The dorsal hippocampus (DH) is critically involved in the acquisition and expression of trace and contextual fear conditioning. NMDA/glutamate receptor-mediated transmission is thought to be one mechanism mediating the plastic changes that support long-term memories in the DH. However, their precise involvement in acquisition and expression processes has not been defined. To examine this issue, the NMDA receptor antagonist, D,L-2-amino-5-phosphonovaleric acid (APV; 10 microg/microl; 0.5 microl), was infused into the DH prior to conditioning and/or testing, using a trace fear conditioning procedure. All rats were tested for freezing to both tone and context in separate, counterbalanced sessions. The three sessions (1 training and 2 test) were separated by approximately 24 h. Using this design, it was possible to assess the role for DH NMDA receptors in the acquisition versus expression of trace and contextual fear conditioning. APV disrupted acquisition, but not expression, of contextual fear conditioning. By contrast, APV attenuated both acquisition and expression of trace fear memories. Thus, DH NMDA receptors appear to contribute to retrieval of some, but not all, fear memories.

Previous research has established that Asian Americans use mental health services less frequently and hold poorer attitudes toward psychological counseling than Caucasians. The authors directly tested whether stigmatizing beliefs regarding mental illness might explain such differential attitudes toward counseling in a South Asian and Caucasian student sample. Using mediation analyses, the authors examined 2 aspects of stigma posited to affect help-seeking attitudes: personal stigmatizing views and perceptions of the public's stigmatizing views directed toward persons with mental illness. First, the authors found that Caucasian (n ϭ 74) college students revealed more positive attitudes toward counseling than did South Asian (n ϭ 54) students. Second, in terms of mediation, increased personal stigma, but not perceived stigma, expressed by South Asians partially mediated and accounted for 32% of the observed difference in attitudes toward counseling services. These findings support a long-standing conjecture in the literature regarding the increased significance of stigma processes on disparities in majority-minority help-seeking attitudes. They also suggest that efforts to reduce disparities in attitudes toward counseling for South Asian students specifically should incorporate interventions to reduce the increased stigma expressed by this community, particularly related to a desire for social distance from persons with a mental illness.

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Background We prospectively followed an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of girls with ADHD (n = 140) and a matched comparison sample (n = 88) from childhood through young adulthood to evaluate developmental trajectories of executive functions (EF) and associations between EF trajectories and dimensional measures of ADHD symptoms. We hypothesized that (a) EF trajectories would be similar in girls both with and without childhood ADHD, with the ADHD group showing greater impairment across time; and (b) changes in EF abilities would predict changes in ADHD symptoms across time, consistent with the theory that ADHD symptom reductions partially result from prefrontally-mediated EF development. Method Latent growth curve models were used to evaluate development of sustained attention, response inhibition, working memory, and global EF abilities, and associations between EF trajectories and ADHD symptom trajectories. Results Girls with childhood-diagnosed ADHD showed greater improvement across development on measures of sustained attention and global EF, but similar rates of improvement on measures of working memory and response inhibition. Changes in the global EF measure predicted changes in both inattentive and hyperactive-impulsive symptoms across time, whereas changes in response inhibition predicted changes in hyperactive-impulsive symptoms; associations between changes in other EF variables and symptoms were not significant. Conclusions Findings suggest variability in patterns of EF improvement over time in females with ADHD histories and indicate that EF development may play a role in symptom change.

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and an acculturation inventory consisting of 15 semantic differential and sociocultural items were administered to Chicano college students. Factor analysis produced a four-dimensional measure of acculturation. The multivariate relationships between the multidimensional measure of acculturation and MMPI validity and clinical scales were investigated by means of canonical correlational analysis. Two of the canonical correlations were significant. Differences in language use, generation and citizenship of head of household (Nationality-Language factor) were related to differences on L, Hs, and MF scales, with less acculturated subjects scoring higher on L and Hs scales and lower on the MF scale. Differences in socioeconomic status (SES factor) and attitudes toward the concept "male" (Male-Potency factor) were related to differences on L, K, and Pd scales, with less acculturated students scoring lower on L and K, and higher on Pd. Implications for future cross-cultural research and the difficulties in the psychological assessment of the heterogeneous Chicano population are discussed.

