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Background: Previous studies had shown that poor quality of early parental attachment is a risk factor for suicide, but few have focus on the mechanism between suicidal ideation and parental attachment. The aim of this study was to explore how parental attachment, anhedonia, and peer attachment were associated with suicidal ideation in adolescents. Method: Participants were enrolled in middle schools, in Hefei, Anhui, China. All participants completed socio-demographic characteristic and standard assessments on parental attachment, peer attachment, anhedonia, and suicidal ideation by paper surveys. The effect of parental attachment on suicidal ideation mediated by anhedonia and peer attachment was analyzed by a structural equation model (SEM) using SPSS AMOS 23.0. Results: The SEM analysis revealed that the standard total effect of parental attachment on suicidal ideation was -0.137 ( Z =-27.00, 95% confidence interval [CI; -0.147, -0.127], p <0.001), with a direct effect of parental attachment on suicidal ideation of -0.107 ( Z =-21.40, 95% CI [-0.117, -0.098], p <0.001), while the indirect effects were-0.002 ( Z =-3.33, 95% CI [-0.003, -0.002], p <0.001) in the pathway of parental attachment-anhedonia-peer attachment-suicidal ideation, -0.019 ( Z =-19.00, 95%CI [-0.022, -0.017], p <0.001) in the pathway of parental attachment-anhedonia-suicidal ideation, and-0.008 ( Z =-7.00, 95% CI [-0.010, -0.007], p <0.001) in the pathway of parental attachment-peer attachment-suicidal ideation. Conclusion: The study suggested that parental attachment could directly influence suicidal ideation and indirectly influence suicidal ideation via anhedonia and peer attachment. The results emphasized the importance of attachment in infancy and verified the feasibility of intervention on anhedonia and peer attachment to prevent suicidal ideation., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Guo, Ji, Huang, Jin, Lin, Chen, Zhang, Zhu, Yu and Wang.)

Although individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and schizophrenia (SCH) share overlapping characteristics and may perform similarly on many cognitive tasks, cognitive dysfunctions common to both disorders do not necessarily share the same underlying mechanisms. Decision-making is currently a major research interest for both ASD and SCH. The aim of the present study was to make direct comparisons of decision-making and disorder-specific underlying neuropsychological mechanisms between the two disorders. Thirty-seven participants with ASD, 46 patients with SCH, and 80 healthy controls (HC) were assessed with the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), which measures decision-making under ambiguity, and the Game of Dice Task (GDT), which measures decision-making under risk. The results revealed that both the ASD and SCH groups had deficits for both the IGT and the GDT compared with the HC. More importantly, in the IGT, participants with ASD displayed a preference for deck A, indicating that they had more sensitivity to the magnitude of loss than to the frequency of loss, whereas patients with SCH displayed a preference for deck B, indicating that they showed more sensitivity to the frequency of loss than to the magnitude of loss. In the GDT, the impaired performance might be due to the deficits in executive functions in patients with SCH, whereas the impaired performance might be due to the deficits in feedback processing in participants with ASD. These findings demonstrate that there are similar impairments in decision-making tasks between ASD and SCH; however, these two disorders may have different impairment mechanisms.