Elevated suicide rates at high altitude: sociodemographic and health issues may be to blame

Suicide rates are higher at high altitudes; some hypothesize that hypoxia is the cause. We examined 8,871 suicides recorded in 2006 in 15 states by the National Violent Death Reporting System, with the victim's home county altitude determined from the National Elevation Dataset through FIPS code matching. We grouped cases by altitude (low<1000m; middle=1000-1999m; high≥2000m). Of reported suicides, 5% were at high and 83% at low altitude, but unadjusted suicide rates per 100,000 population were higher at high (17.7) than at low (5.7) altitude. High and low altitude victims differed with respect to race, ethnicity, rural residence, intoxication, depressed mood preceding the suicide, firearm use and recent financial, job, legal, or interpersonal problems. Even after multivariate adjustment, there were significant differences in personal, mental health, and suicide characteristics among altitude groups. Compared to low altitude victims, high altitude victims had higher odds of having family or friends report of a depressed mood preceding the suicide (OR 1.78; 95%CI:1.46-2.17) and having a crisis within 2weeks before death (OR 2.00; 95%CI:1.63-1.46). Suicide victims at high and low altitudes differ significantly by multiple demographic, psychiatric, and suicide characteristics; these factors, rather than hypoxia or altitude itself, may explain increased suicide rates at high altitude.     

What is the deficit in phonological processing deficits: auditory sensitivity, masking, or category formation?

Although children with language impairments, including those associated with reading, usually demonstrate deficits in phonological processing, there is minimal agreement as to the source of those deficits. This study examined two problems hypothesized to be possible sources: either poor auditory sensitivity to speech-relevant acoustic properties, mainly formant transitions, or enhanced masking of those properties. Adults and 8-year-olds with and without phonological processing deficits (PPD) participated. Children with PPD demonstrated weaker abilities than children with typical language development (TLD) in reading, sentence recall, and phonological awareness. Dependent measures were word recognition, discrimination of spectral glides, and phonetic judgments based on spectral and temporal cues. All tasks were conducted in quiet and in noise. Children with PPD showed neither poorer auditory sensitivity nor greater masking than adults and children with TLD, but they did demonstrate an unanticipated deficit in category formation for nonspeech sounds. These results suggest that these children may have an underlying deficit in perceptually organizing sensory information to form coherent categories.     

Age-dependent consequences of seizures: relationship to seizure frequency, brain damage, and circuitry reorganization

Seizures in the developing brain pose a challenge to the clinician. In addition to the acute effects of the seizure, there are questions regarding the impact of severe or recurrent seizures on the developing brain. Whether provoked seizures cause brain damage, synaptic reorganization, or epilepsy is of paramount importance to patients and physicians. Such questions are especially relevant in the decision to treat or not treat febrile seizures, a common occurrence in childhood. These clinical questions have been addressed using clinical and animal research. The largest prospective studies do not find a causal connection between febrile seizures and later temporal lobe epilepsy. The immature brain seems relatively resistant to the seizure-induced neuronal loss and new synapse formation seen in the mature brain. Laboratory investigations using a developmental rat model corresponding to human febrile seizures find that even though structural changes do not result from hyperthermic seizures, synaptic function may be chronically altered. The increased understanding of the cellular and synaptic mechanisms of seizure-induced damage may benefit patients and clinicians in the form of improved therapies to attenuate damage and changes induced by seizures and to prevent the development of epilepsy.     

Culture in the context of intercultural negotiation.

This study explores culture's effect on behaviors and outcomes in intercultural negotiation and examines how those effects are moderated by role. Eighty U.S. and international students took part in a previously developed negotiation task (Pruitt, 1981) and completed Hui and Triandis's (1986) individualism‐collectivism (INDCOL) scale. Negotiation interactions were coded for information sharing, offers, and distributive tactics. Findings show that a negotiation dyad's collectivism is positively associated with higher joint profit. The effects of culture on both communication behaviors and joint outcomes, however, differ by role of the negotiator. In particular, seller collectivism has larger and more consistent effects on communication behavior and joint profit than buyer collectivism. Results support a ‘culture in context’ perspective of negotiation that takes into account negotiator qualities, contextual and structural features of the negotiation, and mediating processes in addition to cultural values.     

