Brief Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Suicidal Inpatients

Suicide risk is elevated in psychiatric patients following discharge from inpatient care. Despite this vulnerability, there has been limited research investigating suicide prevention protocols that take into account the unique system characteristics of this setting (e.g., short lengths of stay, crisis stabilization treatment model, multidisciplinary team coordination). Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) has demonstrated efficacy for improving suicide risk in outpatients, but has not been validated with inpatients. The current study was a treatment development and pilot feasibility open trial that modified brief cognitive-behavioral therapy (BCBT) for an inpatient setting (BCBT-I). Key treatment modifications included administering up to 10 sessions (depending on patient length of stay), daily, and in a standardized order, with core crisis management skills introduced during the first three sessions. In addition, coordination with the inpatient treatment team was included in BCBT-I implementation. Six adult inpatients with a recent suicide attempt enrolled and completed an average of 4.67 BCBT-I sessions (SD = 1.36). The treatment was highly acceptable (Client Satisfaction Questionnaire total score M = 3.49, SD = 0.73). Pre- to posttreatment effect sizes demonstrated improvements in suicidal ideation (d = 0.97), depression (d = 1.33), and suicidal implicit associations (d = 1.28). All but one of the participants (83%) completed follow-up assessments 1-, 2-, and 3-months postdischarge. Over follow-up, two participants reported suicidal ideation (both without intent), and none reported suicide attempts, preparatory acts or behaviors, or nonsuicidal self-injury. This study provided preliminary evidence supporting the feasibility of CBT to treat suicidal inpatients. Future research is needed to validate BCBT-I in a larger, randomized controlled trial to determine whether BCBT-I reduces suicide risk beyond that afforded by inpatient treatment alone.     

Comparing computer‐based training and lecture formats to teach visual analysis of baseline‐treatment graphs

Accurate analysis of data is vital to the validation of interventions. As such, there has been a recent increase in studies evaluating visual analysis training procedures. However, past investigations have not evaluated direct and indirect visual analysis training methods with matched instructional content that was systematically designed. Furthermore, training has rarely included assessment of generalization and maintenance of visual analysis skills. The purpose of the current dissertation study was to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of (a) computer‐based training, (b) lecture formats with and (c) without the opportunity to pause, and (d) a no‐training group to teach visual analysis of AB graphs to university students. To make these formats directly comparable, the instructional content was equated by ensuring information and examples were identical across the three training procedures. Eighty‐three students were randomly assigned to one of the four groups. Results showed that all three training formats produced increases in accurate responding compared to the no‐training group. Visual analysis skills generalized to novel graphs and maintained approximately 2 weeks following all trainings. These results suggest that structured approaches that are carefully designed to train visual analysis are effective and lead to gains that generalize and maintain in the absence of training.     

Do wild raccoons (Procyon lotor) use tools?

Animal Cognition - Being able to make and use tools was once considered to be an evolutionary hallmark of our species, but has since been documented in other animals. However, for reasons that...     

The Miranda Warnings and the Deaf Suspect

Administration of the Miranda Warnings to deaf suspects poses many legal issues. If police officers, judges, attorneys and psychologists are unaware of these, evidence obtained as a consequence of deaf suspects waiving their Miranda Rights may be inadmissible in court. These issues include the importance of videotaping the police interview, the use of sign language interpreters, the determination of the deaf defendant's reading level and communication capacity, the limitations of lipreading, and other psycholinguistic factors. Recommendations are offered to aid in determining whether a deaf suspect is capable of understanding the Miranda Warnings and how these warnings should be administered.     

Scale sensitivity in the multiplicative AHP and SMART

We consider first a variant of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) with a one-parametric class of geometric scales to quantify human comparative judgement and with a multiplicative structure: logarithmic regression to calculate the impact scores of the alternatives at the first evaluation level and a geometric-mean aggregation rule to calculate the final scores at the second level. We demonstrate that the rank order of the impact scores and final scores is scale-independent. Finally we show that the multiplicative AHP is an exponential version of the simple multi-attribute rating technique (SMART). In fact, the multiplicative AHP is concerned with ratios of intervals on the dimension of desirability, whereas SMART analyses differences in the corresponding orders of magnitude.