@article{ref1,
title="Decomposing implicit associations about life and death improves our understanding of suicidal behavior",
journal="Suicide and life-threatening behavior",
year="2020",
author="O'Shea, Brian A. and Glenn, Jeffrey J. and Millner, Alexander J. and Teachman, Bethany A. and Nock, Matthew K.",
volume="50",
number="5",
pages="1065-1074",
abstract="The Death/Suicide Implicit Association Test (IAT) is effective at detecting and prospectively predicting suicidal thoughts and behaviors. However, traditional IAT scoring procedures used in all prior studies (i.e., D-scores) provide an aggregate score that is inherently relative, obfuscating the separate associations (i.e., &quot;Me = Death/Suicide,&quot; &quot;Me = Life&quot;) that might be most relevant for understanding suicide-related implicit cognition. Here, we decompose the D-scores and validate a new analytic technique called the Decomposed D-scores (&quot;DD-scores&quot;) that creates separate scores for each category (&quot;Me,&quot; &quot;Not Me&quot;) in the IAT. Across large online volunteer samples (N > 12,000), results consistently showed that a weakened association between &quot;Me = Life&quot; is more strongly predictive of having a history of suicidal attempts than is a stronger association between &quot;Me = Death/Suicide.&quot; These findings replicated across three different versions of the IAT and were observed when calculated using both reaction times and error rates. However, among those who previously attempted suicide, a strengthened association between &quot;Me = Death&quot; is more strongly predictive of the recency of a suicide attempt. These results suggest that decomposing traditional IAT D-scores can offer new insights into the mental associations that may underlie clinical phenomena and may help to improve the prediction, and ultimately the prevention, of these clinical outcomes.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0363-0234",
doi="10.1111/sltb.12652",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/sltb.12652"
}