Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Suicide Life Threat Behav. 2021 Dec;51(6):1259-1271. doi: 10.1111/sltb.12808. Epub 2021 Oct 11.
Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a severe problem, and its prevalence is increasing. To aid prevention and treatment, there is an urgent need for evidence-based measures to identify individuals at risk for NSSI. Measures that probe past NSSI are most promising, but people are often motivated to conceal NSSI behavior. This problem can be overcome by using implicit measures, which do not require individuals to self-report on their behavior. Yet, prior research typically found weak predictive utility of implicit measures. Based on a new perspective on implicit measures and recent findings in NSSI research, we developed an Implicit Association Test that probes past NSSI (the P-NSSI-IAT).
We report two preregistered studies (N = 83; N = 372) in which we tested the utility of the P-NSSI-IAT to detect past NSSI and predict NSSI one month later.
P-NSSI-IAT scores (a) differentiated injury groups from non-injury groups and (b) prospectively predicted NSSI and improved prediction above and beyond risk factors of NSSI.
These initial findings suggest that the P-NSSI-IAT is a promising tool for NSSI risk assessment. Future studies should further examine the predictive utility of this newly developed measure for NSSI behavior.
非自杀性自伤（NSSI）是一个严重的问题，其患病率正在上升。为了帮助预防和治疗，迫切需要基于证据的措施来识别有 NSSI 风险的个体。探究过去 NSSI 的措施最有前途，但人们往往有动机隐瞒 NSSI 行为。这个问题可以通过使用不要求个人报告自己行为的内隐测量来克服。然而，先前的研究通常发现内隐测量的预测效用较弱。基于对内隐测量的新视角和 NSSI 研究的最新发现，我们开发了一种探测过去 NSSI 的内隐联想测验（P-NSSI-IAT）。
我们报告了两项预先注册的研究（N=83；N=372），在这些研究中，我们测试了 P-NSSI-IAT 检测过去 NSSI 和预测一个月后 NSSI 的效用。
P-NSSI-IAT 得分（a）区分了受伤组和未受伤组，（b）前瞻性预测了 NSSI，并在 NSSI 的风险因素之上和之外提高了预测能力。
这些初步发现表明，P-NSSI-IAT 是一种有前途的 NSSI 风险评估工具。未来的研究应进一步研究这一新开发的测量方法对 NSSI 行为的预测效用。
