Spirituality Moderates Hopelessness,Depression, and Suicidal Behavior among Malaysian Adolescents

Suicide is an important public health problem for adolescents, and it is essential to increase our knowledge concerning the etiology of suicide among adolescent students. Therefore, this study was designed to examine the associations between hopelessness, depression, spirituality, and suicidal behavior, and to examine spirituality as a moderator between hopelessness, depression, and suicidal behavior among 1376 Malaysian adolescent students. The participants completed measures of depression, hopelessness, daily spiritual experience, and suicidal behavior. Structural equation modeling indicated that adolescent students high in hopelessness and depression, but also high in spirituality, had less suicidal behavior than others. These findings reinforce the importance of spirituality as a protective factor against hopelessness, depression, and suicidal behavior among Malaysian adolescent students.     

A Propensity Score Analysis of Homework Adherence-Outcome Relations in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Depression

Little is known about whether or not a consistently high level of homework adherence over the course of therapy benefits patients. This question was examined in two samples of patients who were receiving individual Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for depression (Ns = 128 [Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression: STAR-D] and 183 [Continuation Phase Cognitive Therapy Relapse Prevention: C-CT-RP]). Logistic and linear regression and propensity score models were used to identify whether or not clinician assessments of homework adherence differentiated symptom reduction and remission, as assessed by the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale-17 (HDRS-17), the Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology–Self-Reported Scale (QIDS-SR), and the QIDS–Clinician Scale (QIDS-C). CBT-related response and remission were equally likely between both high and low homework adherers in both studies and in all models. But in propensity adjusted models that adjusted for session attendance, for both the STAR-D and C-CT-RP samples, greater homework adherence was significantly associated with greater response and remission from depression in the first and last 8 sessions of CBT. Our results suggest that homework adherence can account for response and remission early and late in treatment, with adequate session attendence.     

Visual categorization of social interactions

Prominent theories of action recognition suggest that during the recognition of actions the physical patterns of the action is associated with only one action interpretation (e.g., a person waving his arm is recognized as waving). In contrast to this view, studies examining the visual categorization of objects show that objects are recognized in multiple ways (e.g., a VW Beetle can be recognized as a car or a beetle) and that categorization performance is based on the visual and motor movement similarity between objects. Here, we studied whether we find evidence for multiple levels of categorization for social interactions (physical interactions with another person, e.g., handshakes). To do so, we compared visual categorization of objects and social interactions (Experiments 1 and 2) in a grouping task and assessed the usefulness of motor and visual cues (Experiments 3, 4, and 5) for object and social interaction categorization. Additionally, we measured recognition performance associated with recognizing objects and social interactions at different categorization levels (Experiment 6). We found that basic level object categories were associated with a clear recognition advantage compared to subordinate recognition but basic level social interaction categories provided only a little recognition advantage. Moreover, basic level object categories were more strongly associated with similar visual and motor cues than basic level social interaction categories. The results suggest that cognitive categories underlying the recognition of objects and social interactions are associated with different performances. These results are in line with the idea that the same action can be associated with several action interpretations (e.g., a person waving his arm can be recognized as waving or greeting).     

Early access to abstract representations in developing readers: evidence from masked priming

A commonly shared assumption in the field of visual‐word recognition is that retinotopic representations are rapidly converted into abstract representations. Here we examine the role of visual form vs. abstract representations during the early stages of word processing – as measured by masked priming – in young children (3rd and 6th Graders) and adult readers. To maximize the chances of detecting an effect of visual form, we employed a language with a very intricate orthography, Arabic. If visual form plays a role in the early stages of processing, greater benefit would be expected from related primes that have the same visual form (in terms of the ligation pattern between a word's letters) as the target word (e.g.– [ktz b–ktA b] – note that the three initial letters are connected in prime and target) than for those that do not (– [ktxb–ktA b]). Results showed that the magnitude of priming effect relative to an unrelated condition (e.g. –) was remarkably similar for both types of prime. Thus, despite the visual complexity of Arabic orthography, there is fast access to the abstract letter representations not only in adult readers by also in developing readers.     

Visual object detection, categorization, and identification tasks are associated with different time courses and sensitivities

Recent evidence suggests that the recognition of an object's presence and its explicit recognition are temporally closely related. Here we re-examined the time course (using a fine and a coarse temporal resolution) and the sensitivity of three possible component processes of visual object recognition. In particular, participants saw briefly presented (Experiment I to III) or noise masked (Experiment IV) static images of objects and non-object textures. Participants reported the presence of an object, its basic level category, and its subordinate category while we measured recognition performance by means of accuracy and reaction times. All three recognition tasks were clearly separable in terms of their time course and sensitivity. Finally, the use of a coarser temporal sampling of presentation times decreased performance differences between the detection and basic level categorization task suggesting that a fine temporal sampling for the dissociation of recognition performances is important. Overall the three probed recognition processes were associated with different time courses and sensitivities.     

Priming of abstract letter representations may be universal: The case of Arabic

Recent research on the Roman alphabet has demonstrated that the magnitudes of masked repetition priming are equivalent for letter pairs that have similar visual features across cases (e.g., c-C) and for letter pairs with dissimilar features (e.g., g-G). Here, we examined whether priming of abstract letter representations occurs in an orthographic system, Arabic, in which the letters show an intricate number of contextual forms. Arabic does not have a lowercase/uppercase distinction, but the letters exhibit different forms that depend on their position (initial, medial, final, or isolated) and their connectivity. Importantly, some letters look quite different across positions (e.g., (symbol in text) and (symbol in text), which correspond to the letter 'ayn), whereas others look very similar (e.g. (symbol in text), and (symbol in text), which correspond to the letter fā'). We employed a masked priming same-different task, in which native speakers of Arabic decided whether a target letter was the same as or different from a reference letter presented in a different position (middle vs. isolated). The results showed masked repetition priming effects of the same magnitude for letter pairs with similar and with dissimilar visual features across letter positions. These data support the view that priming of abstract letter representations is a universal phenomenon.     

Re-Examining the Effect of Top-Down Linguistic Information on Speaker-Voice Discrimination

The current study replicated and extended the results from a study conducted by Narayan, Mak, and Bialystok (2017) that found effects of top-down linguistic information on a speaker discrimination task by examining four conditions: rhymes (day-bay), compounds (day-dream), reverse compounds (dream-day), and unrelated words (day-bee). The original study found that participants were more likely to judge two words to be spoken by the same speaker if the words cohered lexically (created lexical compounds such as day-dream) or were phonologically related (rhymes, such as day-bay), but their study contained two limitations: (a) Same- and different-speaker trials were analyzed separately, which obscures effects of response bias, and (b) cross-gender pairs were used in the different-speaker trials, potentially inflating performance. The current study addresses these limitations by including only within-gender trials and by examining sensitivity and bias using signal detection theory. Our results not only provide support of the original study but also provide clear evidence that listeners are biased to judge two words as being produced by the same person when they share either phonological information (rhymes) or lexical-semantic coherence (compounds). Thus, the current study provides an important modified replication of previous research.