A prospective investigation of suicidal ideation in college students: a test of a model

In order to test the predictive validity of a stress--vulnerability model of suicide ideation and behavior, a longitudinal study was conducted with college undergraduates. Based on previous research (Bonner & Rich, 1987; Rich & Bonner, 1987a), measures of social/emotional alienation, adaptive resources for living, and cognitive rigidity were taken at the beginning of the semester and combined to develop a vulnerability score. Then, at midterm, measures of midterm stress and cumulative negative life stress were obtained from the same subjects. It was hypothesized that the vulnerability factor would interact with midterm and negative life stress to predict suicide ideation. Instead of an interactive model, a linear, compensatory model of suicide ideation was found. The combination of alienation, deficient adaptive resources, and life stress best predicted ideation scores. Implications for research and theory are noted.     

Evaluations of Outcome Sequences

We extend the literature on intertemporal choice by investigating how possession of knowledge related to the present value of future outcomes (PV knowledge) affects the extent to which individuals weight certain attributes when evaluating outcome sequences. While PV-knowledgeable individuals can ascribe value to attributes according to their PV relevance (or irrelevance), unknowledgeable individuals cannot do so. Such knowledge, therefore, likely interacts with outcome-sequence attributes to affect the extent to which individuals exhibit impatience when evaluating outcome sequences. The main experimental findings indicate that higher PV knowledge increases the extent to which individuals value impatience (as opposed to improvement). However, these findings also reinforce a need to distinguish among impatience, improvement, and PV because some higher PV knowledge participants willingly sacrifice PV while exhibiting impatience (while others do so in order to gain improvement). Overall, PV considerations appear central, but not determinative, in higher PV-knowledgeable individuals' evaluations of outcome sequences.     

Improving the 'how' and 'what' decisions of elite table tennis players

Training methods in sport usually focus on improving either technical or tactical aspects of performance, ignoring the fact that successful performance requires the athlete to simultaneously decide what movement to perform and how it should be executed. Young elite table tennis players were trained, in a first phase, to improve their forehand and backhand movements and, in a second phase, to make a tactical switch between forehand and backhand movements. Half of the players took part in behavioral training focusing on how to perform the required movements, whereas half received additional video feedback about their technical and tactical performance (decision training). The results indicate that improvements of how decisions (techniques) and what decisions (tactics) can occur as a consequence of combining technical and tactical training. These results were stable in delayed Post-test analyses of competitive matches. It was concluded that a combination of both technical and tactical training is beneficial to elite table tennis performers, particularly during early seasonal training programs.     

Desperately seeking perfection: Christian discipleship and medical genetics.

The question of what, if anything, Christian theology as theology might contribute to ethical debates about appropriate uses of medical genetics has often been ignored. The answer is complex, and the author argues it is best characterized by an explanation of the analogous aspirations of the two: both have as their goal the perfection of the human being, both assert that the present disposition of the human body is on a fundamental level more often than not other than it ought to be, and both aspire to transform the present state of the body toward a future state in which present imperfections no longer exist. Given these analogous concerns, it would seem that one of the primary moral contributions that Christianity can make to debates about medical genetics is to ask whether and to what extent the Christian vision of embodied human perfection is compatible with the vision of perfection offered by the sciences pertaining to medical genetics. The author pursues a discussion of this analogy and its implications in this essay.     

Visual search in multicharacter arrays with and without gaps

Subjects searched through briefly presented arrays of letters in a controlled order, indicating quickly which of two possible targets had occurred. Some arrays contained gaps—three missing letters. Reaction time (RT) and accuracy were both improved by a gap after the target; improvement was less when the gap preceded the target. To account for these results, a new model is proposed, one which calls for overlapping processing of successive array items. This is not a “hybrid” model, but a third alternative between the two extremes of serial (zero overlap) and parallel (complete overlap). Quantified, the overlapping model generates U-shaped serial-position curves and produces RT predictions in good accord with our data from arrays with and without gaps. The predicted functions for RT vs. array size are concave upward; however, for arrays of five or less they are virtually linear and not very different in slope for positive and negative trials. Although this model is primarily designed for RT, with some additional assumptions it can be extended to accuracy results.     

The effect of organismic disadvantage on allocation behavior in children

Equity theory (Adams, 1965) suggests that when persons are asked to divide a given amount of reward between two other persons, one relatively more disadvantaged than the other at performing a task, they will make allocations that are disproportionate to the two persons' performance levels, giving the disadvantaged person a disproportionately larger share and the advantaged person a disproportionately smaller share of the reward. The theory attributes this effect to the allocator's perception that the disadvantaged individual expended a disproportionately greater amount of effort. A group of third- and fourth-graders and a group of seventh-graders were asked to divide rewards between pairs of children that were described to vary in age (“younger” vs. older) or ability (“unskilled” vs. skilled) or that were the “same” in age and ability and that were described to vary (5 vs. 15, or 0 vs. 20 baskets) or to be equal (10 vs. 10 baskets) in performance on a basketball-shooting task. Unlike the group of third- and fourth-graders, the seventh-graders generally made significantly larger allocations to the disadvantaged individuals (“younger” and “unskilled”) than to the “same” individuals, making the largest allocations under the most discrepant performance condition (0 vs. 20). Overall, the results suggested that the equity principle becomes more salient in children as age increases.     

Hans-Martin Sass,Robert M. Veatch,Rihito Kimura (eds.). Advance Directives and Surrogate Decision Making in Health Care

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -