Search

Introduction: Most women report that clitoral stimulation is an integral aspect of their orgasm experience. Thus, recent claims that vaginal stimulation and vaginally generated orgasms are superior to clitoral stimulation and clitorally generated orgasms pathologize most women and maintain a clitoral vs vaginal dichotomy that might not accurately reflect the complexity of women's sexual experience., Aim: To have women report on their experienced source of orgasm, including combinations of vaginal and clitoral stimulation, the solo or partnered context of the stimulation, and the intensity of the orgasms from different sources and to predict indicators of mental health and sexual health using the orgasm source., Methods: Eighty-eight women 18 to 53 years old answered detailed questions about their usual and recent orgasm experiences, sexual history, depression, and anxiety. Then, they viewed a series of neutral and sexual films. They were instructed to increase or decrease their sexual arousal or respond "as usual" to the sexual films. They reported their sexual arousal after each film., Main Outcome Measures: Outcomes assessed included mental health (depression and anxiety) and sexual health (orgasm quality, ability to regulate sexual response to sex films). Reported sexual arousal was analyzed for the regulation task., Results: Most women (64%) reported that clitoral and vaginal stimulation contributed to their usual method of reaching orgasm. Women who reported that clitoral stimulation was primarily responsible for their orgasm reported a higher desire to self-stimulate and demonstrated greater control over their self-reported sexual arousal. The primary stimulation site for orgasm was unrelated to measurements of depression or anxiety despite sufficient statistical power., Conclusion: Most women reported that clitoral and vaginal stimulation is important in orgasm. Women experience orgasms in many varied patterns, a complexity that is often ignored by current methods of assessing orgasm source. The reported source of orgasm was unrelated to orgasm intensity, overall sex-life satisfaction, sexual distress, depression, or anxiety. Women who reported primarily stimulating their clitoris to reach orgasm reported higher trait sexual drive and higher sexual arousal to visual sexual stimulation and were better able to increase their sexual arousal to visual sexual stimulation when instructed than women who reported orgasms primarily from vaginal sources., (Copyright © 2016 International Society for Sexual Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

A person's ability to control their own sexual arousal is important both to reduce the risks associated with some sexual behaviours and to respond sexually with intimate partners. A lack of control over sexual urges is a proposed feature of "hypersexual disorder", though some evidence suggests that sexual desire predicts the self-regulation of sexual arousal better than hypersexuality. In the current study, a sample (N = 116) of men and women recruited from community ads viewed a series of 20-second neutral and sexual films. Before each sexual film, participants were instructed to increase their sexual arousal, decrease their sexual arousal or respond as usual. Higher levels of desire for sex with a partner consistently predicted failures to downregulate sexual arousal. Hypersexuality was unrelated. These findings replicate Winters et al.'s study and extend their findings by including upregulation, women, a new measure of hypersexuality and a higher-trial design.

Visual sexual stimuli can motivate sexual behaviors that can risk or enhance health. How one allocates attention to a sexually motivating stimulus may be important for predicting its effect on sexual feelings, sexual risk behaviors, and sexual problems. A large sample (N = 157) of men and women rated the similarity of all possible pairs of photographs of women, which had been pretested to vary in their sexual and affective content. Multidimensional scaling was used to extract two dimensions of sex and affect, including the extent to which each person relied on each dimension in making their similarity judgments. These individual weights were then used to predict sexual variables of interest. Participants who relied more on the affect information judging photograph similarity were more likely to be female, viewed erotica less frequently, reported fewer sexual partners, reported less sexual desire, and more sexual problems. Those who relied more on the erotic content in making their similarity judgments were more likely to be male, viewed more erotica weekly, experienced higher sexual desire, and were more likely to have taken an HIV test. The "double edge sword" of attention weight to affect in sexual cues is discussed for its potential to both enhance and harm sexual health.

Anterior alpha asymmetry of electroencephalographic (EEG) signals has been suggested to index state approach (or avoidance) motivation. This model has not yet been extended to high approach-motivation sexual stimuli, which may represent an important model of reward system function. Sixty-five participants viewed a neutral and a sexually motivating film while their EEG was recorded, and reported their sexual feelings after each film. Greater alpha power in the left hemisphere during sexually motivated states was evident. A positive relationship between self-reported mental sexual arousal and alpha asymmetry was identified, where coherence between these indicators was higher in women. Notably, coherence was stronger when mental versus physical sexual arousal was rated. Alpha asymmetry appears to offer a new method for further examining this novel coherence pattern across men and women., (Copyright © 2014 Society for Psychophysiological Research.)

