Psychometric validation of the French version of the Suicidal Ideation Attributes Scale (SIDAS-FR).

The purpose of this study was to validate in French the Suicidal Ideation Attributes Scale (SIDAS) using an online community survey that was completed by 2304 French-speaking Quebec participants (adolescents and adults). The SIDAS-FR demonstrated high internal consistency (α = .83), a unifactorial structure, and strong convergent validity with relevant constructs. Cutoff scores of ≥13 for moderate severity and ≥20 for high severity of suicidal ideations were optimal. The excellent psychometric properties of the French-Canadian version of the SIDAS support its use as an effective tool for online screening of suicidal ideations, for both adolescents and adults.

Coping, Social Support, and Suicide Attempts Among Homeless Adolescents.

Background: Homeless youth are a population at risk for suicidal behavior. Despite growing knowledge about risk factors, protective factors against suicidal behavior among this population are still poorly understood. Aims: To explore differences in coping and social support between homeless adolescents who attempted suicide and those who did not. Method: In total, 76 homeless adolescents from eight different shelters provided information about their suicidal behaviors over the previous year and filled out coping and social support questionnaires. Results: Homeless adolescents who had not attempted suicide perceived more social support (tangible assistance and guidance). Conversely, youth who had attempted suicide reported using more nonproductive strategies of coping (tension reduction, keep to self, and self-blame). Tangible assistance and tension reduction were found to be the strongest predictors. Limitations: As most of these youth were not homeless for a long time, care should be taken in generalizing these results to adolescents with longer histories of homelessness. Conclusion: Productive coping does not seem to constitute a sufficient personal resource to protect homeless adolescents from suicide attempts. Nonproductive coping could, however, be considered a serious risk factor. Consequently, promoting homeless youths' ability to find environmental resources, especially tangible assistance, could be the most valuable approach.

Callosal Sensitivity to Short-Range Stimulus Orientation and Long-Range Stimulus Context Orientation: Tachistoscopic Evidence.

To study local-global relationships in interhemispheric interactions, tachistoscopically presented pairs of lines (1.15 degrees) were compared for their relative orientation by 48 neurotypical adults. Orientations of line stimuli (local aspect of the task) were vertical, horizontal, forward slash or backslash, as were those of the interstimulus axes. The latter created a global context that could influence line discrimination. Stimulus pairs were presented within a field (not requiring callosal participation for line orientation comparison) or one on each side of the visual field meridian (requiring callosal participation). The primary purpose of the design was to determine whether local or global violations of stimulus "homotopy" across the meridian would impose costs of interhemispheric integration. The rationale for this expectation is that the fiber projection of the corpus callosum is highly symmetric across the midsagittal plane (i.e., homotopic). The expected "callosal homotopy" effect was significantly upheld as a whole but broke down or became extravagant in certain specific conditions, with specific costs of interhemispheric integration varying from null to a highly significant 20-ms as a function of interactions of interstimulus and stimulus orientations. The corpus callosum seems to be particularly sensitive to local stimulus orientation in interaction with long-range stimulus context orientation.

Psychometric properties of three measures of protective factors for depression and suicidal behaviour among adolescents.

OBJECTIVES: To assess the reliability of French versions of the Adolescent Coping Scale (ACS), the Reasons for Living Inventory for Adolescents (RFL-A), and the Spirituality Scale (SS); to examine the construct validity of these psychometric instruments; and to determine their convergent validity with French versions of the Life Events Questionnaire for Adolescents (LEQ-A), the Beck Depression Inventory-Second Edition (BDI-II), and the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS) among French-Canadian adolescents. METHODS: Participants were 429 adolescents from high schools (n = 283) and the Mood Disorder Clinic (n = 146) in Montreal. The instruments were translated into French following the back-translation method. The internal consistency was assessed through Cronbach alpha coefficients. Exploratory analyses were conducted to document the content of their dimensions. Convergent validity was examined by correlating the ACS, the RFL-A, and the SS with the French versions of the LEQ-A, the BDI-II, and the BHS. RESULTS: The findings confirm that the ACS, RFL-A, and SS are psychometric instruments well suited to assess protective factors for depression and suicidal behaviour among French-speaking adolescents in community and clinical settings. However, results must be interpreted with some circumspection as 2 SS subscales obtained reliability coefficients in the moderate range only and the instructions for the RFL-A were reframed in response to ethical considerations. CONCLUSIONS: Our results add to those already available on the original English versions of the ACS, RFL-A, and SS and advance the knowledge of the psychometric properties of protective measures.

New variations of intrahemispheric and interhemispheric processing indexed by the dimond paradigm.

We report 2 experiments designed to demonstrate that unilateral tachistoscopic stimulation would yield a response time (RT) advantage over bilateral stimulation in a simple experiment, whereas the opposite pattern would occur in a complex version of the same task, as predicted by the intrahemispheric resource limitation model of Banich and colleagues. Experiment 1 was a go/no-go task in which participants had to press a key when two shapes (circles or squares) were identical on the computer screen. A unilateral field advantage was obtained that was accentuated in several task conditions that yielded overall longer RTs, mostly in the bilateral condition. Experiment 2 was similar but required a more complex judgment: The go trials were to 2 stimuli identical on 1 dimension (shape or color) but not both or neither. The RTs were significantly and substantially longer than in Experiment 1 and exhibited a nonsignificant bilateral field advantage, which differed significantly from the unilateral field advantage obtained in Experiment 1. These results support the intrahemispheric resource limitation model of Banich and colleagues. However, several within-experiment effects are in direct opposition to this model and are best explained as limitations of commissural relay of perceptual information.