The Impact of Adolescent Suicide on Siblings and Parents: A Longitudinal Follow-Up

The psychiatric sequelae of loss of a family member to suicide were evaluated in parents and siblings of adolescent suicide victims and controls, who were followed up to 3 years after the suicide. Siblings did not show an increased risk for the development of depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or other conditions over the course of follow-up, despite showing a prolonged elevated level of grief symptomatology. Mothers showed an increased rate of recurrence of depression over follow-up, whereas fathers did not show an increased incidence of disorder compared to fathers of controls. The interrelationship of bereavement and depression for siblings, parents, and others exposed to suicide is discussed.     

Boosting the Potency of Resistance: Combining the Motivational Forces of Inoculation and Psychological Reactance

The efficacy of inoculation theory has been confirmed by decades of empirical research, yet optimizing its effectiveness remains a vibrant line of investigation. The present research turns to psychological reactance theory for a means of enhancing the core mechanisms of inoculation—threat and refutational preemption. Findings from a multisite study indicate reactance enhances key resistance outcomes, including: threat, anger at attack message source, negative cognitions, negative affect, anticipated threat to freedom, anticipated attack message source derogation, perceived threat to freedom, perceived attack message source derogation, and counterarguing. Most importantly, reactance‐enhanced inoculations result in lesser attitude change—the ultimate measure of resistance.     

An investigation of everyday prospective memory

Prospective memory, remembering to carry out one’s planned activities, was investigated using a naturalistic paradigm. Three experiments, with a total of 405 participants, were conducted. The goal was to demonstrate that the cognitive processing underlying successful everyday prospective remembering involves components other than mere “memory.” Those components are probably best represented as individual differences in various cognitive capacities. More specifically, metamemory, attentional capacities, and planning processes that reprioritize intentions according to the demands of everyday life may determine how people actually accomplish the plans they establish for themselves. The results of these experiments suggest that researchers interested in the topic will have to contend with a multidimensional set of factors before any comprehensive understanding of prospective remembering can be realized.     

Object perception and object naming in early development

Among our most fundamental capacities are those that allow us to perceive, categorize and name objects. Recently, controversy has surrounded the question of how young children learn names for objects, in particular, the relative roles of perception and higher-level world knowledge. It is well known that adults depend strongly on conceptual knowledge in a variety of categorization tasks, including object naming. We argue, however, that perception may play a special role in early object naming and, in particular, that certain kinds of world knowledge known to guide adult naming may come to guide naming only rather late in development. Building early mechanisms of naming on a perceptual foundation that may be encapsulated, and thus shut off from more reflective processes, may explain in part why young children can easily and rapidly learn names for things from the adults around them, despite the fact that adults and children may possess very different conceptual organizations.     

Children read normal and reversed letters: A simple test of reading skill

Above- and below-average readers in grades 3, 5 and 7 named letters under two conditions. In one condition, letters were presented in normal orientation. In the other condition, letters were presented in left-right mirror image orientation. The ratio of (1) naming time on normal letters to (2) naming time on mirror image letters was calculated for each child. Good readers had lower ratios than poor readers. This was due primarily to the faster naming of normal letters by good readers. Good and poor readers named mirror image letters at similar speeds. Two possible explanations for the results are discussed. One explanation is that the skilled readers have a better memory for the normal orientation of the letter shapes. A second explanation is that skilled readers process more peripheral information, when naming, than their less skilled counterparts, but that this peripheral processing is curtailed when transformed text is presented.