Viewing visual sexual stimuli (VSS) has been documented to have both positive (e.g., increased sexual arousal and sexual behaviors) and negative (e.g., higher anxiety, devaluing of partner attractiveness) effects. Excitation transfer and social comparison theories were used to generate hypotheses that could explain these mixed findings. Forty-four monogamous, heterosexual couples viewed erotic, exciting (non-erotic films), and nature films both alone and together. They rated their feelings of general arousal and relationship satisfaction as well as perceptions of self and partner sexual behaviors and attractiveness. Participants viewing both the erotic and exciting films reported equivalent increases in excitement; however, the erotic film was rated as slightly more generally arousing and increased participant's desire to be close to their partner. Viewing the erotic films also induced greater reports of negative affect, guilt, and anxiety. These findings moderately support a transfer of excitation interpretation. No effects of partner presence or absence while viewing the films was found. Viewing erotic films led to more positive evaluations of one's own sexual behaviors. These findings provide mixed support in regard to self and partner social comparisons. Co-occurring positive and negative emotional reactions were explored as possible explanation to the complex reactions to VSS.

Distractions from sexual cues have been shown to decrease the sexual response, but it is unclear how distracters decrease sexual response. Individual differences may modulate the efficacy of distracters. Forty women viewed three sexual films while their labial temperature and continuous self-reported sexual arousal were monitored. One sexual film had simultaneous verbal distracters concerning dissatisfaction with one's physical appearance (higher salience distracter), a second had distracters concerning daily chores (lower salience distracter), and the third sexual film had no distracters. Participant's reporting greater relationship satisfaction and more communication with their partner about their own physical appearance were expected to decrease the efficacy (increased sexual arousal) of the distracters concerning physical appearance. Contrary to expectations, women who received less feedback about their body from their partners reported less sexual arousal during a sexual film with body distracters than a sexual film with general distracters or a sexual film with no distracters. All women exhibited lower labial temperature in Minutes 2 and 3 of the sexual film with body image distracters as compared to the other two sexual films. Possible explanations explored include self-verification theory and individual differences in the indicators that women consider when rating their sexual arousal.

Introduction: Sexual desire variation traditionally has been treated as due to variance in affective response to sexual stimulation, but differences in attention to the stimuli may better account for differences in sexual desire., Aim: Determine whether sexual desire varies due to attention biases towards sexual stimuli., Main Outcome Measures: Sexual arousal was quantified by physiological (labia minus temperature) and experienced (continuously adjusting a potentiometer) indicators., Methods: Twenty-two women who varied in their level of sexual desire attended one laboratory session during which they viewed a neutral nature film, a sexual film, and a sexual film with distractors while their labial temperature and self-reported sexual arousal were recorded., Results: Participants reported and displayed lower sexual arousal during the sexual stimulus with distractors as compared to the sexual film without distractors. While all women reported lower sexual arousal to the sexual film with distractors, women with relatively lower sexual desire also reported lower sexual arousal to the sexual film with no distractors than women with higher sexual desire. Physiologically, women with lower sexual desire exhibited lower labial temperature., Conclusions: Since the predicted lower self-reported and physiological sexual arousal to the sexual stimulus with distractors for the women with lower sexual desire did not emerge, this study does not support that sexual desire levels vary due to differential attention to sexual stimuli.

The labial thermistor offers several potential psychometric advantages over existing measures of female sexual response; however, the thermistor lacked data to support these presumed advantages, especially with respect to its discriminant validity. In this study, both the labial thermistor was worn simultaneously with the vaginal photoplethysmograph as women viewed films. They also indicated their level of subjective sexual arousal using a lever. The labial thermistor discriminated sexual from nonsexual arousing stimuli and was sensitive to different levels of sexual arousal. The correspondence of the instrument with subjective sexual arousal, measured using a continuous lever, was lower during the mildly arousing sexual film and higher during the maximally sexual arousing film. One woman reported that the labial thermistor was very uncomfortable, while others indicated no or mild discomfort from each instrument. The vaginal photoplethysmograph largely replicated the effects documented by the labial thermistor, although it did not discriminate sexual stimuli of different intensity nor correspond with women's continuous lever responses as closely during the more arousing stimulus. Difficulties recording simultaneously with these instruments are noted. The labial thermistor adequately discriminates between generally arousing and sexually arousing stimuli, increasing its utility as a measure for between-subject study designs.

Little is known about why individuals vary in their levels of sexual desire. Information processing models, like Barlow's (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 54:140-148, 1986) model of sexual functioning, suggest that individuals with higher sexual desire attend more and respond with more pleasant emotions to sexual cues than individuals with lower levels of sexual desire. In this study, 69 participants (36 women, 33 men) completed a dot detection task measuring attention capture by sexual stimuli and a startle eyeblink modulation task indexing the valence of emotional response to affective stimuli. Participants with high levels of sexual desire were slower to detect targets in the dot detection task that replaced sexual images but did not differ in startle eyeblink responses to sexual stimuli. The results suggest that the amount of attention captured by sexual stimuli is a stronger predictor of a person's sexual desire level than the valence of the emotional responses elicited by such stimuli.