Factor structure of Calhoun's Youth Suicide Scale

To assess the factor structure of Calhoun's Youth Suicide Scale (YSS), 191 consenting undergraduates in one sample and 240 consenting undergraduates in a second sample wee given the YSS during class. From the second sample, 152 subjects also took the YSS a second time about 1 month later. In the first sample, three factors, which accounted for 50.0% of the variance, emerged. They were: How the Parents were Viewed (in terms of psychological disturbance, likability, and blame); Expected Responses to the Bereaved Family (terms of tension and sympathy); and Empathy with Parents (whether the newspaper was viewed as correct in reporting the cause of death, how long parents were expected to grieve, and whether parents were expected to be liked). In the second sample, the same three factors emerged (accounting for 55.5% of the variance), with the exception of one item on Factor 3: expecting to like the parents. Congruence coefficients between the three factors in the two samples were .98, .94, and .78, respectively. Reliability correlations on individual items ranged from a low of .30 to a high of .61. These results indicate that the YSS is valid, stable, and moderately reliable for assessing reactions to youth suicide; thus, it would be a viable instrument for use in future research on reactions to suicide.     

Cultural and emotional components of loneliness and depression

The relation between loneliness and depression and the distinction between emotional and social loneliness were examined by administering the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Loneliness Scale, the Belcher Extended Loneliness Scale (BELS), the Beck Depression Inventory, and self-report questions about social and emotional loneliness to the following four groups: foreign (Chinese-descent) students in American universities, Chinese students in Taiwanese universities, American students in American universities, and depressed American clients. Depressed clients reported not only more depression but also more overall loneliness than did any of the other groups; they also were more likely to report emotional loneliness or both emotional and social loneliness than were the other three groups. Foreign students, in contrast, reported more social loneliness than did Taiwanese students. Results substantiate the view that loneliness is not a unitary concept and suggest that the UCLA Loneliness Scale and the BELS emphasize emotional rather than social loneliness and that emotional loneliness is a greater component of depression than is social loneliness.     

Dissociating local and global levels of perceptuo-motor control in masked priming

Masked prime stimuli presented near the threshold of conscious awareness affect responses to subsequent targets. The direction of these priming effects depends on the interval between masked prime and target. With short intervals, benefits for compatible trials (primes and targets mapped to the same response) and costs for incompatible trials are observed. This pattern reverses with longer intervals. We argue (a) that these effects reflect the initial activation and subsequent self-inhibition of the primed response, and the corresponding inhibition and subsequent disinhibition of the nonprimed response, and (b) that they are generated at dissociable local (within response channels) and global (between channels) levels of motor control. In two experiments, global-level priming effects were modulated by changing the number of response alternatives, whereas local-level effects remained unaffected. These experiments suggest that low-level motor control mechanisms can be successfully decomposed into separable subcomponents, operating at different levels within the motor system.     

The finitude of life—How mortality salience affects consumer behavior: A review

The influence of mortality salience (MS) on consumer behavior has been well-established over the last 25 years. However, research findings have provided divergent insights with regard to the direction of its outcomes. This article provides a systematic review of the extant research stream thereby revealing how the differences are primarily due to the conceptualization and operationalization of MS. Based on a conceptual revision of MS, we suggest an extended definition of the concept. An extensive overview of empirical findings, together with a holistic presentation of influential factors, offers a foundation for further MS studies conducted in a consumer behavior context, concluding with an extensive research agenda.     

A factor analysis of six commonly used instruments associated with suicide using college students

Determined whether six commonly used inventories which are associated with suicide (Hopelessness Scale, Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale, Scale for Suicide Ideation, Reasons for Living Inventory, Suicide Probability Scale, and the Suicide Ideation Questionnaire) overlap; all six were given to 308 undergraduates. A principal components factor analysis yielded four factors with Eigenvalues greater than 1.00. These four factors were labeled Suicidal/Negative Ideas, Reasons for Living, Self-Doubt, and Suicide Desire. Each scale or subscale had a factor loading of .4 or greater on one factor. Only the Survival and Coping Beliefs subscale of the Reasons for Living Inventory and the Suicide Ideation Questionnaire loaded on two factors. Thus, each of these six instruments accounts for unique variance in suicidality. A suicide screening battery that includes all six inventories would take approximately 20 min for college students to complete, and would be valuable in identifying different aspects of suicidality.     

