No relation between digit ratio (2D:4D) and visual attention patterns to sexually preferred and non-preferred stimuli

What can the eyes tell us about atypical sexual preferences as a function of sex and age? Linking eye movements with child-related chronophilias

Visual attention plays a central role in current theories of sexual information processing and is key to informing the use of eye-tracking techniques in the study of typical sexual preferences and more recently, in the study of atypical preferences such as pedophilia (prepubescent children) and hebephilia (pubescent children). The aim of this theoretical-empirical review is to connect the concepts of a visual attention-based model of sexual arousal processing with eye movements as indicators of atypical sexual interests, to substantiate the use of eye-tracking as a useful indirect measure of sexual preferences according to sex and age of the stimuli. Implications for research are discussed in terms of recognizing the value, scope and limitations of eye-tracking in the study of pedophilia and other chronophilias in males and females, and the generation of new hypotheses using this type of indirect measure of human sexual response.

A Life History Approach to the Female Sexual Orientation Spectrum: Evolution, Development, Causal Mechanisms, and Health

Women's capacity for sexual fluidity is at least as interesting a phenomenon from the point of view of evolutionary biology and behavioral endocrinology as exclusively homosexual orientation. Evolutionary hypotheses for female nonheterosexuality have failed to fully account for the existence of these different categories of nonheterosexual women, while also overlooking broader data on the causal mechanisms, physiology, ontogeny, and phylogeny of female nonheterosexuality. We review the evolutionary-developmental origins of various phenotypes in the female sexual orientation spectrum using the synergistic approach of Tinbergen's four questions. We also present femme-specific and butch-specific hypotheses at proximate and ultimate levels of analysis. This review article indicates that various nonheterosexual female phenotypes emerge from and contribute to hormonally mediated fast life history strategies. Life history theory provides a biobehavioral explanatory framework for nonheterosexual women's masculinized body morphology, psychological dispositions, and their elevated likelihood of experiencing violence, substance use, obesity, teenage pregnancy, and lower general health. This pattern of life outcomes can create a feedback loop of environmental unpredictability and harshness which destabilizes intrauterine hormonal conditions in mothers, leading to a greater likelihood of fast life history strategies, global health problems, and nonheterosexual preferences in female offspring. We further explore the potential of female nonheterosexuality to function as an alloparental buffer that enables masculinizing alleles to execute their characteristic fast life history strategies as they appear in the female and the male phenotype. Synthesizing life history theory with the female sexual orientation spectrum enriches existing scientific knowledge on the evolutionary-developmental mechanisms of human sex differences.

Differences in Visual Attention Patterns to Sexually Mature and Immature Stimuli Between Heterosexual Sexual Offenders, Nonsexual Offenders, and Nonoffending Men

Men, whether gynephilic or androphilic, show both early and late attention toward adults and not toward children. We examined early and late visual attention to sexually mature versus immature stimuli in four groups of heterosexual men: sexual offenders against children (SOAC = 18), sexual offenders against adults (SOAA = 16), nonsexual offenders (NSO = 18), and nonoffending men (NOM = 19). We simultaneously presented adult and child stimuli and measured time to first fixation, number of first fixations, total duration of fixation, and fixation count to four areas of interest: entire body, then face, chest, and pelvis. We found a significant interaction where only SOAC tended to fixate more first times to child than to adult stimuli. Conversely, we found longer total duration of fixations for the bodies of adults compared to the bodies of children in all groups; however, in both the total duration of fixations and the fixation count for the whole body, but especially in the chest, SOAC tended to fixate longer and more often on child stimuli than the other two groups of offenders, but not longer or more often than NOM. This study adds to the limited research using eye-tracking techniques in samples of SOAC.