A Review of “Suicidal Intent” Within the Existing Suicide Literature

The results of a systematic literature review that investigated suicide intent are presented. Of the 44 relevant articles identified, 17 investigated the relationships between various suicide risk factors and suicide intent and 25 publications investigated the relationships between suicide intent and various suicide outcomes. Despite recent advancements in the definition and nomological validity of suicide intent, a high degree of variability in the empirical measurement and analysis of suicide intent was found. Such variability limits future research related to measuring suicidal risk and outcomes, reporting suicide intent, or the meaningful comparison of diagnostic approaches or treatments across multiple studies.     

Statistical Learning of Unfamiliar Sounds as Trajectories Through a Perceptual Similarity Space

In typical statistical learning studies, researchers define sequences in terms of the probability of the next item in the sequence given the current item (or items), and they show that high probability sequences are treated as more familiar than low probability sequences. Existing accounts of these phenomena all assume that participants represent statistical regularities more or less as they are defined by the experimenters—as sequential probabilities of symbols in a string. Here we offer an alternative, or possibly supplementary, hypothesis. Specifically, rather than identifying or labeling individual stimuli discretely in order to predict the next item in a sequence, we need only assume that the participant is able to represent the stimuli as evincing particular similarity relations to one another, with sequences represented as trajectories through this similarity space. We present experiments in which this hypothesis makes sharply different predictions from hypotheses based on the assumption that sequences are learned over discrete, labeled stimuli. We also present a series of simulation models that encode stimuli as positions in a continuous two‐dimensional space, and predict the next location from the current location. Although no model captures all of the data presented here, the results of three critical experiments are more consistent with the view that participants represent trajectories through similarity space rather than sequences of discrete labels under particular conditions.     

Prognosis after Adolescent Suicide Attempt: Mental Health,Psychiatric Treatment,and Suicide Attempts in a Nine‐Year Follow‐up Study

The prevalence of mental health and suicidal behavior was examined 8 to 10 years after an adolescent suicide attempt. Of 71 persons, 79% had at least one psychiatric disorder (mean 1.7) at follow‐up, most commonly depression (46%), personality disorder (46%), and anxiety disorder (42%). The stability of diagnoses was moderate. The suicide attempters had received a substantial amount of treatment. One third had received inpatient treatment, and 78% psychiatric treatment, despite low compliance shortly after the index suicide attempt. At follow‐up, repeated suicide attempts were found in 44% of the sample, and half of those had an affective or personality disorder.     

The Non‐Identity of Appearances and Things in Themselves

According to the ‘One Object’ reading of Kant's transcendental idealism, the distinction between the appearance and the thing in itself is not a distinction between two objects, but between two ways of considering one and the same object. On the ‘Metaphysical’ version of the One Object reading, it is a distinction between two kinds of properties possessed by one and the same object. Consequently, the Metaphysical One Object view holds that a given appearance, an empirical object, is numerically identical to the thing in itself that appears as that object. I raise various indiscernibility arguments against that view; because an appearance has different spatiotemporal and modal properties than a thing in itself, no appearance can be identical to a thing in itself. I point out that these arguments are similar to arguments against Monism, the view that material objects are numerically identical to the matter of which they are made. I outline some strategies Monists have developed to respond to these indiscernibility arguments and then develop parallel responses on behalf of the Metaphysical One Object view. However, I then raise another indiscernibility argument, to which, I argue, the Metaphysical One Object view cannot respond, even using the resources I have developed thus far. I develop a modified version of the Metaphysical One Object view that can respond to this new indiscernibility argument, but, I argue, this modified version of the One Object view is only a terminological variant of the Two Object view. When the Metaphysical One Object view is fully thought through it becomes the Two Object view. I conclude that Kantian appearances are not numerically identical to the things in themselves that appear to us.     

A Quantitative Empirical Analysis of the Abstract/Concrete Distinction

This study presents original evidence that abstract and concrete concepts are organized and represented differently in the mind, based on analyses of thousands of concepts in publicly available data sets and computational resources. First, we show that abstract and concrete concepts have differing patterns of association with other concepts. Second, we test recent hypotheses that abstract concepts are organized according to association, whereas concrete concepts are organized according to (semantic) similarity. Third, we present evidence suggesting that concrete representations are more strongly feature‐based than abstract concepts. We argue that degree of feature‐based structure may fundamentally determine concreteness, and we discuss implications for cognitive and computational models of meaning.     

Posttraumatic stress and physical health among adults: The role of coping mechanisms

The purpose of the present study was to examine whether coping mechanisms predict physical health, after controlling for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom clusters in a non-clinical sample of adults. Data were collected from 483 adults through an online survey. Most of the participants (66.7%) reported lifetime exposure to at least one traumatic event. The final sample of this study included 319 trauma-exposed individuals. Results indicated that PTSD symptoms on the avoidance and hyperarousal clusters had significant positive relationships with self-reported physical health symptoms. After controlling for gender and PTSD, denial, behavioral disengagement, and self-blame significantly and positively predicted physical health symptoms.     

Investigating the Links Between Cultural Values and Belief in Conspiracy Theories: The Key Roles of Collectivism and Masculinity

Research suggests that belief in conspiracy theories (CT) stems from basic psychological mechanisms and is linked to other belief systems (e.g., religious beliefs). While previous research has extensively examined individual and contextual variables associated with CT beliefs, it has not yet investigated the role of culture. In the current research, we tested, based on a situated cultural cognition perspective, the extent to which culture predicts CT beliefs. Using Hofstede's model of cultural values, three nation-level analyses of data from 25, 19, and 18 countries using different measures of CT beliefs (Study 1, N = 5323; Study 2a, N = 12,255; Study 2b, N = 30,994) revealed positive associations between masculinity, collectivism, and CT beliefs. A cross-sectional study among U.S. citizens (Study 3, N = 350), using individual-level measures of Hofstede's values, replicated these findings. A meta-analysis of correlations across studies corroborated the presence of positive links between CT beliefs, collectivism, r = .31, 95% CI = [.15; .47], and masculinity, r = .39, 95% CI = [.18; .59]. Our results suggest that in addition to individual differences and contextual variables, cultural factors also play an important role in shaping CT beliefs.