A Virtual Hope Box Smartphone App as an Accessory to Therapy: Proof‐of‐Concept in a Clinical Sample of Veterans

A “Hope Box” is a therapeutic tool employed by clinicians with patients who are having difficulty coping with negative thoughts and stress, including patients who may be at risk of suicide or nonsuicidal self‐harm. We conducted a proof‐of‐concept test of a “Virtual” Hope Box (VHB)—a smartphone app that delivers patient‐tailored coping tools. Compared with a conventional hope box integrated into VA behavioral health treatment, high‐risk patients and their clinicians used the VHB more regularly and found the VHB beneficial, useful, easy to set up, and said they were likely to use the VHB in the future and recommend the VHB to peers.     

Influences on Call Outcomes among Veteran Callers to the National Veterans Crisis Line

The association of caller and call characteristics with proximal outcomes of Veterans Crisis Line calls were examined. From October 1–7, 2010, 665 veterans with recent suicidal ideation or a history of attempted suicide called the Veterans Crisis Line; 646 had complete data and were included in the analyses. A multivariable multinomial logistic regression was conducted to identify correlates of a favorable outcome (a resolution or a referral) when compared to an unfavorable outcome (no resolution or referral). A multivariable logistic regression was used to identify correlates of responder‐rated caller risk in a subset of calls. Approximately 84% of calls ended with a favorable outcome, 25% with a resolution, and 59% with a referral to a local health care provider. Calls from high‐risk callers had greater odds of ending with a referral than without a resolution or referral, as did weekday calls (6:00 am to 5:59 pm EST, Monday through Friday). Responders used caller intent to die and the absence of future plans to determine caller risk. Findings suggest that the Veterans Crisis Line is a useful mechanism for generating referrals for high‐risk veteran callers. Responders appeared to use known risk and protective factors to determine caller risk.     

The Validity and Reliability of the Language Battery in Comprehensive Aphasia Test-Turkish (CAT-TR)

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Aphasia assessment is the initial step of a well-structured language therapy. Therefore, it is reasonable to underline that the assessment tools need to...     

Fluency in L2: Read and Spontaneous Speech Pausing Patterns of Turkish,Swahili, Hausa and Arabic Speakers of English

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Language learners’ actual speech performances constitute an essential aspect of studies on second language learning and teaching. Although there is...     

A test of theory of planned behavior in type II diabetes adherence: The leading role of perceived behavioral control

Current Psychology - Diabetes mellitus is a health complication that millions of people suffer from all over the world. Type II (non-insulin dependent) diabetes requires many changes in the daily...     

Arguments from Aesthetic Merit to Fictional Content

Often, part of the fictional content of a narrative is not stated explicitly. Interpreters are frequently concerned with establishing this content. In doing so, they sometimes argue that, fictionally, something is the case because under that interpretation, the aesthetic merit of the work would be greater than under an alternative interpretation. The move from what would be of greater aesthetic merit to what is (fictionally) the case raises questions regarding the argumentative force of such arguments: How exactly do the premises of arguments from aesthetic merit to fictional content (for short: Afams) establish their conclusions? This paper spells out four ways to reconstruct the argumentative structure of Afams: In Section ii , we analyze two possibilities to establish Afams as deductive arguments; Section iii is concerned with a reconstruction based on a constructivist picture of literature and literary interpretation; and in Section iv, we look at a nondeductive reconstruction of Afams in accordance with an intentionalist framework. While we conclude that all four reconstructions can account for the argumentative force of Afams, the ultimate acceptability of each reconstruction rests on the readers’ commitment to background assumptions concerning the theory of interpretation.     

Telehealth Monitoring of Patients with Schizophrenia and Suicidal Ideation

A telehealth system was developed to monitor risk following hospitalization for suicidal ideation. We hypothesized that 3 months of telehealth monitoring will result in a greater reduction in suicidal ideation. Veterans with schizophrenia admitted with recent suicidal ideation and/or a suicidal attempt were recruited into a discharge program of VA Usual Care with daily Health Buddy© monitoring (HB) or Usual Care (UC) alone. Fifteen of 25 were randomized to HB and 10 received UC. Daily adherence in the use of the HB system during months 1–3 was, respectively, 86.9%, 86.3%, and 84.1%. There were significant improvements in Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation scores in HB participants. There were no changes in depressive symptoms. Telehealth monitoring for this population of patients appears to be feasible.     

Alignment in Multimodal Interaction: An Integrative Framework

When people are engaged in social interaction, they can repeat aspects of each other’s communicative behavior, such as words or gestures. This kind of behavioral alignment has been studied across a wide range of disciplines and has been accounted for by diverging theories. In this paper, we review various operationalizations of lexical and gestural alignment. We reveal that scholars have fundamentally different takes on when and how behavior is considered to be aligned, which makes it difficult to compare findings and draw uniform conclusions. Furthermore, we show that scholars tend to focus on one particular dimension of alignment (traditionally, whether two instances of behavior overlap in form), while other dimensions remain understudied. This hampers theory testing and building, which requires a well-defined account of the factors that are central to or might enhance alignment. To capture the complex nature of alignment, we identify five key dimensions to formalize the relationship between any pair of behavior: time, sequence, meaning, form, and modality. We show how assumptions regarding the underlying mechanism of alignment (placed along the continuum of priming vs. grounding) pattern together with operationalizations in terms of the five dimensions. This integrative framework can help researchers in the field of alignment and related phenomena (including behavior matching, mimicry, entrainment, and accommodation) to formulate their hypotheses and operationalizations in a more transparent and systematic manner. The framework also enables us to discover unexplored research avenues and derive new hypotheses regarding alignment.