Challenges and Concerns in Assisting Indigenous People with Suicide Attempts.

There has been an alarming rise in suicide attempts among Indigenous people in Brazil, leading to national concerns about the provision of psychosocial care and professional support. In this study, we make an attempt to understand the perspectives of professionals in assisting Indigenous people from a specific group, the Iny, and identify the specific challenges of addressing issues through the mental health care system related specifically to suicide prevention. Using a qualitative approach with participant observation and semi-structured interviews, the research included Indigenous and their families assisted by three public institutions and the professionals that work in public psychosocial assistance. For this paper, we examined the tensions, conflicts, and challenges of the healthcare professionals at one of these institutions, a Psychosocial Care Center in the state of Goiás/Brazil. For data analysis, a sociocultural protocol was built to identify dialogical tensions between the different thematic fields of mental health care. The findings reveal that the theme of suicide was an important concern in the daily work with the community. Still, there were significant issues related to the assumptions, methodology, and meaning of care between the professionals and the community, on account of which the objective of the programme to address suicide attempts had not been effective or successful. The discussion of the results raises several critical questions about the possible contributions of dialogical cultural psychology in the context of Indigenous health. Also, it has important implications for the global issue of the wellbeing of Indigenous people.

Musings about Metaphors and Models: the Need to Put Psychology Together Again.

Zagaria, Andò & Zennaro (2020) raise several issues for the study of the human condition, highlighting the precarious status of psychology on account of a core weakness: The absence of consensus about fundamental concepts. Using the metaphor of a giant, albeit one with feet of clay, the authors develop an argument about how evolutionary psychology is the best possible candidate to advance a unified paradigm on account of theoretical consistency. In this commentary we examine the metaphors and models invoked in the article and suggest alternative perspectives on the grounds that a grand singular solution and consistency in definitions are not urgent requirements for understanding the complexity, diversity, and nuances of the human condition. We argue that plurality and low consensus can be taken as productive and functional; precisely because psychological and cultural phenomena are always characterized by uncertainty in irreversible time. Cultural psychology is a valuable paradigm, inclusive of universal and individual processes in ways that provide more appropriate resolution for cultural pluralism. Every definition of psychological phenomena, however obscure and contested, has arisen from theoretical speculation arising from a specific perspective.

Correction to: Age Patterns in Risk Taking Across the World.

In the original publication, the legends for Figs 4 and 5 were incorrect, such that each regression line was mislabeled with the incorrect country. Below are the correctly labeled countries. The authors apologize for any confusion or misinformation this error may have caused.

Bruner and Beyond: a Commentary.

The philosophy of Bruner transcends traditional boundaries in the study of the human mind with a new kind of psychology, one that frees the thinking mind from its opposition to feelings and also from the limitations of being considered an 'inside-the-head' phenomenon. It is with active engagement with the outside world that a child develops its understanding. In this engagement with the outside world, the developmental construction of thought is actively created through the use of symbols. The cultural context, images, and languages a person experiences are thus considered to be formative in thinking. Opposing the notion of readiness, Bruner believed children to be capable of complex thought, and the dynamics of these developments were guided by meaning-making. The significance of meaning in Psychology was resurrected in his writing. Furthermore, the notion of narrative as constructive in facilitating the organisation and management of mental processes is invaluable. In this article, we bring a commentary on two articles, one that relates to the study of scaffolding of emotion regulation by parents of adolescents and the other on the narrative understanding of selfhood of individuals with autism.

Adolescents' cognitive capacity reaches adult levels prior to their psychosocial maturity: Evidence for a "maturity gap" in a multinational, cross-sectional sample.

All countries distinguish between minors and adults for various legal purposes. Recent U.S. Supreme Court cases concerning the legal status of juveniles have consulted psychological science to decide where to draw these boundaries. However, little is known about the robustness of the relevant research, because it has been conducted largely in the U.S. and other Western countries. To the extent that lawmakers look to research to guide their decisions, it is important to know how generalizable the scientific conclusions are. The present study examines 2 psychological phenomena relevant to legal questions about adolescent maturity: cognitive capacity, which undergirds logical thinking, and psychosocial maturity, which comprises individuals' ability to restrain themselves in the face of emotional, exciting, or risky stimuli. Age patterns of these constructs were assessed in 5,227 individuals (50.7% female), ages 10-30 (M = 17.05, SD = 5.91) from 11 countries. Importantly, whereas cognitive capacity reached adult levels around age 16, psychosocial maturity reached adult levels beyond age 18, creating a "maturity gap" between cognitive and psychosocial development. Juveniles may be capable of deliberative decision making by age 16, but even young adults may demonstrate "immature" decision making in arousing situations. We argue it is therefore reasonable to have different age boundaries for different legal purposes: 1 for matters in which cognitive capacity predominates, and a later 1 for matters in which psychosocial maturity plays a substantial role. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Limbal schwannoma: Clinicopathological study of a case with review of literature.

