This research report examines self-continuity and its role as a protective factor against suicide. First, we review the notions of personal and cultural continuity and their relevance to understanding suicide among First Nations youth. The central theoretical idea developed here is that, because it is constitutive of what it means to have or be a self to somehow count oneself as continuous in time, anyone whose identity is undermined by radical personal and cultural change is put at special risk to suicide for the reason that they lose those future commitments that are necessary to guarantee appropriate care and concern for their own well-being. It is for just such reasons that adolescents and young adults-who are living through moments of especially dramatic change-constitute such a high risk group. This generalized period of increased risk during adolescence can be made even more acute within communities that lack a concomitant sense of cultural continuity that might otherwise support the efforts of young persons to develop more adequate self-continuity warranting practices. Next, we present data to demonstrate that, while certain indigenous or First Nations groups do in fact suffer dramatically elevated suicide rates, such rates vary widely across British Columbia's nearly 200 aboriginal groups: some communities show rates 800 times the national average, while in others suicide is essentially unknown. Finally, we demonstrate that these variable incidence rates are strongly associated with the degree to which BC's 196 bands are engaged in community practices that are employed as markers of a collective effort to rehabilitate and vouchsafe the cultural continuity of these groups. Communities that have taken active steps to preserve and rehabilitate their own cultures are shown to be those in which youth suicide rates are dramatically lower.

One hundred and sixty-six studies are reviewed of predictions of outcome of individual psychotherapy with adult patients. Predictors arc classed as patient, therapist, or treatment factors; the number of predictors which were significant versus nonsignificant are tallied. By far, the largest number deals with patient factors-relatively few with therapist or treatment. Those patient factors which were most often significantly associated with improvement are psychological health or adequacy of personality functioning, absence of schizoid trends, motivation, intelligence, anxiety, educational and social assets, and experiencing (rated from early sessons). Therapist factors are experience, attitude and interest patterns, empathy, and similarity of patient and therapist. The treatment factors revealed one main trend: the number of sessions. The review ends with a methodological evaluation and a suggestion for crossvalidation of the main predictors.

2 groups of 5–8‐year‐olds were examined in an effort to explore the developing relations between false belief understanding and an awareness of the individualized nature of personal taste, on the one hand, and, on the other, a maturing grasp of the interpretive character of the knowing process. In Study 1, 20 children between 5 and 8 all behaved in accordance with hypotheses by proving to be indistinguishable in their already good grasp of the possibility of false beliefs and in their common assumption that differences of opinion concerning matters of taste are legitimate expressions of personal preferences. By contrast, only the 7‐ and 8‐year‐old children gave evidence of recognizing that ambiguous stimuli especially allow for warrantable differences of interpretation. Study 2 replicated and extended these findings with a group of 48 5‐8‐year‐old subjects, again showing that while 5‐year‐olds easily pass a standard test of false belief understanding, only children of 7 or 8 ordinarily evidence an appreciation of the interpretive character of the knowing process.

This study measured and attempted to remediate deficits in the role-taking skills of 45 chronically delinquent boys. After documenting significant differences in role taking between the delinquent subjects and a group of 45 nondelinquents, the delinquent subjects were assigned to one of three treatment conditions. One third were enrolled in an experimental program which employed drama and the making of video films as a vehicle for providing remedial training in role taking. The remaining subjects were assigned to either placebo or nontreatment control conditions. Preintervention and postintervention comparisons indicated that only subjects in the experimental group improved significantly in their role-taking ability. An 18-month follow-up study showed these improvements to be associated with significant reductions in delinquent behavior.

This research report summarizes the results of a study into the abilities of 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old children to deceptively lead others into false beliefs, and is intended to help arbitrate a growing controversy as to when young persons first acquire some theory-like understanding of other minds. Utilizing a novel hide-and-seek board game as a context within which to observe children's spontaneous use of deceptive strategies, a total of 50 subjects between the ages of 2 1/2 and 5 were tested. In contrast to the competing findings of others, which are claimed to establish that children younger than approximately 4 suffer a cognitive deficit that wholly blocks them from the possibility of entertaining any sort of contrastive beliefs about beliefs, the results of this study show that even 2 1/2-year-olds are capable of already successfully employing a range of deceptive strategies that both trade upon an awareness of the possibility of false beliefs and presuppose some already operative theory of mind.