Moving Beyond Self‐Report: Implicit Associations about Death/Life Prospectively Predict Suicidal Behavior among Veterans

Reliance on self‐report limits clinicians' ability to accurately predict suicidal behavior. In this study the predictive validity of an objective measure, the death/suicide Implicit Association Test (d/sIAT), was tested among psychiatrically hospitalized veterans. Following acute stabilization, 176 participants completed the d/sIAT and traditional suicide risk assessments. Participants had similar d/sIAT scores regardless of whether they had recently attempted suicide. However, d/sIAT scores significantly predicted suicide attempts during the 6‐month follow‐up above and beyond other known risk factors for suicidal behavior (OR = 1.89; 95% CI: 1.15–3.12; based on 1SD increase). The d/sIAT may augment the accuracy of suicide risk assessment.     

Knowledge central: A central role for knowledge attributions in social evaluations

Five experiments (N?=?1710) demonstrate the central role of knowledge attributions in social evaluations. In Experiments 1–3, we manipulated whether an agent believes, is certain of, or knows a true proposition and asked people to rate whether the agent should perform a variety of actions. We found that knowledge, more so than belief or certainty, leads people to judge that the agent should act. In Experiments 4–5, we investigated whether attributions of knowledge or certainty can explain an important finding on how people act based on statistical evidence, known as “the Wells effect”. We found that knowledge attributions, but not certainty attributions, mediate this effect on decision making.     

SUPERVENIENT DUALISM

The topic under examination is the idea of ‘supervenient dualism’, which Christopher Shields first put forward in his study of Aristotle's theory of psychology. Shields takes supervenient dualism to be a form of ‘substance supervenience’, in which an immaterial substance supervenes upon a material or physical substance. Shields, however, does not develop a convincing version of supervenient dualism because he fails to develop a convincing version of substance supervenience. A plausible version of substance supervenience can be developed in the light of Jaegwon Kim's idea of ‘multiple-domain supervenience’, although this version of substance supervenience is not able to provide the basis for an adequate formulation of supervenient dualism. The nature of this version of substance supervenience depends upon a relation of coordination between the substances, and there does not seem to be any relation of coordination that yields a form of substance supervenience that also counts as a form of supervenient dualism.     

Visual discrimination and response programming

Summary Choice reaction time (RT) depends on the relationship between responses, and these dependencies are usually interpreted in terms of the advance-specification assumption. According to this assumption characteristics that are the same for the choice responses can be specified in advance of the response signal, thus allowing faster RTs. Since the advance-specification assumption is called into question by some of the available data, an alternative interpretation is suggested and formalized in terms of an accumulator model. According to the programming-interactions assumption, stimulus processing is tightly linked to response programming, so that both the possible responses are programmed as long as there is uncertainty with regard to stimulus identity. This gives rise to interactions between simultaneous processes of motor programming. Predictions of this assumption for the joint effects of signal similarity and the relationship between responses are tested and confirmed.This research was supported by grant no. He 1187/3–1 from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft     

Families of Adolescent Drug Abusers Are “Rigid”: Are These Families Either “Disengaged” or “Enmeshed,” or Both?

The FACES instrument, based on Olson's Circumplex Model of family functioning, was administered to 96 adolescent drug-abuse clients and their parents. The majority of these families categorized themselves as "disengaged" (rather than "enmeshed") on the cohesion dimension, and as "rigid" (rather than "chaotic") on the adaptability dimension. These findings were unexpected as they were substantially different from published findings on families with other types of problems. Family therapists, utilizing Olson's Clinical Rating Scale for the Circumplex Model, characterized significantly more of these same families as "enmeshed," rather than "disengaged." Possible explanations for the difference between the therapists' perceptions and the families' self-perceptions are discussed.     

When Fluency Signals Truth: Prior Successful Reliance on Fluency Moderates the Impact of Fluency on Truth Judgments

Repeated statements are more frequently judged to be true. One position relates this so‐called “truth effect” to metacognitive experiences of fluency, suggesting that repeated statements are more frequently judged to be true because they are processed more fluently. Although most prior research focused on why repetition influences truth judgments, considerably less is known about when fluency is used as information. The present research addresses this question and investigates whether reliance on fluency is moderated by learning experiences. Specifically, we focus on changes in the reliance on fluency over the course of time. A series of experiments reveals that fluency is more likely to be used in truth judgments when previous reliance on fluency has resulted in valid judgments, compared with when previous reliance on fluency was misleading. These findings suggest that reliance on fluency in judgments is a finely tuned process that takes prior experiences with fluency‐based judgments into account. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

结构方程模型检验：拟合指数与卡方准则

讨论了Hu和Bentler（1998,1999）推荐的检验结构方程模型的7个拟合指数准则,对这7个指数的历史、特点和表现做了比较详细的述评。指出了他们基于这7个指数的单指数准则和2-指数准则的不足之处。提出了超低显著性水平下的卡方准则,并部分重复他们的模拟例子,将卡方准则与这7个指数准则比较,结果说明新的卡方准则优于其中的6个,与另一个相当。最后简要说明了应当如何检视拟合指数进行模型检验和模型比较。     

The W.R. Bion Tradition: Lines of Development,Evolution of Theory and Practice over the Decades,edited by Howard B. Levine and Giuseppe Civitarese,Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2018. 514pp.

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Chinese acceptance of mistreatment by in-relation offenders can be neutralized by triggering a “group” collectivism perspective

Examining the effect of culture on workplace revenge, we predict and find that people in a Chinese cultural context are more likely than people in an American cultural context to adjust their response to mistreatment based on being, or not being, “in relation” to the harm-doer. Specifically, Chinese people are more likely to let a harm-doer off the hook if they have a prior relationship with him or her, while Americans are less likely to do so. However, this Chinese sensitivity to relational status with the harm-doer ceases to be a factor if they receive a stimulus that shifts their perspective from relational collectivism to group collectivism. Implications for Chinese management and society are explored.