Syntactic structure and the garden path

The experiment investigated locally ambiguous English sentences containing “complement” verbs such as believe, which can be followed either by a direct object or by a complement clause. These two sentence types were compared with unambiguous sentences in which the complement clause was introduced by the word that. Subjects processed numerous examples of these sentences in a word-by-word self-paced reading task. At the disambiguation point after the ambiguous noun phrase, longer reading times were obtained for reduced complement constructions compared with direct object sentences. Such an effect has been attributed to the operation of the parsing principle Minimal Attachment (Frazier and Rayner, 1982). This principle predicts that subjects assume falsely that the noun phrase after the complement verb in the reduced complement constructions is the direct object, resulting in the need for subsequent structural reanalysis. However, longer times in the disambiguating zone were also found for the unambiguous that complements. Thus, the complexity difference seems not to represent “garden-pathing” as a result of the operation of Minimal Attachment, but may instead reflect the extra complexity caused by having to handle two sets of clausal relations instead of just one.     

Diazepam (Valium): its dependency liability

Reports of the withdrawal syndrome following discontinuation of diazepam and drug dependence fears have contributed to diazepam's displacement as the most popular anxiolytic agent. Reports of the withdrawal syndrome, the factors involved in withdrawal, and the remedies proposed for diazepam withdrawal symptoms are reviewed.     

Medically Documented Suicide Ideation Among U.S. Army Soldiers

We used administrative data to examine predictors of medically documented suicide ideation (SI) among Regular Army soldiers from 2006 through 2009 (N = 10,466 ideators, 124,959 control person‐months). Enlisted ideators (97.8% of all cases) were more likely than controls to be female, younger, older when entering service, less educated, never or previously deployed, and have a recent mental health diagnosis. Officer ideators were more likely than controls to be female, younger, younger when entering service, never married, and have a recent mental health diagnosis. Risk among enlisted soldiers peaked in the second month of service and declined steadily, whereas risk among officers remained relatively stable over time. Risk of SI is highest among enlisted soldiers early in Army service, females, and those with a recent mental health diagnosis.