Preventing Suicide at Suicide Hotspots: A Case Study from Australia

The Gap Park Self‐Harm Minimisation Masterplan project is a collaborative attempt to address jumping suicides at Sydney's Gap Park through means restriction, encouraging help‐seeking, and increasing the likelihood of third‐party intervention. We used various data sources to describe the Masterplan project's processes, impacts, and outcomes. There have been reductions in reported jumps and confirmed suicides, although the trends are not statistically significant. There has been a significant increase in police call‐outs to intervene with suicidal people who have not yet reached the cliff's edge. The collaborative nature of the Masterplan project and its multifaceted approach appear to be reaping benefits.     

Thought suppression and memory biases during and after depressive moods

Previous research indicates that formerly depressed individuals engage in high levels of thought suppression that can mask depressive cognitions. However, suppression may also ironically foster a vigilance for unwanted thoughts that promotes uncertainty about ambiguous information and distorts memory. The present study tested this possibility. Formerly dysphoric, currently dysphoric, and never-dysphoric participants listened to a series of statements describing life events that were positive, negative, or ambiguous. In a subsequent recognition phase, participants reviewed a series of statements and rated each for the likelihood that it had been presented earlier. The recognition list included positive and negative disambiguated versions of the original items. Compared to the never-dysphoric group, formerly dysphoric individuals were more likely to endorse negative disambiguations. As predicted, this bias was associated with higher levels of thought suppression and greater uncertainty about the meaning of ambiguous situations, suggesting an ongoing conflict between positive and negative thoughts.     

Expanding Echo: Coordinated Head Articulations as Nonmanual Enhancements in Sign Language Phonology

Echo phonology was originally proposed to account for obligatory coordination of manual and mouth articulations observed in several sign languages. However, previous research into the phenomenon lacks clear criteria for which components of movement can or must be copied when the articulators are so different. Nor is there discussion of which nonmanual articulators can echo manual movement. Given the prosodic properties of echoes (coordination of onset/offset and of dynamics such as speed) as well as general motoric coordination of various articulators in the human body, we expect that the mouth is not the only nonmanual articulator involved in echo phonology. In this study, we look at a fixed set of lexical items across 36 sign languages and establish that the head can echo manual movement with respect to timing and to the axis/axes of manual movement. We propose that what matters in echo phonology is the visual percept of temporally coordinated movement that repeats a salient movement property in such a way as to give the visual impression of a copy. Our findings suggest that echoes are not obligatory motor couplings of two or more articulators but may enhance phonological distinctions that are otherwise difficult to see.     

Opposition to Immigration and (Anti-)Environmentalism: An Application and Extension of the Social Dominance-Environmentalism Nexus with 21 Countries in Europe

The social dominance–environmentalism nexus proposes that orientations for inequality and domination are expressed both in human–human and human–nature relations. In two studies, the present work applies and extends this proposition to understand endorsement of environmental values, concern with climate change, support for climate policies, and responsibility for climate action. In study one, using a representative random sample from Portugal (N = 1270, 53.3% female; European Social Survey, ESS8), social dominance orientation showed unique associations with concern with climate change. Moreover, opposition to immigration (as expression of anti-egalitarianism in intergroup relations) showed unique associations with all four measures of environmentalism. In study two, multi-level analyses using representative random samples from 20 other countries in Europe (N = 38830, 51.5% female; ESS8) confirmed the associations between opposition to immigration and environmentalism, controlling for a set of sociodemographic covariates, political orientation, and nesting at the country level. However, there were differences in the strength and direction of these associations based on country levels of societal development (i.e., Human Development Index; HDI). These differences reinforce the notion that context or situational variables may shape the links between diverse expressions of (anti-)egalitarianism and (anti-)environmentalism. Inputs for applied research on hierarchy-affirming tendencies toward others and the natural environment are proposed and discussed.     

Holistic face processing is penetrable … depending on the composite design

Holistic processing (HP) of faces is usually measured by the composite effect. While Weston and Perfect [2005. Effects of processing bias on the recognition of composite face halves. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 1038–1042. doi:10.3758/BF03206440] found that priming at the local level speeded recognition of components of faces, Gao et al. [2011. Priming global and local processing of composite faces: Revisiting the processing-bias effect on face perception. Attention Perception & Psychophysics, 73, 1477–1486. doi:10.3758/s13414-011-0109-7] found that only global priming had an effect on HP of faces. The two studies used different versions of the composite task (the partial design, which is considered to be prone on bias, and the complete design). However, the two studies also differed in other respects and it is difficult to know to what extent issues with the partial design contributed to the differing conclusions. In the present study, the HP indexed by the complete design measure was augmented by global priming. In contrast, no effect was observed in the partial design index. We claim that the partial design index reflects other factors besides HP, including response bias, and conclude that HP can be understood within the context of domain-general attentional processes.