No Evidence of Suicide Increase Following Terrorist Attacks in the United States: An Interrupted Time‐Series Analysis of September 11 and Oklahoma City

There is substantial evidence of detrimental psychological sequelae following disasters, including terrorist attacks. The effect of these events on extreme responses such as suicide, however, is unclear. We tested competing hypotheses about such effects by employing autoregressive integrated moving average techniques to model the impact of September 11 and the Oklahoma City bombing on monthly suicide counts at the local, state, and national level. Unlike prior studies that provided conflicting evidence, rigorous time series techniques revealed no support for an increase or decrease in suicides following these events. We conclude that while terrorist attacks produce subsequent psychological morbidity and may affect self and collective efficacy well beyond their immediate impact, these effects are not strong enough to influence levels of suicide mortality.     

Word recognition in developmental dyslexia: A connectionist interpretation

We present a study of the accuracy, consistency, and speed of word naming in a dyslexic boy, JM, who has severe impairments in the ability to use sub-lexical, phonological reading strategies. For words that he can recognise, JM's naming latencies do not differ from those of control subjects matched for reading age, and he is generally consistent from one occasion to the next. He can also match printed homophones with their definitions--a skill that requires access to well-specified orthographic representations. The data are interpreted as evidence for the creation of efficient recognition devices for words within JM's sight vocabulary. However, he shows a continuing inability to use phonological decoding strategies to deal with words that he cannot recognize by sight. Overall we argue our results pose problems for stage models of reading development, and that they may best be interpreted within a connectionist framework of the development of word recognition skills.     

Physiological foundations of behaviour

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Physiological foundations of behaviour

     

Remembering Your Parents: Reflections on the Retrospective Method

In the present paper, I critique the use of the retrospective method when it is used as a proxy for actual longitudinal data on personality development. Studies on the constructive nature of memory cast strong doubts about the meaning of retrospective data. There are good reasons, both theoretical and empirical, to distrust the accuracy of such recall concerning parenting, whether recalled by parents, children, or siblings. Instead of using the method as a shortcut to developmental data, studies examining individual differences in accuracy and distortion and the factors that moderate them may inform us of the various meanings of retrospective data.     

Cognitive Tendencies in Analogical Forecasting1

This article attempts to identify some cognitive tendencies involved in analogical forecasting of the outcomes of medical treatment. Sixty-one medical doctors were involved in two experimental tasks concerned with prediction of the outcomes of a new medical treatment when the result with a first patient was known to be either negative or positive. The same subjects were also tested by the Short Optimism/Pessimism Questionnaire (SO/PQ) to explore relationships between life attitude and the cognitive tendencies observed in the experiment. The following findings were reported: (1) The first step of forecasting was recognized as a Data Evaluation Process (DEP), where the physician decides if the given data are sufficient to forecast the result of the same treatment with a new patient. (2) Two cognitive tendencies were identified: non-data-suggested tendency—drawing a conclusion opposite to the data given; and data-suggested tendency—drawing an optimistic conclusion when forecasting from “positive” data and a pessimistic conclusion when forecasting from “negative” data. The second tendency appeared to be dominant; however, the “positive” data created a stronger atmosphere to draw conclusions on a negative outcome. (3) It was stated that analogical forecasting involves two integrated processes, i.e., concluding and asserting. If the integration process is not complete, the subject is drawing analogical conclusions with a low confidence. (4) An optimistic life attitude appeared to be an important factor in determining analogical forecasting.