A Safety and Coping Planning Intervention for Suicidal Adolescents in Acute Psychiatric Care

Transitioning from an acute psychiatric care setting to a less restrictive environment after a suicidal event is arguably the most critical period of suicide risk for adolescents, making comprehensive safety and coping plans for this population ever more critical. In this paper we provide theoretical and empirical rationale for the need for developmental adaptations to current safety planning procedures for suicidal adolescents, as well as the standardization of pediatric safety plans for broader use across settings that provide acute psychiatric care to adolescents. We describe how we developed the Adolescent Safety and Coping Plan (ASCP) using qualitative in-depth interviews with 20 adolescents and their parents, explain the specific components of the ASCP, and give a case example of the ASCP being used with a young adolescent and her parents. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the barriers and facilitators of the use of the ASCP in settings that provide acute psychiatric care, as well as the need for future research to test the ASCP with diverse adolescent and family populations and settings.     

Defensive aggression in terns: Effect of species,density, and isolation

Defensive aggression was examined in seven species of terns during the hatching period when young are most vulnerable and adults most responsive. Aggression toward an unfamiliar person varied with respect to species, flush distance, approach distance, number of birds overhead and diving, and number of dives per 2 min for all birds and the nest owner. Defensive aggression involved birds circling over and diving at the experimenter. Generally, flush distance was negatively correlated with nest density, while the number of birds diving was positively correlated with the nest density. The number of birds diving was positively related to the number of dives, dives by the owner, and the number overhead.     

Prior Allegations of Harassment Impact Mock Jurors’ Perceptions of Sexual Harassment in a Criminal Trial

The current study examined factors that may influence jurors’ judgments in a criminal sexual harassment case with Canadian undergraduate students. Undergraduate students (n?=?268) examined whether defendant’s gender, victim’s gender, and whether the victim had made similar accusations in the past were influential in mock jurors’ judgments. Participants read a case summary describing an alleged sexual harassment and answered questions concerning defendant’s guilt, defendant’s culpability, and perceptions of the victim. Additionally, attitudes concerning sexual harassment and sexism were measured. The presence of prior allegations was a driving force in mock juror decisions, with mock jurors providing more guilty verdicts, more favorable perceptions of the victim, and less favorable perceptions of the defendant when no prior allegations of harassment had been made by the victim. The results of the current study suggest that the presence of prior allegations have a large impact on mock jurors’ decisions, suggesting that prior allegations may need to be considered more closely in court before they can be used as evidence.

     

Making Americans Feel Great Again? Personal Significance Predicts Political Intentions of Losers and Winners of the 2016 U.S. Election

Reactions of losers and winners of political elections have important consequences for the political system during times of power transition. In four studies conducted immediately before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, we investigated how personal significance induced by success or failure of one's candidate is related to hostile versus benevolent intentions toward political adversaries. We found that the less significant supporters of Hillary Clinton and supporters of Donald Trump felt after an imagined (Study 1A) or actual (Study 2) electoral failure the more they were willing to engage in peaceful actions against the elected president and the less they were willing to accept the results of the elections. However, while significance gain due to an imagined or actual electoral success was related to more benevolent intentions among Clinton supporters (Study 1B), it was related to more hostile intentions among Trump supporters (Studies 1B, 2, and 3).     

New Directions in the Conceptualization and Assessment of Personality—A Dynamic Systems Approach

In this paper, we demonstrate how an integrative approach to personality—one that combines within-person and between-person differences—can be achieved by drawing on the principles of dynamic systems theory. The dynamic systems perspective has the potential to reconcile both the stable and dynamic aspect of personality, it allows including different levels of analysis (i.e. traits and states), and it can account for regulatory mechanisms, as well as dynamic interactions between the elements of the system, and changes over time. While all of these features are obviously appealing, implementing a dynamic systems approach to personality is challenging. It requires new conceptual models, specific longitudinal research designs, and complex data analytical methods. In response to these issues, the first part of our paper discusses the Personality Dynamics model, a model that integrates the dynamic systems principles in a relatively straightforward way. Second, we review associated methodological and statistical tools that allow empirically testing the PersDyn model. Finally, the model and associated methodological and statistical tools are illustrated using an experience sampling methodology data set measuring Big Five personality states in 59 participants (N = 1916 repeated measurements). © 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology     

Action-based and vision-based selection of input: Two sources of control

In the first part of this paper we review evidence suggesting that there exists a mechanism that selects input on the basis of its similarity to the required action. This response-based input selection differs from the more established space- and object-based input selection in that it is not constrained by the structure of the input. Our evidence suggests that the two-choice Stroop effect is caused by this response-based selection mechanism. By contrast, it is known that the flanker effect is determined by the space- and object- based selection mechanisms. We explore whether the conflict resolution of the Stroop and flanker tasks is different as well by embedding these two tasks in a PRP (Psychological Refractory Period) paradigm. We show that the Stroop and the PRP effects are additive whereas the flanker and the PRP effects are underadditive, suggesting that the processes in charge of the conflict resolution in the Stroop and the flanker tasks are indeed different. We discuss possible reasons for this difference, and discuss possible ways in which the response-based mechanism can be implemented in information processing models.     

Win-shift and win-stay learning in the short-beaked echidna (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Tachyglossus aculeatus</Emphasis>)

Numerous previous investigators have explained species differences in spatial memory performance in terms of differences in foraging ecology. In three experiments we attempted to extend these findings by examining the extent to which the spatial memory performance of echidnas (or "spiny anteaters") can be understood in terms of the spatio-temporal distribution of their prey (ants and termites). This is a species and a foraging situation that have not been examined in this way before. Echidnas were better able to learn to avoid a previously rewarding location (to "win-shift") than to learn to return to a previously rewarding location (to "win-stay"), at short retention intervals, but were unable to learn either of these strategies at retention intervals of 90 min. The short retention interval results support the ecological hypothesis, but the long retention interval results do not. Electronic Publication     

The Factor Structure of the Beavers Interactional Scales

Confirmatory factor analysis and regression analyses of the Beavers Interactional Scales did not appear to support the model offered by its developers, namely, several specified family attributes contributing respectively to two global factors of Family Competence and Family Style. Moreover, regression analysis indicated that only three of 12 items predicted raters' assessments of Global Family Health, and one of seven items predicted Global Family Style. Individuals interested in the family dynamic centripetal/centrifugal might best think of that as a unitary entity and rate it accordingly.     

Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology: What’s the Question?

Alvin Plantingas Warranted Christian Belief is without questionone of the central texts of the Reformed epistemology movement. Critiques of Plantingas defence have been both multiple and varied. As varied as these responses are, however, it is my contention that many of them amount to the same thing. It is the purpose of this paper to offer an overview of the main lines of attack that have been directed as Plantingas project, and thereafter to show how many, if not most, of these objections can be understood as versions or aspects of the same criticism, what I call the Inadequacy Thesis.