Prior Health Care Utilization Patterns and Suicide Among U.S. Army Soldiers

Suicides among U.S. Army soldiers are increasing and, in January 2009, outpaced deaths due to combat. For this study, 1,873 army suicides identified through death, inpatient, and emergency room records were matched with 5,619 controls. In multivariate models, older, male, White, single, and enlisted soldiers with a prior injury (OR = 2.04, 95% CI = 1.64‐2.54), alcohol (OR = 3.41, 95% CI = 2.32‐4.99), or mental health hospitalization (OR = 6.62, 95% CI = 4.77‐9.20) were at increased risk for suicide. Risk was greatest immediately following diagnoses, but remained elevated even after 5 or more years of follow‐up. Most injury hospitalizations were unintentional but, nonetheless, significantly associated with suicide. Interactions indicate soldiers with both mental health and injury history are particularly vulnerable.     

Action experience in infancy predicts visual-motor functional connectivity during action anticipation

Despite substantial evidence indicating a close link between action production and perception in early child development, less is known about how action experience shapes the processes of perceiving and anticipating others’ actions. Here, we developed a novel approach to capture functional connectivity specific to certain brain areas to investigate how action experience changes the networks involved in action perception and anticipation. Nine- and-12-month-old infants observed familiar (grasping) and novel (tool-use) actions while their brain activity was measured using EEG. Infants’ motor competence of both actions was assessed. A link between action experience and connectivity patterns was found, particularly during the anticipation period. During action anticipation, greater motor competence in grasping predicted greater functional connectivity between visual (occipital alpha) and motor (central alpha) regions relative to global levels of whole-brain EEG connectivity. Furthermore, visual and motor regions tended to be more coordinated in response to familiar versus novel actions and for older than younger participants. Critically, these effects were not found in the control networks (frontal-central; frontal-occipital; parietal-central; parietal-occipital), suggesting a unique role of visual-motor networks on the link between motor skills and action encoding.

Highlights

• Infants’ motor development predicted functional connectivity patterns during action anticipation.
• Faster graspers, and older infants, showed a stronger ratio of visual-motor neural coherence.
• Overall whole-brain connectivity was modulated by age and familiarity with the actions.
• Measuring inter-site relative to whole-brain connectivity can capture specific brain-behavior links.
• Measures of phase-based connectivity over time are sensitive to anticipatory action.

     

Children's social wariness toward a different-race stranger relates to individual differences in temperament

When children first meet a stranger, there is great variation in how much they will approach and engage with the stranger. While individual differences in this type of behavior—called social wariness—are well-documented in temperament research, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the social groups (such as race) of the stranger and how these characteristics might influence children's social wariness. In contrast, research on children's social bias and interracial friendships rarely examines individual differences in temperament and how temperament might influence cross-group interactions. The current study bridges the gap across these different fields of research by examining whether the racial group of an unfamiliar peer or adult moderates the association between temperament and the social wariness that children display. Utilizing a longitudinal dataset that collected multiple measurements of children's temperament and behaviors (including parent-reported shyness and social wariness toward unfamiliar adults and peers) across early childhood, we found that 2- to 7-year-old children with high parent-reported shyness showed greater social wariness toward a different-race stranger compared to a same-race stranger, whereas children with low parent-reported shyness did not. These results point to the importance of considering racial group membership in temperament research and the potential role that temperament might play in children's cross-race interactions.

Research Highlights

• Previous research on temperament has not considered how the race of strangers could influence children's social wariness.
• We find evidence that 2- to 7-year-old children with high parent-reported shyness show greater social wariness toward a different-race stranger compared to a same-race stranger.
• These results point to the importance of considering racial group membership in temperament research.
• Our findings also suggest temperament may play a role in children's cross-race interactions.

     

Anxiety Sensitivity Differentially Predicts Factors of Interpersonal–Psychological Suicide Risk: A Consideration of Specificity

Recent studies have identified anxiety sensitivity (AS) as a risk factor for suicidality; however, limited work has been performed to understand this risk within the context of the interpersonal–psychological theory of suicide (IPTS; Joiner, 2005). The current study examined the relationship between overall AS, each AS subfactor (cognitive, social, and physical), and the three IPTS domains (perceived burdensomeness, thwarted belongingness, and acquired capability). While each AS subfactor uniquely predicted one IPTS domain, greater overall AS only predicted greater acquired capability, suggesting that assessment of AS at the subfactor level may offer us more information about an individual's interpersonal suicide risk.     

Pornography Consumption and Satisfaction: A Meta‐Analysis

A classic question in the communication literature is whether pornography consumption affects consumers' satisfaction. The present paper represents the first attempt to address this question via meta‐analysis. Fifty studies collectively including more than 50,000 participants from 10 countries were located across the interpersonal domains of sexual and relational satisfaction and the intrapersonal domains of body and self satisfaction. Pornography consumption was not related to the intrapersonal satisfaction outcomes that were studied. However, pornography consumption was associated with lower interpersonal satisfaction outcomes in cross‐sectional surveys, longitudinal surveys, and experiments. Associations between pornography consumption and reduced interpersonal satisfaction outcomes were not moderated by their year of release or their publication status. But analyses by sex indicted significant results for men only.