The Epidemiology of Homicide followed by Suicide: A Systematic and Quantitative Review

This systematic review of population based studies of homicide followed by suicide was conducted to examine the associations between rates of homicide‐suicide, rates of other homicides and rates of suicide. The review analysed 64 samples, including the case of an outlier (Greenland) that were reported in 49 studies. There was a significant association between the rates of homicide‐suicide and those of other homicides in studies from the U.S.A. Outside the U.S.A. there was no clear association between homicide‐suicide and other homicide but there was modest but significant association between rates of suicide and homicide‐suicide. Homicide‐suicide appears to be closer in epidemiological terms to homicide than suicide in regions with high rates of homicide and measures to reduce homicide in these regions may also reduce homicide‐suicide.     

Goodness-of-Fit Assessment in Multidimensional Scaling and Unfolding

Judging goodness of fit in multidimensional scaling requires a comprehensive set of diagnostic tools instead of relying on stress rules of thumb. This article elaborates on corresponding strategies and gives practical guidelines for researchers to obtain a clear picture of the goodness of fit of a solution. Special emphasis will be placed on the use of permutation tests. The second part of the article focuses on goodness-of-fit assessment of an important variant of multidimensional scaling called unfolding, which can be applied to a broad range of psychological data settings. Two real-life data sets are presented in order to walk the reader through the entire set of diagnostic measures, tests, and plots. R code is provided as supplementary information that makes the whole goodness-of-fit assessment workflow, as presented in this article, fully reproducible.     

More questions for mirror neurons

The mirror neuron system is widely held to provide direct access to the motor goals of others. This paper critically investigates this idea, focusing on the so-called ‘intentional worry’. I explore two answers to the intentional worry: first that the worry is premised on too limited an understanding of mirror neuron behaviour (Sections 2 Mirror neurons and the intentional worry, 3 What is the mechanism behind motor chain embeddings?), second that the appeal made to mirror neurons can be refined in such a way as to avoid the worry (Section 4). I argue that the first response requires an account of the mechanism by which small-scale gestures are supposedly mapped to larger chains of actions but that none of the extant accounts of this mechanism are plausible. Section 4 then briefly examines refinements of the mirror neuron-mindreading hypothesis which avoid the intentional worry. I conclude that these refinements may well be plausible but that they undermine many of the claims standardly made for mirror neurons.     

Explanatory Roles for Minimal Content

A standard objection to so‐called ‘minimal semantics’ (Borg 2004, 2012, Cappelen and Lepore 2005) is that minimal contents are explanatorily redundant as they play no role in an adequate account of linguistic communication (those making this objection include Levinson 2000, Carston 2002, Recanati 2004). This paper argues that this standard objection is mistaken. Furthermore, I argue that seeing why the objection is mistaken sheds light both on how we should draw the classic Gricean distinction between saying and implicating, and how we should think about the key philosophical notion of assertion. Specifically, it reveals that these ideas are best understood primarily in socio‐linguistic terms (resting on the degree of liability a speaker is held to have for linguistically conveyed content).     

Field dependence in relation to alcohol consumption: a co-twin control study.

20 male, alcohol-discordant twin pairs, aged 45 to 65 yr. were compared for field-dependent cognitive style and general intelligence by means of one-sample t and multivariate Td2-tests. The high alcohol group was more field-dependent (p less than .01) than the low alcohol group, mainly because of poorer scores on the Embedded-figures Test. When general intelligence was controlled for, the amount of embedded-figures variance accounted for by consumption of alcohol dropped considerably.     

The eukolos-dyskolos dimension: locus of control and personal satisfaction

It is first asked how Hofst?tter's (1986) personality dimension dyskolos-eukolos could be validated without directly using self-assessments of subjective well-being. It is argued that internal and external locus-of-control beliefs could be tied to this construct. A study with 264 respondents shows that internal beliefs lead to well-being ratings that are higher in every life aspect than those associated with ratings of external beliefs. The effects are only marginally greater for control beliefs directly related to the different life aspects. It is hypothesized that internal control beliefs and high satisfaction are both generated by experiences of behavior that is both successful and causally self-attributed.