investing resources in a group which critics consider as low risk. The following study addresses the question of recidivism risks for CSA or viewing CSAM among non-forensic individuals. We found significantly higher rates of CSA/CSAM in our participants' history compared to a German study on a representative sample of males. Regarding CSAM, the recidivism rate of 39% was found to be 11 times higher than the expected recidivism rate based on previous publications. Regarding CSA, the recidivism rate of 14% was not significantly different from the expected rate reported for subjects with a conviction for a sexual contact offense. Among various risk instruments, only the CPORT with CASIC rating was able to predict CSA (AUC = 0.69, 95% CI = 0.55, 0.82) and CSAM (AUC = 0.63, 95% CI = 0.53, 0.73) among individuals with a history of CSAM, but with poor discrimination. We conclude that a large proportion of our sample poses a substantial risk and therefore treatment resources are well invested. However, further studies are needed to improve risk assessment among non-forensic clients.

Age changes in pain perception: A systematic-review and meta-analysis of age effects on pain and tolerance thresholds.

Demographic changes, with substantial increase in life expectancy, ask for solid knowledge about how pain perception might be altered by aging. Although psychophysical studies on age-related changes in pain perception have been conducted over more than 70 years, meta-analyses are still missing. The present meta-analysis aimed to quantify evidence on age-related changes in pain perception, indexed by pain thresholds and pain tolerance thresholds in young and older healthy adults. After searching PubMed, Google Scholar and PsycINFO using state-of-art screening (PRISMA-criteria), 31 studies on pain threshold and 9 studies assessing pain tolerance threshold were identified. Pain threshold increases with age, which is indicated by a large effect size. This age-related change increases the wider the age-gap between groups; and is especially prominent when heat is used and when stimuli are applied to the head. In contrast, pain tolerance thresholds did not show substantial age-related changes. Thus, after many years of investigating age-related changes in pain perception, we only have firm evidence that aging reduces pain sensitivity for lower pain intensities.

Continuity and discontinuity in memory for threat.

Using a paradigm that allows a quasi-continuous tracking of memory performance over time, two experiments were designed to test the hypotheses that (a) persons with a cognitively avoidant style of coping with threat manifest a dissociation between (intact) short-term and (reduced) long-term retrieval of aversive information and (b) persons with a vigilant coping style recall aversive information particularly well after long retention intervals, provided they are free to think about aversive events. Study 1 (N = 75) showed that avoiders manifest a poor memory for aversive pictures after long retention intervals only. Study 2 (N = 95) replicated this finding. In addition, manipulation of the cognitive load during the retention interval influenced vigilants' recall of aversive information in the predicted way. Results indicate that processes occurring during the retention interval are essential for individual difference in memory for aversive information and require similar attention as encoding, appraisal, and retrieval processes.

Ubiquitin dynamics in complexes reveal molecular recognition mechanisms beyond induced fit and conformational selection.

Protein-protein interactions play an important role in all biological processes. However, the principles underlying these interactions are only beginning to be understood. Ubiquitin is a small signalling protein that is covalently attached to different proteins to mark them for degradation, regulate transport and other functions. As such, it interacts with and is recognised by a multitude of other proteins. We have conducted molecular dynamics simulations of ubiquitin in complex with 11 different binding partners on a microsecond timescale and compared them with ensembles of unbound ubiquitin to investigate the principles of their interaction and determine the influence of complex formation on the dynamic properties of this protein. Along the main mode of fluctuation of ubiquitin, binding in most cases reduces the conformational space available to ubiquitin to a subspace of that covered by unbound ubiquitin. This behaviour can be well explained using the model of conformational selection. For lower amplitude collective modes, a spectrum of zero to almost complete coverage of bound by unbound ensembles was observed. The significant differences between bound and unbound structures are exclusively situated at the binding interface. Overall, the findings correspond neither to a complete conformational selection nor induced fit scenario. Instead, we introduce a model of conformational restriction, extension and shift, which describes the full range of observed effects.

Sensitive maintenance: a cognitive process underlying individual differences in memory for threatening information.

Dispositional styles of coping with threat influence memory for threatening information. In particular, sensitizers excel over repressors in their memory for threatening information after long retention intervals, but not after short ones. We therefore suggested that sensitizers, but not repressors, employ active maintenance processes during the retention interval to selectively retain threatening material. Sensitive maintenance was studied in 2 experiments in which participants were briefly exposed to threatening and nonthreatening pictures (Experiment 1, N = 128) or words (Experiment 2, N = 145). Following, we administered unannounced recognition tests before and after an intervening task that generated either high or low cognitive load, assuming that high cognitive load would impede sensitizers' memory maintenance of threatening material. Supporting our hypotheses, the same pattern of results was obtained in both experiments: Under low cognitive load, sensitizers forgot less threat material than repressors did; no such differences were observed under high cognitive load.

Controllability and hindsight components: Understanding opposite hindsight biases for self-relevant negative event outcomes.

There is an anomaly in the hindsight bias literature with respect to hindsight effects obtained after self-relevant negative event outcomes: Whereas some studies have reported reduced hindsight bias, others have shown increases. This article contrasts two explanations for the anomaly. The first points to an influence of perceived control over the event outcome: In hindsight, people decrease foreseeability (and hence, responsibility and blame) for controllable events, but they increase the perceived inevitability of uncontrollable events for coping reasons. The second explanation, derived from a reconception of hindsight bias in terms of separate components (Blank, Nestler, von Collani, & Fischer, 2008), traces the anomaly to differences in the observed hindsight components: Hindsight decreases are to be expected for foreseeability, whereas increases are restricted to the inevitability component. Our experiment (N = 210) manipulated controllability and the hindsight component orthogonally and showed strong support for the component explanation, but also some influence of perceived control.