Death awareness and body–self dualism: A why and how of afterlife belief

Belief in life after death offers potential comfort in the face of inevitable death. However, afterlife belief likely requires not only an awareness of death but also body–self dualism—the perception that the self (e.g., the mind) is distinct from the physical, undeniably mortal, body. In turn, we hypothesized that mortality salience (MS) should heighten afterlife belief only when dualism is facilitated. Study 1 found that MS increased belief for people high, relative to low, in trait mind–body dualism. In Study 2, MS only increased belief when people first wrote about their thoughts and personality, which a pilot study confirmed facilitated dualistic belief, relative to thinking about the physical self. Study 3 used the brain–computer interface technology to induce a dualistic experience: MS increased belief when participants accurately “typed” without the use of their external body (i.e., no hands). Together, these findings support the position that mortality awareness and body–self dualism constitute a “why” and “how” of afterlife belief. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Special Section on LGBT Resilience Across Cultures: Introduction

This special section addresses a gap area of resilience and LGBT well‐being. Although comprehensive global diversity regarding LGBT resilience was challenging to find, the special section includes representation from outside the US (Israel and Hong Kong), ethnic/racially diverse domestic populations, immigration, and one population for which LGBT identities might be considered marginalized—Christians in the US. The full range of LGBT identities are represented in the issue along with persons identifying as queer or questioning, although transgendered people were less well represented than lesbian, gay or bisexual identities.     

Precipitating Circumstances of Suicide among Active Duty U.S. Army Personnel Versus U.S. Civilians, 2005–2010

To help understand suicide among soldiers, we compared suicide events between active duty U.S. Army versus civilian decedents to identify differences and inform military prevention efforts. We linked 141 Army suicide records from 2005 to 2010 to National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) data. We described the decedents’ military background and compared their precipitators of death captured in NVDRS to those of demographically matched civilian suicide decedents. Both groups commonly had mental health and intimate partner precipitating circumstances, but soldier decedents less commonly disclosed suicide intent.     

Training‐induced recovery of low‐level vision followed by mid‐level perceptual improvements in developmental object and face agnosia

Long‐term deprivation of normal visual inputs can cause perceptual impairments at various levels of visual function, from basic visual acuity deficits, through mid‐level deficits such as contour integration and motion coherence, to high‐level face and object agnosia. Yet it is unclear whether training during adulthood, at a post‐developmental stage of the adult visual system, can overcome such developmental impairments. Here, we visually trained LG, a developmental object and face agnosic individual. Prior to training, at the age of 20, LG's basic and mid‐level visual functions such as visual acuity, crowding effects, and contour integration were underdeveloped relative to normal adult vision, corresponding to or poorer than those of 5–6 year olds (Gilaie‐Dotan, Perry, Bonneh, Malach & Bentin, 2009). Intensive visual training, based on lateral interactions, was applied for a period of 9 months. LG's directly trained but also untrained visual functions such as visual acuity, crowding, binocular stereopsis and also mid‐level contour integration improved significantly and reached near‐age‐level performance, with long‐term (over 4 years) persistence. Moreover, mid‐level functions that were tested post‐training were found to be normal in LG. Some possible subtle improvement was observed in LG's higher‐order visual functions such as object recognition and part integration, while LG's face perception skills have not improved thus far. These results suggest that corrective training at a post‐developmental stage, even in the adult visual system, can prove effective, and its enduring effects are the basis for a revival of a developmental cascade that can lead to reduced perceptual impairments.     

Prior Publication and Redundancy in Contemporary Science: Are Authors and Editors at the Crossroads?

We discuss prior publication and redundancy in contemporary science in the context of changing perceptions of originality in the communication of research results. These perceptions have been changing in the publication realm, particularly in the last 15 years. Presenting a brief overview of the literature, we address some of the conflicts that are likely to arise between authors and editors. We illustrate our approach with conference presentations that are later published as journal articles and focus on a recent retraction of an article that had been previously published as a conference proceedings. Although we do not make definitive pronouncements on the matter—as many concepts are evolving—we do argue that conference papers that contain sufficient details for others to attempt a replication and are indexed in scientific databases such as PubMed, challenge some currently held assumptions of prior publication and originality in the sciences. Our view is that these important issues are in need of further clarification and harmonization within the science publishing community. This need is more evident when we consider current notions of research integrity when it comes to communication to peers. Revisiting long-standing views about what constitutes prior publication and developing a clearer set of guidelines for authors and editors to follow should reduce conflicts in the research environment, which already exerts considerable pressure, especially on newcomers in academia. However, while clearer guidelines are timely, developing them is only part of the challenge. The present times seem to call for deeper changes in the research and publication systems.