Schwannomas involving the perilimbal conjunctiva is an extremely rare clinical entity and has been reported scantily in literature. In this case, a 27-year-old healthy female presented with a pinkish smooth globular mass involving the limbus in the superonasal quadrant of the left eye. The mass was completely excised and histopathology revealed an encapsulated tumor, with cells displaying elongated nuclei, bland chromatin, and few Verocay bodies with palisaded nuclei, suggestive of schwannoma. Immunohistochemistry showed strong S100 positivity. This case thus highlights schwannoma as a differential diagnosis of limbal masses.

Bringing the Real World Into Developmental Science: A Commentary on Weber, Fernald, and Diop (2017).

This article examines the parent intervention program evaluated by Weber et al. (2017) and argues that there are scientific and ethical problems with such intervention efforts in applied developmental science. Scientifically, these programs rely on data from a small and narrow sample of the world's population; assume the existence of fixed developmental pathways; and pit scientific knowledge against indigenous knowledge. The authors question the critical role of talk as solely providing the rich cognitive stimulation important to school success, and the critical role of primary caregivers as teachers of children's verbal competency. Ethically, these programs do not sufficiently explore how an intervention in one aspect of child care will affect the community's culturally organized patterns of child care.

The Myth of Universal Sensitive Responsiveness: Comment on Mesman et al. (2017).

This article considers claims of Mesman et al. (2017) that sensitive responsiveness as defined by Ainsworth, while not uniformly expressed across cultural contexts, is universal. Evidence presented demonstrates that none of the components of sensitive responsiveness (i.e., which partner takes the lead, whose point of view is primary, and the turn-taking structure of interactions) or warmth are universal. Mesman and colleagues' proposal that sensitive responsiveness is "providing for infant needs" is critiqued. Constructs concerning caregiver quality must be embedded within a nexus of cultural logic, including caregiving practices, based on ecologically valid childrearing values and beliefs. Sensitive responsiveness, as defined by Mesman and attachment theorists, is not universal. Attachment theory and cultural or cross-cultural psychology are not built on common ground.

Around the world, adolescence is a time of heightened sensation seeking and immature self-regulation.

The dual systems model of adolescent risk-taking portrays the period as one characterized by a combination of heightened sensation seeking and still-maturing self-regulation, but most tests of this model have been conducted in the United States or Western Europe. In the present study, these propositions are tested in an international sample of more than 5000 individuals between ages 10 and 30 years from 11 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, using a multi-method test battery that includes both self-report and performance-based measures of both constructs. Consistent with the dual systems model, sensation seeking increased between preadolescence and late adolescence, peaked at age 19, and declined thereafter, whereas self-regulation increased steadily from preadolescence into young adulthood, reaching a plateau between ages 23 and 26. Although there were some variations in the magnitude of the observed age trends, the developmental patterns were largely similar across countries.

Age Patterns in Risk Taking Across the World.

Epidemiological data indicate that risk behaviors are among the leading causes of adolescent morbidity and mortality worldwide. Consistent with this, laboratory-based studies of age differences in risk behavior allude to a peak in adolescence, suggesting that adolescents demonstrate a heightened propensity, or inherent inclination, to take risks. Unlike epidemiological reports, studies of risk taking propensity have been limited to Western samples, leaving questions about the extent to which heightened risk taking propensity is an inherent or culturally constructed aspect of adolescence. In the present study, age patterns in risk-taking propensity (using two laboratory tasks: the Stoplight and the BART) and real-world risk taking (using self-reports of health and antisocial risk taking) were examined in a sample of 5227 individuals (50.7% female) ages 10-30 (M = 17.05 years, SD = 5.91) from 11 Western and non-Western countries (China, Colombia, Cyprus, India, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the US). Two hypotheses were tested: (1) risk taking follows an inverted-U pattern across age groups, peaking earlier on measures of risk taking propensity than on measures of real-world risk taking, and (2) age patterns in risk taking propensity are more consistent across countries than age patterns in real-world risk taking. Overall, risk taking followed the hypothesized inverted-U pattern across age groups, with health risk taking evincing the latest peak. Age patterns in risk taking propensity were more consistent across countries than age patterns in real-world risk taking. Results suggest that although the association between age and risk taking is sensitive to measurement and culture, around the world, risk taking is generally highest among late adolescents.

