Intolerance to delayed reward in girls with multiple suicide attempts

Impulsivity has been conceptualized as influencing the expression of suicidal behavior. Adolescence is a developmental period characterized both by a relatively high rate of suicide attempts and a high level of impulsivity. The current study examined two behavioral measures (delay reward and disinhibition) and one self-report measure of impulsivity among girls with suicide attempt histories. Girls with multiple suicide attempts performed more impulsively on measures of delayed reward, and had higher self-ratings of depression and aggression than girls with either one or no suicide attempts. The multiple attempter girls' preference for immediate gratification may directly increase vulnerability to suicidal acts in the context of distressing states or indirectly increase risk by creating poor life experience over time.     

Habitual computer game playing at night is related to depressive symptoms

This study investigated whether the amount and circadian time of habitual computer game playing were related to depressive symptoms in adolescents and young adults. We expected that habitual late playing relates to more depressive symptoms beyond the effect of the total time of computer game playing as playing at night may involve short, irregular, and disturbed sleep as well as misalignment of the circadian rhythm. 646 adolescents and young adults (ages 13–30; 90.9% males) who play the internet role-playing game World of Warcraft completed an online questionnaire. Habitual computer game playing between 10 pm and 6 am was related to an increased risk of high depression scores independent of the total amount of playing. Adolescents (ages 13–17 years) were most vulnerable when habitually playing during early night (i.e., 10–12 pm), while emergent adults (ages 18–22 years) showed more vulnerability when habitually playing late at night (i.e., after 2 am). The effect was partly mediated by daytime sleepiness but not by sleep loss or insomnia problems.     

Future Time Perspective and Gratitude in Daily Life: A Micro‐longitudinal Study

Preliminary cross‐sectional evidence suggests that future time perspective (FTP) is associated with dispositional gratitude, but research on daily perceptions of FTP and their relations to daily gratitude is lacking. In this study, we addressed this gap by examining how FTP and gratitude jointly unfold in daily life and how these relations vary within and across individuals. A micro‐longitudinal design (N = 331, adults aged 18–77) with daily assessments over two workweeks was employed to examine the relations between gratitude and two components of FTP (remaining opportunities and time). Three important results from random intercepts cross‐lagged panel models stand out. First, we found evidence for within‐person day‐to‐day carry‐over effects in FTP and gratitude. Second, FTP and gratitude were systematically related within and across individuals. Third, age and dispositional forms of FTP and gratitude predicted between‐person differences in FTP and gratitude in daily life. Finally, exploratory multilevel analyses have shown that the associations between daily FTP and gratitude vary across ages at the between‐person level but not at the within‐person level. Overall, these findings advance our understanding of perceptions of FTP in daily life and their associations with gratitude in adulthood. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Long-term adverse health outcomes of physical workplace violence: a 7-year population-based follow-up study

The aim of the present study was to analyse whether physical workplace violence increases the risk of long-term adverse health outcomes (i.e., high number of visits to the general practitioner, outpatient treatment, hospital admittance, antidepressant use, and/or having a mental disorder). The study was based on representative survey data from 2006 and 2010 (entitled “How are you?”) merged with register data for a 7-year follow-up period (N = 30,812). To examine if physical workplace violence was a predictor of adverse health outcomes, logistic regression models were conducted for the total follow-up period and for each follow-up year with the different outcome measures as the dependent variables. In the follow-up period, individuals who were exposed to physical workplace violence had a higher number of visits to the general practitioner, had more often received outpatient treatment, and had more often been admitted to hospital than their non-exposed counterparts. Moreover, exposed individuals had higher odds of using antidepressants in the last three follow-up years than did non-exposed individuals. The findings call for heightened attention to securing preventive as well as rehabilitative strategies to help victims of physical workplace violence with the aim of avoiding adverse long-term health consequences.     

Detecting malingered neurocognitive dysfunction using the reliable digit span in traumatic brain injury

This study assessed the effectiveness of Greiffenstein's Reliable Digit Span (RDS) score for the detection of malingered neurocognitive dysfunction. Participants were 54 traumatic brain injury patients referred for neuropsychological evaluation. Twenty-four met the Slick, Sherman, and Iverson criteria for at least probable malingered neurocognitive dysfunction. The control group was composed of 30 patients without external incentive and who thus did not meet the Slick criteria. All patients completed the digit span test as part of either the WAIS-R or WAIS-III. The RDS scores were calculated, and sensitivity, specificity, and predictive power were examined for several cutoffs. Classification accuracy for the RDS was excellent. Issues related to the clinical application of this technique are discussed.     

Familial transmission of Continuous Performance Test behavior: attentional and impulsive response characteristics

Continuous Performance Tests (CPTs) provide information on attentional processing and impulsive behavior. The results of previous research that used self-report measures have provided evidence for familial transmission (through genetic and/or environmental influences) of impulsive characteristics. The authors of the present study examined whether the impulsive behavioral parameters that are measured by the CPT also share familial relationships. The researchers asked 26 healthy parent-adolescent pairs to complete the Immediate and Delayed Memory Tasks (IMT/DMT; D. M. Dougherty, 1999; D. M. Dougherty, D. M. Marsh, & C. W. Mathias, 2002), a modified CPT (B. A. Cornblatt, N. J. Risch, G. Faris, D. Friedman, & L. Erlenmeyer-Kimling, 1988; H. E. Rosvold, A. Mirsky, I. Sarason, E. D. Breansome, Jr., & L. H. Beck, 1956), and the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS; J. H. Patton, M. S. Stanford, & E. S. Barratt, 1995), a self-report measure. The main findings can be summarized as follows: (a) commission errors (but not correct detections) on the IMT and DMT were correlated between parents and their adolescent children, (b) adolescents emitted a higher proportion of commission errors than did their parents, and (c) self-reported impulsivity (i.e., BIS) was correlated with commission errors for parents, but not for adolescents. The findings of this study support the use of an objective behavioral measure of impulsivity to assess familial relationships of impulsivity.     

How Reliably Do Eye Parameters Indicate Internal Versus External Attentional Focus?

Eye behavior is increasingly used as an indicator of internal versus external focus of attention both in research and application. However, available findings are partly inconsistent, which might be attributed to the different nature of the employed types of internal and external cognition tasks. The present study, therefore, investigated how consistently different eye parameters respond to internal versus external attentional focus across three task modalities: numerical, verbal, and visuo-spatial. Three eye parameters robustly differentiated between internal and external attentional focus across all tasks. Blinks, pupil diameter variance, and fixation disparity variance were consistently increased during internally directed attention. We also observed substantial attentional focus effects on other parameters (pupil diameter, fixation disparity, saccades, and microsaccades), but they were moderated by task type. Single-trial analysis of our data using machine learning techniques further confirmed our results: Classifying the focus of attention by means of eye tracking works well across participants, but generalizing across tasks proves to be challenging. Based on the effects of task type on eye parameters, we discuss what eye parameters are best suited as indicators of internal versus external attentional focus in different settings.