Neuropsychological profile of Belgian forensic patients related to the IQ: An exploratory research.

Neuropsychological functioning in delinquency is the subject of much research (Pham et al., 2003; Ogilvie et al., 2011; Joyal et al., 2013). However the neuropsychological assessment of offenders with intellectual disabilities is rare in the literature. To our knowledge, they are few data on the neuropsychological assessment among forensic patients in European French speaker sample. The purpose of our study is to compare the neuropsychological profile of forensic patient with intellectual disability (ID) to the profile of patients without ID. Our population (N = 40) from the Forensic Hospital Les Marronniers in Tournai (Belgium) is divided in two groups according to IQ obtained the WAIS- IV: the group without ID (IQ > 70, N = 20) and the group with ID (IQ < 70, N = 20). In order to assess executive and attentional functions, we use the Tower of London, the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, the Stroop and the d2 and also the Bushke-16 for assessing memory abilities. All participants were also evaluated with the WAIS-IV. The characteristics of the cognitive profile of the patients were defined on the neuropsychological score. The scores of neuropsychological tests were correlated with the scores of the WAIS-IV. First, we expected that the patients without ID would present significant deficits at the attentional and executive tests. Secondly, their scores would be impaired to the Buschke-16, and specifically for the retrieval information. Finally, we expected that the patients with ID would present lower scores to neuropsychological scores than patients without ID. The results will be discussed on the light of international literature.