Psychological autopsy is an investigative technique employed by social scientists to help determine mode of death in equivocal cases. Data derived from interviews with survivors and inspection of public records are employed to arrive at conclusions about the death motivation of the deceased person just prior to his demise. In applying this technique to the study of the death of a famous person, problems emerged that uniquely illustrated its strengths and weaknesses. The equivocal death of a returned POW who spent 5 years in a North Vietnamese prison camp provided the subject for the psychological autopsy described herein. We believe that the results of the psychological autopsy influenced U.S. government policy about returned POWs.

Although the notion that Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) often persists into adulthood is increasingly accepted, important diagnostic questions remain. Using a large (baseline proband n = 140, comparison n = 88) prospectively followed, ethnically diverse female sample, I examined the impacts of (a) informant (i.e., parent-vs. self-report) and (b) diagnostic symptom threshold (i.e., the DSM-IV 6/9 symptoms of inattention [IA] or hyperactivity/impulsivity [H/I] vs. a developmentally referenced criterion [DRC]) on estimates of ADHD persistence from childhood (age range 6-12) into young adulthood (mean age = 19.6 years). Further, I assessed and compared the predictive validity of ADHD status per each informant, as well as via the two different symptom cutoffs, on measures assessing functioning in a number of important domains (e.g., depression, academic achievement, global impairment).Separate 2 x 2 (Wave 1 diagnostic status x Wave 3 diagnostic status) chi-square analyses revealed that per parent report, significantly more probands (44%) than baseline comparison participants (1%) met full ADHD criteria (χ 2 [187] = 42.51, p< 0.001, φ = 0.47). Significantly more probands (22%) than comparisons (2%; χ 2 [209] = 15.97, p< 0.001, φ = 0.28) met full criteria via young adult self-report as well. Informant diagnostic concordance was significant, but of a small effect size (κ = .22). Using a series of hierarchical multiple regression analyses and controlling for key covariates, parent-reported ADHD was found to be independently associated with poorer outcomes on eight of nine considered measures (|β|'s ranging from 0.18 to 0.61). Self-reported ADHD was independently associated only with lower math scores (|β| = .18).As in past research, the DRC was set at two SD above the comparison participants' mean symptom number, yielding a diagnostic threshold of 4/9 H/I and 5/9 IA symptoms. Via the DSM-IV cutoff, ADHD was estimated to persist in 55.9% of baseline probands; via the DRC, this estimate rose to 61.4%. One-way ANCOVA models were used to test mean differences on outcome measures for participants who met the DSM-IV threshold, those who only met the DRC ("DRC-only"), and those who met neither threshold. All models were significant (all Fs >6.50, all ps < .01). DRC-only participants endorsed poorer outcomes of large to very large effect sizes 2 across seven of the study's nine outcome measures, compared to participants who met neither cutoff. Further, DRC-only participants did not differ on any outcome measure from those who met the higher DSM-IV threshold.The present findings add to extant research in suggesting that (a) parent-report yields higher ADHD persistence estimates than young adult self-report and (b) parent-reported persistence remains a more potent predictor of young adult functioning than self-report. Findings also suggest that self-reported ADHD persistence rates may be higher in young adult females than in males, although this suggestion merits further investigation. Further, findings suggest th...

This review assesses the present state of knowledge regarding victims of suicide, accidental death, and homicide and analyzes the formal characteristics of the empirical research models that have yielded this body of knowledge. It is shown that our knowledge of these victims and their circumstances is fragmented because few investigators have studied more than one mode of violent death and because few studies have examined data from both the individual and environmental levels of analysis. An analysis of the research models that have been used to study violent death reveals inherent limitations. Specifically, these empirical approaches are shown to have particular deficiencies in terms of their ability to reflect interactions between environmental and personal factors. In view of these problems, a research model better suited to interactionist analyses is developed, and its usefulness for further research is discussed.