Perception of behavioral contagion of adolescent suicide

In order to assess perceptions of behavioral contagion of suicide (what people thought a disturbed adolescent would do if the teen knew about a suicide in the community), and to assess actor-observer differences in such perceptions, 142 college students were asked to view a videotaped vignette of a distressed high school student, and then to assess her potential for committing suicide, running away, entering therapy, or abusing alcohol. Subjects who were told that the teenager knew of two recent suicides in the community (contagion group) rated the young woman as more likely to commit suicide or run away than did the subjects who were not told of the suicides (noncontagion group). Subjects who were instructed to imagine that they were the teenager (actors) blamed situational factors, and in particular the teen's parents, more for her distress than did subjects who were instructed just to rate the teenager on the videotape (observers). Contagion/actors rated suicide as more likely than did any other group. Apparently, people believe that behavioral contagion occurs when a suicide is reported, and they especially perceive themselves to be influenced by such information.     

Schematic influences of rape myth acceptance on visual information processing: An eye-tracking approach

Schematic influences of rape myth acceptance (RMA) on visual information processing were studied. After reading a short text on a rape case, students viewed a “police photograph” of the plaintiff's living room, where the rape allegedly happened, while their eye-movements were recorded. The photograph contained two myth-consistent cues, one being expected in the situation (wine bottle and glasses), the other unexpected (poster of a nude male). Results of Study 1 (N = 60) showed that participants higher in RMA fixated the expected cue both earlier and less long, which may indicate hypervigilance and greater ease of processing, respectively. Higher RMA also predicted longer initial fixation of the unexpected cue. These processing differences mediated participants' verdicts and blame judgments. In Study 2 (N = 30), participants' level of RMA was manipulated experimentally via social norm feedback. This manipulation significantly affected eye-movement patterns for the expected myth-consistent cue. Results support the notion that RMA actively guides visual information processing of relevant stimuli.     

Object permanence in adult common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus): not everything is an “A-not-B” error that seems to be one

In this paper, we describe a behaviour pattern similar to the “A-not-B” error found in human infants and young apes in a monkey species, the common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus). In contrast to the classical explanation, recently it has been suggested that the “A-not-B” error committed by human infants is at least partially due to misinterpretation of the hider’s ostensively communicated object hiding actions as potential ‘teaching’ demonstrations during the A trials. We tested whether this so-called Natural Pedagogy hypothesis would account for the A-not-B error that marmosets commit in a standard object permanence task, but found no support for the hypothesis in this species. Alternatively, we present evidence that lower level mechanisms, such as attention and motivation, play an important role in committing the “A-not-B” error in marmosets. We argue that these simple mechanisms might contribute to the effect of undeveloped object representational skills in other species including young non-human primates that commit the A-not-B error.     

Domestication has not affected the understanding of means-end connections in dogs

Recent studies have revealed that dogs often perform well in cognitive tasks in the social domain, but rather poorly in the physical domain. This dichotomy has led to the hypothesis that the domestication process might have enhanced the social cognitive skills of dogs (Hare et al. in Science 298:1634-1636, 2002; Miklósi et al. in Curr Biol 13:763-766, 2003) but at the same time had a detrimental effect on their physical cognition (Frank in Z Tierpsychol 5:389-399, 1980). Despite the recent interest in dog cognition and especially the effects of domestication, the latter hypothesis has hardly been tested and we lack detailed knowledge of the physical understanding of wolves in comparison with dogs. Here, we set out to examine whether adult wolves and dogs rely on means-end connections using the string-pulling task, to test the prediction that wolves would perform better than dogs in such a task of physical cognition. We found that at the group level, dogs were more prone to commit the proximity error, while the wolves showed a stronger side bias. Neither wolves nor dogs showed an instantaneous understanding of means-end connection, but made different mistakes. Thus, the performance of the wolves and dogs in this string-pulling task did not confirm that domestication has affected the physical cognition of dogs.