Preschool‐aged children's understanding of gratitude: Relations with emotion and mental state knowledge

Developmental precursors to children's early understanding of gratitude were examined. A diverse group of 263 children was tested for emotion and mental state knowledge at ages 3 and 4, and their understanding of gratitude was measured at age 5. Children varied widely in their understanding of gratitude, but most understood some aspects of gratitude‐eliciting situations. A model‐building path analysis approach was used to examine longitudinal relations among early emotion and mental state knowledge and later understanding of gratitude. Children with a better early understanding of emotions and mental states understand more about gratitude. Mental state knowledge at age 4 mediated the relation between emotion knowledge at age 3 and gratitude understanding at age 5. The current study contributes to the scant literature on the early emergence of children's understanding of gratitude.     

Cooperative representation of visual borders.

Recently it has been reported that the visual cortical cells which are engaged in cooperative coding of global stimulus features, display synchrony in their firing rates when both are stimulated. Alternative models identify global stimulus features with the course spatial scales of the image. Versions of the Munsterberg or Café Wall illusions which differ in their low spatial frequency content were used to show that in all cases it was the high spatial frequencies in the image which determined the strength and direction of these illusions. Since cells responsive to high spatial frequencies have small receptive fields, cooperative coding must be involved in the representation of long borders in the image.     

Suicide Attempts and Suicide among Marines: A Decade of Follow‐up

Suicidal behavior among military personnel is of paramount public health importance because of the increased risk of death from suicide in this population. Pre‐ and post‐Marine recruit training risk factors for suicide attempts among current and former Marines were examined in 10 years following recruit training. The characteristics of the subsample of current and former Marines who died by suicide during this time are also described. Stressful and traumatic life events (e.g., childhood physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, sexual harassment during recruit training) and pre‐recruit training suicide attempts emerged as having strong associations with post‐recruit training attempts. Half of those who died by suicide in the 10 years following recruit training endorsed at least one significant life stressor prior to joining the Marines. This study highlights the importance of screening for stressful and potentially traumatic experiences occurring both before and during military service as part of a comprehensive suicide risk assessment in military samples.