Puberty Predicts Approach But Not Avoidance on the Iowa Gambling Task in a Multinational Sample.

According to the dual systems model of adolescent risk taking, sensation seeking and impulse control follow different developmental trajectories across adolescence and are governed by two different brain systems. The authors tested whether different underlying processes also drive age differences in reward approach and cost avoidance. Using a modified Iowa Gambling Task in a multinational, cross-sectional sample of 3,234 adolescents (ages 9-17; M = 12.87, SD = 2.36), pubertal maturation, but not age, predicted reward approach, mediated through higher sensation seeking. In contrast, age, but not pubertal maturation, predicted increased cost avoidance, mediated through greater impulse control. These findings add to evidence that adolescent behavior is best understood as the product of two interacting, but independently developing, brain systems.

Interaction of reward seeking and self-regulation in the prediction of risk taking: A cross-national test of the dual systems model.

In the present analysis, we test the dual systems model of adolescent risk taking in a cross-national sample of over 5,200 individuals aged 10 through 30 (M = 17.05 years, SD = 5.91) from 11 countries. We examine whether reward seeking and self-regulation make independent, additive, or interactive contributions to risk taking, and ask whether these relations differ as a function of age and culture. To compare across cultures, we conduct 2 sets of analyses: 1 comparing individuals from Asian and Western countries, and 1 comparing individuals from low- and high-GDP countries. Results indicate that reward seeking and self-regulation have largely independent associations with risk taking and that the influences of each variable on risk taking are not unique to adolescence, but that their link to risk taking varies across cultures. (PsycINFO Database Record

Reactions to Receiving a Gift-Maternal Scaffolding and Cultural Learning in Berlin and Delhi.

This study shows how Berlin (n = 35) and Delhi (n = 28) mothers scaffold a common and highly scripted social situation, namely gift giving, and enable cultural learning in 19-month-olds. Using modeling and prompting to encourage appropriate responses, mothers took culture-specific directions during scaffolding that were in line with the broader cultural model as assessed by maternal socialization goals (SGs). Whereas Berlin mothers prioritized autonomous SGs, Delhi mothers emphasized autonomous and relational SGs to similar degrees. During scaffolding, Berlin mothers focused on maximizing positive affect and acknowledging the gift, whereas Delhi mothers prompted toddlers to acknowledge the giver more often. Furthermore, there were differences in toddlers' behavior in line with these culture-specific scripts guiding gift giving.

Role of Histological Criteria and Immunohistochemical Markers in Predicting Risk of Malignancy in Parathyroid Neoplasms.

Parathyroid carcinoma (PC) is a rare neoplasm accounting for 0.5-6 % of primary hyperparathyroidism. Histological criteria are currently considered as established means to diagnose malignancy in parathyroid neoplasms; however, it does not accurately predict the risk of aggressive behaviour of PC. Immunohistochemical (IHC) markers have been used in the literature with variable results. This work was planned to study whether IHC markers would have any added advantage over histology in predicting outcome in parathyroid neoplasms. Two hundred twenty-seven parathyroid neoplasms were reviewed according to older and revised histological criteria. IHC was performed for parafibromin, APC, galectin-3, PGP9.5 and Ki67. Diagnostic categories were correlated with clinical, biochemical, histological features and IHC markers. Chi-square test was used to analyse categorical variables. Review of histology by earlier and revised criteria showed a change in diagnosis of five cases of atypical adenoma (15.1 %), all of which were diagnosed as carcinoma according to earlier criteria. Change in diagnosis did not affect behaviour of disease as none of the cases showed recurrence or metastasis on follow-up. Combination of PF, Gal-3 and PGP9.5 showed 50 % sensitivity, 97.9 % specificity and 95.4 % predictive accuracy for PC. Histological criteria still remains the most established method for predicting risk of malignancy in parathyroid neoplasms irrespective of whether old or revised criteria are used. Combination of positive (Gal-3, PGP9.5) and negative (PF) IHC markers may be used as an adjunct to histology in histological, atypical and malignant parathyroid neoplasms to obviate the need for repeated follow-up.