Active school travel is associated with fewer suicide attempts among adolescents from low-and middle-income countries

Background/Objective: This study explored the association between active school travel (AST) and suicide attempts among adolescents in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Method: We used the data from the Global School-based Health Survey, including 127,097 adolescents aged 13-17 years from 34 LMICs. A self-reported survey was used to collect data on AST and suicide attempts as well as some variables. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to assess the association between AST and suicide attempts. A meta-analysis with random effects was undertaken to identify the difference in the association between AST and suicide attempts. Results: Across all the adolescents, the prevalence of AST was 37% and the prevalence of suicide attempts was 11.60%. Adolescents who engaged in AST were less likely to have suicide attempts irrespective of gender. The country-wise analysis indicated a large inconsistency in the association between AST and suicide attempt across the countries. Conclusions: AST would appear to be a protective factor for reducing suicide attempts among adolescents. However, the association between AST and suicide attempts varied greatly across the countries. Future studies should confirm the association between AST and suicide attempts.     

Attentional characteristics of different types of individuals with high self-esteem in self-threatening situations

The high self-esteem (HSE) heterogeneity hypothesis provides a new research perspective for investigating differences in the quantity and quality of different types of self-esteem. The present study adopted the emotional Stroop paradigm and the odd-one-out search task to explore how individuals with different types of self-esteem process social information in self-threatening situations. The results showed that individuals with different types of self-esteem had an attentional bias toward negative information and had different attentional biases toward angry faces in self-threatening situations. Individuals with fragile HSE and low self-esteem showed facilitated attention to angry faces and had difficulty drawing attention away from them; secure HSE individuals only showed difficulty disengaging attention from angry faces.

     

A comparison between the development of the appearance-reality distinction in the People's Republic of China and the United States

A study of the appearance-reality distinction in American 3- to 5-year-olds was replicated with Chinese 3- to 5-year-olds. The error patterns, age changes, and absolute levels of performance were similar in the two samples. It was speculated that the acquisition of this distinction may be a universal, possibly age-linked development that is probably fueled by experiences with appearance-reality discrepancies that are available in all cultures.     

The effects of ongoing task absorption on event-based prospective memory in preschoolers

The current study applied a 2 × 2 experimental design to investigate the effects of ongoing task absorption on event-based prospective memory performance of children aged 3 and 5 years. Children were required to label pictures as ongoing task but to remember to refrain from picture naming and to respond to the target cues in a different way as the prospective memory task. Two differently absorbing ongoing tasks (high absorbing scenario game task vs. low absorbing computer-based task) were administered. Results indicated that prospective memory performance of 5-year-old children was significantly better than that of 3-year-old children. Ongoing task absorption affected the ongoing task performance of preschoolers, but not overall prospective memory performance. Only the 3-year-olds were negatively affected by high ongoing task absorption, which was not the case for the 5-year-olds. The findings are discussed within the light of the multiprocess theory.     

Monitoring running-wheel movement using a serial mouse and an IBM-compatible system

A running-wheel-movement-detection system is described for use with an IBM-compatible system and a serial mouse. It is an adaptation of a system developed for use on a Commodore 64. The IBM-compatible system provides obvious advantages in speed, memory, data storage, and programming ease over the earlier Commodore 64 system.