A Follow-up Study of 53 Suicides Known to a Suicide Prevention Center

ABSTRACT: The operation of the Cleveland Suicide Prevention Center is reviewed, and 53 known suicides during the Center's first four years of operation are discussed. A suicide rate of 288 per 100,000 suggests that persons contacting the Center represented a high suicide risk group. Of the suicides, 57 percent were women. This high proportion of females was statistically significant when compared to the smaller percentage of female suicides for Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Of the persons who committed suicide, 26 percent initiated direct contact with the Center themselves, and none recontacted the Center just prior to death. The question is raised whether contact initiated by another may in itself be suggestive of greater suicidal risk. Some of the practical problems in evaluation and referral are discussed.     

Targeting Item-level Nuances Leads to Small but Robust Improvements in Personality Prediction from Digital Footprints

In the past decade, researchers have demonstrated that personality can be accurately predicted from digital footprint data, including Facebook likes, tweets, blog posts, pictures, and transaction records. Such computer-based predictions from digital footprints can complement—and in some circumstances even replace—traditional self-report measures, which suffer from well-known response biases and are difficult to scale. However, these previous studies have focused on the prediction of aggregate trait scores (i.e. a person's extroversion score), which may obscure prediction-relevant information at theoretical levels of the personality hierarchy beneath the Big 5 traits. Specifically, new research has demonstrated that personality may be better represented by so-called personality nuances—item-level representations of personality—and that utilizing these nuances can improve predictive performance. The present work examines the hypothesis that personality predictions from digital footprint data can be improved by first predicting personality nuances and subsequently aggregating to scores, rather than predicting trait scores outright. To examine this hypothesis, we employed least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression and random forest models to predict both items and traits using out-of-sample cross-validation. In nine out of 10 cases across the two modelling approaches, nuance-based models improved the prediction of personality over the trait-based approaches to a small, but meaningful degree (4.25% or 1.69% on average, depending on method). Implications for personality prediction and personality nuances are discussed. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Stimulus exposure and discrimination in rats: A test of a theory for the role of contextual factors

In two experiments rats were trained on a simultaneous discrimination in a jumping stand. On each trial choice always lay between one stimulus (an obliquely striped object in Experiment I, and a plain grey object in Experiment II) and a second that varied from trial to trial. On half the trials this variable stimulus bore horizontal stripes (H) and on the remaining trials it bore vertical stripes (V). It was argued that the solution of this discrimination would be hindered if the animals tended to classify H and V apart (Bateson and Chantrey, 1972). It was found, however, that prior exposure to H and V in the home cage (which has been supposed to promote classifying apart) facilitated learning and that prior exposure to H and V in the apparatus itself (which might be thought to promote classifying together) hindered later learning. Possible alternative accounts for these exposure learning effects are discussed.     

Self-Deception, Confusion, and Salvation in Fear AndTrembling with Works of Love

Reading Fear and Trembling with Works of Love heightens Kierkegaard's summons to acknowledge the ambiguity of our aims and the treachery of our love. Works of Love underscores that there is a"neighbor" in Fear and Trembling whose justified or damnable banishment occasions Kierkegaard's attempt to "track down" the "illusions" of love. Through de Silentio, Kierkegaard prompts the reader to consider whether the promise has been broken due to radical obedience, lack of faith, dearth of imagination, or a gnarled combination of motives. We are to recognize our kinship with the duplicitous merman and discover that we must, like Tobit's Sarah, receive an extravagant gift. Fear and Trembling is thus a text with soteriological import, but with ethical import as well. Convicted by and indebted to God, we are to find in Abraham's act a premonitory paradigm for every engagement.     

Recall versus recognition: a methodological note

Some current investigators have made direct comparisons of recognition performance with cued recall. In other instances, indirect comparisons of recognition and recall have been made by observing the difference in recognition performance with different types of target material, for example, high- and low-frequency words; this difference has been then compared with the difference obtained when recall is used to measure retention of the same type of target materials. Finally, some experimenters have examined how recognition performance is related to the type of target material that is used, for example, words, pictures, and so on. The results obtained from all of these studies have been used to make inferences about the nature of the memorial process. We have attempted to call attention to the generally accepted but neglected finding that performance on any recognition test can be manipulated by changing the characteristics of the distractors, thus casting doubt on the generality of the experimental findings as well as their theoretical implications.     

Infant individuation and identification of objects

Recent studies of the infant's object concept have focused on the role of property information in individuation. We draw a distinction between individuation and identification. By individuation, we mean the setting up of an object representation (OR). By identification, we mean using the information stored in an OR to decide which, if any, previously individuated object is presently encountered. We investigate this distinction in experiments with 12-month-old infants. We find that for infants of this age, a shape difference between two objects has a large effect on both individuation and identification. However, a color difference between two objects has a large effect on individuation, but little or no effect on identification. This suggests that, somewhat surprisingly, information used to establish an OR may not always be incorporated into that representation.