Perceived Peer and Family Relationships,Hopelessness and Locus of Control as Factors in Adolescent Suicide Attempts

ABSTRACT: Thirty hospitalized suicidal adolescents were compared with thirty-four hospitalized nonsuicidal teenagers and thirty-five nonhospitalized coping youngsters (controls) on the extent of their problems, their perceptions of peer and family relationships, degree of hopelessness, and locus of control. Suicidals were found to experience the greatest total number of problems, nonsuicidals the next most, and controls the fewest. Significantly more peer problems differentiated the suicidals from the other two groups, while serious family problems discriminated the three groups from each other. The controls viewed their families as the most well-adjusted, followed by the nonsuicidals, while the suicidals felt their families were the most maladjusted. Suicide attempters experienced a significantly greater degree of hopelessness than all the nonattempters, and significantly more external locus of control than the controls. Some sex differences emerged in the study.     

The Frequency of Suicides around Major Public Holidays: Some Surprising Findings

ABSTRACT: This paper analyses the recorded number of U.S. daily suicides, 1972–1976. The paper shows that: there is a dip in suicides on and just before major public holidays; there is a peak in suicides just after these holidays; and, the dip in suicides is somewhat larger than the peak—hence, there is a net decrease in suicides around the holidays. On balance, the holidays appear to reduce the number of suicides, not increase them, as was previously believed. In addition, previous research has focussed on the negative psychological impact of holidays. Our findings indicate that holidays have a positive component, which should be taken into account in future research.     

Selective attention modulates implicit learning

The effect of selective attention on implicit learning was tested in four experiments using the "contextual cueing" paradigm (Chun & Jiang, 1998, 1999). Observers performed visual search through items presented in an attended colour (e.g., red) and an ignored colour (e.g., green). When the spatial configuration of items in the attended colour was invariant and was consistently paired with a target location, visual search was facilitated, showing contextual cueing (Experiments 1, 3, and 4). In contrast, repeating and pairing the configuration of the ignored items with the target location resulted in no contextual cueing (Experiments 2 and 4). We conclude that implicit learning is robust only when relevant, predictive information is selectively attended.