Abstract

Aim

Identifying correlates of suicidality is an important goal for suicide researchers because these correlates may predict suicidal behaviors. Psychological tasks that assess sensitivity to the outcomes of actions (i.e., consequence-based learning) have been commonly used by researchers seeking to identify correlates of suicidality. This is likely due to the straightforward integration of the tasks within most theoretical frameworks for understanding suicidality. Contextual factors have been shown to have a substantial effect on responding in behavior-outcome tasks. However, the direct relevance of these factors as determinants of behavior in suicide research is not clear. Thus, the purpose of this review was to assess the role of context in tasks involving behavior-outcome relations in suicide research.

Methods

Four databases were searched using terms from general learning theory. Articles that featured evaluation of tasks with hypothetical or real outcomes to differentiate suicidality were included.

Results

Eighty-two studies met inclusion criteria. Across studies there were 27 different tasks. Most instances of tasks across studies involved rewards (76.9%), while others emphasized punishment (15.7%), social (5.6%), or virtual suicide (1.8%) outcomes. Differentiation of suicidality was detected by 43.4%, 64.7%, 83.3%, and 50% of tasks featuring reward, punishment, social contexts, and virtual suicide respectively. All but five studies were retrospective.

Conclusion

Tasks that more closely mimic contexts and outcomes related to suicide appear to produce more pronounced differentiation of people with suicidality from people without suicidality. The lack of prospective designs is an important limitation of the literature.

• HIGHLIGHTS

• Tasks that involve punishment or social outcomes better discriminate suicidality.

• Reward-based tasks are overused in suicide research.

• The conditioning hypothesis of suicidality is closely aligned with the literature.

• Only 5 of 82 studies incorporated prospective measures.

中文翻译：

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与自杀相关的行为结果心理评估的系统评价

摘要

目的

确定自杀相关因素是自杀研究人员的一个重要目标，因为这些相关因素可能预测自杀行为。评估对行动结果的敏感性的心理任务（即基于结果的学习）已被寻求确定自杀相关性的研究人员普遍使用。这可能是由于将任务直接整合到大多数理解自杀的理论框架中。背景因素已被证明对行为结果任务的反应有重大影响。然而，这些因素作为自杀研究中行为决定因素的直接相关性尚不清楚。因此，本综述的目的是评估背景在自杀研究中涉及行为-结果关系的任务中的作用。

方法

使用一般学习理论中的术语搜索了四个数据库。包括以评估具有假设或真实结果以区分自杀倾向的任务为特色的文章。

结果

八十二项研究符合纳入标准。在整个研究中，有 27 项不同的任务。研究中的大多数任务实例都涉及奖励 (76.9%)，而其他任务则强调惩罚 (15.7%)、社交 (5.6%) 或虚拟自杀 (1.8%) 结果。在具有奖励、惩罚、社会背景和虚拟自杀的任务中，分别有 43.4%、64.7%、83.3% 和 50% 检测到自杀倾向的差异。除了五项研究外，所有研究都是回顾性的。

结论

更密切地模拟与自杀相关的背景和结果的任务似乎会更明显地区分有自杀倾向的人和没有自杀倾向的人。缺乏前瞻性设计是文献的一个重要限制。

• 强调

• 涉及惩罚或社会结果的任务能更好地区分自杀倾向。

• 基于奖励的任务在自杀研究中被过度使用。

• 自杀的条件假设与文献密切相关。

• 82 项研究中只有 5 项采用了前瞻性措施。