Application of The APA Practice Guidelines on Suicide to Clinical Practice

This article presents charts from The American Psychiatric Association Practice Guideline for the Assessment and Treatment of Patients with Suicidal Behaviors, part of the Practice Guidelines for the Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders Compendium, and a summary of the assessment information in a format that can be used in routine clinical practice. Four steps in the assessment process are presented: the use of a thorough psychiatric examination to obtain information about the patient's current presentation, history, diagnosis, and to recognize suicide risk factors therein; the necessity of asking very specific questions about suicidal ideation, intent, plans, and attempts; the process of making an estimation of the patient's level of suicide risk is explained; and the use of modifiable risk and protective factors as the basis for treatment planning is demonstrated. Case reports are used to clarify use of each step in this process.     

Cross-validating the Berlin Affective Word List

We introduce the Berlin Affective Word List (BAWL) in order to provide researchers with a German database containing both emotional valence and imageability ratings for more than 2,200 German words. The BAWL was cross-validated using a forced choice valence decision task in which two distinct valence categories (negative or positive) had to be assigned to a highly controlled selection of 360 words according to varying emotional content (negative, neutral, or positive). The reaction time (RT) results corroborated the valence categories: Words that had been rated as “neutral” in the norms yielded maximum RTs. The BAWL is intended to help researchers create stimulus materials for a wide range of experiments dealing with the emotional processing of words.     

The age prospective memory paradox: young adults may not give their best outside of the lab

Previous research has identified the age prospective memory paradox of age-related declines in laboratory settings in contrast to age benefits in naturalistic settings. Various factors are assumed to account for this paradox, yet empirical evidence on this issue is scarce. In 2 experiments, the present study examined the effect of task setting in a laboratory task and the effect of motivation in a naturalistic task on prospective memory performance in young and older adults. For the laboratory task (Experiment 1, n = 40), we used a board game to simulate a week of daily activities and varied features of the prospective memory task (e.g., task regularity). For the naturalistic task (Experiment 2, n = 80), we instructed participants to try to remember to contact the experimenter repeatedly over the course of 1 week. Results from the laboratory prospective memory tasks indicated significant age-related decline for irregular tasks (p = .006) but not for regular and focal tasks. In addition, in the naturalistic task, the age benefit was eliminated when young adults were motivated by incentives (F < 1). In conclusion, the present results indicate that the variability of age differences in laboratory prospective memory tasks may be due in part to differences in the features of the prospective memory task. Furthermore, increases in motivation to perform the prospective task seem to help remedy prospective memory deficits in young adults in the naturalistic setting.     

The Role of Concurrent Feedback in Learning to Walk Through Sliding Doors

Concurrent feedback is defined as information about performance given to participants during the execution of an action. This article investigates whether concurrent feedback is beneficial or detrimental to the learning of an ecologically relevant task. Eighteen participants were asked to walk through a virtual corridor and they practiced over 1110 trials to adjust their walking speed so as to pass through sliding doors that opened and closed at a frequency of 1 Hz. Concurrent feedback informed them about the possible need to accelerate or decelerate. Performance of participants who received concurrent feedback on 66% of the practice trials (on average) did not differ significantly from performance of participants who did not receive concurrent feedback. Furthermore, participants of both of these groups significantly outperformed participants who received concurrent feedback on all practice trials. These results are discussed in relation to the perceptual-motor mechanisms that underlie the control of the action. Also discussed are implications for future research, including the use of self-controlled feedback and the use of multisensory training programs.     

Direct Learning

The theory of direct perception holds that perception is specific to properties of ambient energy arrays. This article explores a similar approach to perceptual and perceptual-motor learning: Change due to learning is portrayed as specific to properties of ambient energy arrays. This type of learning is labeled direct learning. It is argued that a theory of direct learning explains a wide range of phenomena in ecologically relevant and informationally rich situations as well as in simpler experimental situations. Previous experimental results are reanalyzed and reinterpreted from the perspective of direct learning. To achieve this, the notion of information space is introduced. In information spaces, points represent ambient energy variables, paths represent change due to learning, and vector fields represent information that guides learning. These concepts also allow the theory of direct learning to be connected to and to take advantage of the theory of ordinary differential equations.     

Understanding alexithymia in female adolescents: The role of attachment style

Adults with alexithymia retrospectively report emotional difficulties with caregivers during childhood. However, the association between attachment style and alexithymic traits may be evident at an earlier stage than adulthood, i.e. during adolescence. Sixty school-based healthy females aged 9–18 years (mean 14.08, SD 2.71 years) participated in an Attachment Style Interview (ASI) and completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20). Greater levels of alexithymia were exhibited by both anxious and avoidant insecurely attached groups compared to securely attached participants. Fear of separation (characteristic of anxious attachment style) predicted both overall alexithymia scores and the specific alexithymic trait of ‘difficulty identifying feelings’ (DIF). Constraints on closeness (an avoidant attachment attitude) predicted ‘difficulty describing feelings’ (DDF). Low felt attachment to primary caregiver was a predictor of ‘externally oriented thinking’ (EOT). These findings indicate that features of anxious and avoidant insecure attachment styles are differentially related to the separate facets of alexithymia in female adolescents. Specifically, the findings concerning fear of separation may reflect the adolescent struggle for autonomy and the resulting effects on the affect regulation system. Our results also suggest that the normative differentiation of the emotional and cognitive aspects of alexithymia may occur on a developmental trajectory.     

The biasing effect of personality on self-estimates of cognitive abilities in males and females

In addition to exploring the relationship between psychometric and self-estimated measures of Crystallized Knowledge (Gc) and Visual Processing (Gv), this study investigated whether personality significantly moderated these relationships, thereby influencing the accuracy of the self-estimates. Adult participants (N = 165) completed the Big Five Inventory and self-estimated their levels of Gc and Gv. They were subsequently administered the Multidimensional Aptitude Battery II, a group test of cognitive ability. Significant and positive relationships between psychometric Gc and Gv and their respective self-estimates were found. Additionally, investigation of the moderating effects of personality for each gender separately using standard multiple regressions found that females high in Extraversion and males low in Conscientiousness were more prone to overestimating their Gv ability, while males high in Openness provided more accurate estimates of their Gv than those low in Openness. Elucidating the personality traits that distort self-perceptions of intellectual functioning has significant implications for the identification of individuals at risk of harboring inaccurate expectations, leading to the potential for interventions aimed at ameliorating associated deleterious consequences.     

Posttraumatic Stress in Women with Breast Cancer and Their Daughters

Using the PTSD Reaction Index, posttraumatic stress was assessed in 133 women with breast cancer and 64 of their daughters. Twenty-one percent of patients and 13% of daughters reported symptoms consistent with PTSD. PTSD in these patients without bone marrow transplants may be higher than reported in other samples, and the prevalence of PTSD symptoms in the daughters appear comparable to women with breast cancer. For patients, cancer stage at diagnosis was positively associated with posttraumatic stress severity. Mothers experiencing PTSD symptoms were significantly more likely to have daughters experiencing PTSD symptoms. Intergenerational patterns in reaction to breast cancer are discussed.     

Secondary Revision: On Rethinking the Analytic Process and Analytic Technique

The author relates aspects of his own personal history and professional development in an effort to explain the changes in his way of thinking and working as an analyst that have evolved over the past thirty years. He also includes some of his current thinking on the questions of countertransference, the uses of memory, and contemporary analytic technique.