Predicting individual differences in low‐income children's executive control from early to middle childhood

The present longitudinal study tested the roles of early childhood executive control (EC) as well as exposure to poverty‐related adversity at family and school levels as key predictors of low‐income children's EC in elementary school (n = 391). Findings suggest that children's EC difficulties in preschool and lower family income from early to middle childhood are robust predictors of later EC difficulties as rated by teachers in 2nd and 3rd grades. Findings also suggest enrollment in unsafe elementary schools is significantly predictive of higher levels of teacher‐rated EC difficulty, but only for those children who showed initially elevated levels of EC difficulty in early childhood. Implications for scientific models of cognitive development and poverty‐related adversity are discussed.     

Uniforms affect the accuracy of children's eyewitness identification decisions

A substantial proportion of line‐up identifications involving child eyewitnesses in the UK are conducted by police officers wearing uniform. This study examined the possibility that wearing a uniform constitutes an authority cue that adversely affects a child's ability to make accurate eyewitness identifications. Sixty participants aged 9–10 years old witnessed a staged crime and were later asked to identify a ‘burglar’ from a simultaneous line‐up using a 2 (uniform: present vs. absent) × 2 (target: present vs. absent) design. Children in the uniform present conditions made significantly more choices than children in the uniform absent conditions. More importantly, in the presence of a uniform, children made significantly more false identifications in target‐absent line‐ups. Analysis of supplementary, identification‐related variables (identification time and confidence, state anxiety) suggested that (1) the children experienced uncertainty if the target was absent from the line‐up, but (2) this uncertainty was not expressed when the line‐up administrator wore a uniform, leading to an increase in false identifications. Implications for line‐up administration procedures for children are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Marital therapy: The importance of the assessment of the individuals on personality tests

The importance of assessing individuals in a marital conflict is seen as vital. The theoretical position that there are big ‘T’ and little ‘t’ individuals indicated that some members of the relationship are more eager for thrill seeking and being outgoing while little ‘t’ individuals are more eager for harmony and conservative personality traits. This has long been established. There are extremes of this but also these traits are on a continuum. While opposites attract in a relationship, the more individuals have in common, the more likely the marital relationship will work except in one area, that of seeking control or dominance. Here, opposites are likely to be more successful. Areas where there are likely to be difficulties between big ‘T’ and little ‘t’ individuals are in the rates of infidelity where big T's may predominate, also in sexual dissatisfaction and problems, attitudes to love, marital abuse and spouse abuse, child rearing issues, drug and alcohol abuse, the handling of money, household chores and division of labour, recreation interests, and religious differences. While not all of these may come into conflict or may be part of a big ‘T’ or little ‘t’ personality, there is a weighing in one direction rather than in the other. In order for rehabilitation between marital partners, it is important for each to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the other's personality, be they big ‘T’ or little ‘t’ individuals. Approaches by counsellors, psychologists to these individual differences are discussed.     

THE CONTROL OF BIAS IN RATINGS: A THEORY OF RATING

Based on several years of research and a careful analysis of the rating process Wherry developed a theory of rating. An accurate rating is seen as being a function of three major components: Performance of the ratee, observation of that performance by the rater, and the recall of those observations by the rater. Cast in a mold of classical psychometric theory each of these components is seen as consisting of a systematic portion and a random portion. The systematic portion of each component is further broken down. The performance of the ratee is a combination of true ability or aptitude for the job and the influence of the environment. What the rater observes is a function the performance of the ratee and bias of observation and what the rater recalls is a result of those observations combined with a bias of recall. The development of the theory of rating unfolds by defining the various factors that affect each of these components in a series of linear equations. Various theorems and corollaries are proposed which should lead to a maximization of the true ability component of the ratee and minimize environmental influence and the bias and error components. The theorems and corollaries suggest testable hypotheses for the researcher in performance evaluation.