Development of a Chinese Version of the Suicide Intent Scale

This study established the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Suicide Intent Scale (SIS) in a clinic‐ and community‐based sample of 36 patients and 592 respondents, respectively. Results showed that the Chinese SIS demonstrated good inter‐rater and test‐retest reliability. Factor analysis generated three factors (Precautions, Planning, and Seriousness) explaining 92.9% of the total variance with high internal consistency. It was moderately correlated with depressive symptoms. Results suggest that the Chinese SIS is a reliable and valid instrument for use in assessing the extent of suicidal intention among subjects with deliberate self‐harm in ethnic Chinese populations.     

Learning strategy selection in the water maze and hippocampal CREB phosphorylation differ in two inbred strains of mice

Learning strategy selection was assessed in two different inbred strains of mice, C57BL/6 and DBA/2, which are used for developing genetically modified mouse models. Male mice received a training protocol in a water maze using alternating blocks of visible and hidden platform trials, during which mice escaped to a single location. After training, mice were required to choose between the spatial location where the platform had been during training (a place strategy) and a visible platform presented in a new location (a cued/response strategy). Both strains of mice had similar escape performance on the visible and hidden platform trials during training. However, in the strategy preference test, C57BL/6 mice selected a place strategy significantly more often than DBA/2 mice. Because much evidence implicates the hippocampus and striatum as important neural substrates for spatial/place and cued/response learning, respectively, the engagement of the hippocampus was then assessed after either place or cue training by determining levels of cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB) and phosphorylated CREB (pCREB) in these two mouse strains. Results revealed that hippocampal CREB levels in both strains of mice were significantly increased after place in comparison to cued training. However, the relation of hippocampal pCREB levels to training was strain dependent; pCREB was significantly higher in C57BL/6 mice than in DBA/2 mice after place training, while hippocampal pCREB levels did not differ between strains after cued training. These findings indicate that pCREB, specifically associated with place/spatial training, is closely tied to differences in spatial/place strategy preference between C57BL/6 and DBA/2 mice.     

Statistical processing: not so implausible after all

Myczek and Simons (2008) have shown that findings attributed to a statistical mode of perceptual processing can, instead, be explained by focused attention to samples of just a few items. Some new findings raise questions about this claim. (1) Participants, given conditions that would require different focused attention strategies, did no worse when the conditions were randomly mixed than when they were blocked. (2) Participants were significantly worse at estimating the mean size when given small samples than when given the whole display. (3) One plausible suggested strategy--comparing the largest item in each display, rather than the mean size--was not, in fact, used. Distributed attention to sets of similar stimuli, enabling a statistical-processing mode, provides a coherent account of these and other phenomena.     

Applying the Lifestyle Routine Activities Theory to Understand Physical and Nonphysical Peer Victimization

Peer victimization is a serious problem, and understanding where, with whom, and how long victims spend their time is important. Applying the lifestyle routine activities theory (LRAT), this study examines the association between 4 components of LRAT and physical and nonphysical peer victimization. Using the 2007 National Crime Victimization Survey, we examined Poisson and negative binomial regression models to explain whether physical and nonphysical peer victimization was affected by measures of routine activities. Our findings indicate that students’ exposure and proximity to motivated offenders, school environment, capable guardianship, and target attractiveness were associated with risk of peer victimization. Findings also reveal that risk factors varied depending on the type of victimization.     

The role of negative publicity in consumer evaluations of sports stars and their sponsors

This paper aims to specify and test empirically the impact that two types of negative information (immorality and incompetence) about a sports star have on consumers' perceptions of the sports star and the sponsor. The moderating role of game relevance (game‐related and non‐game‐related) and fan identification with a sports star (high identification and low identification) are also investigated. Using a sample of South Korean consumers (n = 249), we found in the experiment that the type of negative information affects participants' attitudes toward the sports star and the sponsor. This result implies that a sports star's involvement in negative events not only damages the star's reputation but also detracts from the value of the sponsor company. The results also show that the two factors moderate the main effects of negative publicity on consumers' perception of the sports star and his or her sponsor. First, the negative publicity about the sports star's functional issues (e.g., a career‐threatening injury) negatively affects consumer attitude toward the sports star and the sponsor more in the out‐of‐game context than in the in‐game situation. Second, bad sports star publicity has a greater negative effect on consumer perception of sponsors for lowly identified than highly identified sports stars, while the moderating effect on consumer perception of the sports star is not significant. Detailed practical implications and academic contributions are discussed. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploratory factor analysis for small samples

Traditionally, two distinct approaches have been employed for exploratory factor analysis: maximum likelihood factor analysis and principal component analysis. A third alternative, called regularized exploratory factor analysis, was introduced recently in the psychometric literature. Small sample size is an important issue that has received considerable discussion in the factor analysis literature. However, little is known about the differential performance of these three approaches to exploratory factor analysis in a small sample size scenario. A simulation study and an empirical example demonstrate that regularized exploratory factor analysis may be recommended over the two traditional approaches, particularly when sample sizes are small (below 50) and the sample covariance matrix is near singular.