The closure of in-person laboratories and decreased safety of face-to-face interactions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic jeopardized the ability of many developmental researchers to continue data ...collection during this time. Disruptions in data collection are particularly damaging to longitudinal studies, in which the testing of different age groups occurs on a continuous basis, and data loss at one time point can have cascading effects across subsequent time points and threaten the viability of the study. In an effort to continue collecting data for a longitudinal study on emotion development started in-person pre-pandemic, we adapted two parent-infant interaction tasks (free-play task and toy removal task) for a remote testing framework. Our procedure for pivoting these tasks to a supervised, remote online testing framework is outlined and the associated strengths and challenges of testing in this format (e.g., feasibility and implementation, testing environment and task setup validity, and accessibility, recruitment, and diversity) are critically evaluated. Considerations for applying this framework to other behavioral tasks are discussed and recommendations are provided.
Caregivers are instrumental in the development of infant emotion regulation; however, few studies have focused on delineating the real‐time effectiveness of strategies that caregivers use to reduce ...infant distress. It is also unclear whether certain caregiver traits facilitate engagement in more successful regulation strategies. This study addressed these gaps by: (1) examining the differential effectiveness of maternal regulatory attempts (MRAs; behavioral strategies initiated by mothers to assist infants with regulating emotional states) in reducing 12‐ to 24‐month‐old infants' frustration during a toy removal task; and (2) assessing whether maternal mind‐mindedness (mothers' attunement to their infant's mental state) predicted mothers' selection of MRAs. Multilevel modeling revealed that distraction and control were the most effective MRAs in reducing infant negative affect across 5‐s intervals (N = 82 dyads; M infant age = 18 months; 45 females). Greater use of non‐attuned mind‐related speech predicted less engagement in effective MRAs, supporting a link between caregivers' socio‐cognitive skills and provision of in‐the‐moment regulation support. These findings highlight the value of considering caregiver regulatory behaviors as a target for elucidating how maternal socialization of emotion regulation occurs in real‐time. They also underscore mothers' important role as socializing agents in the development of this foundational developmental ability.
•South Asian Canadians exhibit an own-race bias in emotion recognition.•White Canadians show similar recognition accuracy for White and South Asian faces.•Emotion recognition improves throughout ...childhood, and from childhood to adulthood.
Adults are less accurate at recognizing emotions expressed by individuals from a different cultural background. However, the research with children is less clear; whereas some studies suggest better emotion recognition for own-race and own-culture faces, others have found no such relationship. The current study examined the influence of race on emotion recognition in children and adults who share a cultural background (i.e., Canadian). Based on previous studies, we hypothesized that participants would demonstrate better emotion recognition for own-race faces. We also hypothesized that emotion recognition would improve across the lifespan (from childhood to adulthood) and as a function of emotion, such that recognition would be better for happy faces than for the other emotions. Children (n = 69; ages 6–10 years; 41 female) and adults (n = 82; mean age = 19.94 years; 72 female) of Western European or South Asian descent were asked to complete a five-alternative forced-choice emotion recognition task (anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral) in which expressions were displayed by White and South Asian faces. As predicted, adults performed better than older children, who performed better than younger children, and participants performed best on happy faces. South Asian participants, but not White participants, performed better when judging own-race faces compared with other-race faces. This finding only partially supports an own-race bias in emotion recognition and may reflect the tendency in the literature to conflate culture and race. More studies are needed to understand cross-race emotion recognition when individuals share the same culture.
Emotion recognition is important for social interaction and communication, yet previous research has identified a cross-cultural emotion recognition deficit: Recognition is less accurate for emotions ...expressed by individuals from a cultural group different than one's own. The current study examined whether social categorization based on race, in the absence of cultural differences, influences emotion recognition in a diverse context. South Asian and White Canadians in the Greater Toronto Area completed an emotion recognition task that required them to identify the seven basic emotional expressions when posed by members of the same two groups, allowing us to tease apart the contributions of culture and social group membership. Contrary to our hypothesis, there was no mutual in-group advantage in emotion recognition: Participants were not more accurate at recognizing emotions posed by their respective racial in-groups. Both groups were more accurate at recognizing expressions when posed by South Asian faces, and White participants were more accurate overall compared to South Asian participants. These results suggest that in a diverse environment, categorization based on race alone does not lead to the creation of social out-groups in a way that negatively impacts emotion recognition.
There is growing interest in the relationship between obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and sleep problems in youth, including the development of a theoretical model proposing how these disorders ...maintain each other. The model suggests that OCD symptoms are proposed to interfere with sleep duration (e.g., via increased arousal and delayed bedtime), which compounds OCD symptom severity during the daytime and into the evening, feeding back into the model. Whether the recent influx of research on sleep problems in youth with OCD supports this model is unknown. The primary aim of this systematic review was to characterize sleep problems in youth with OCD and evaluate whether current research supports previous theoretical inferences. Findings across 20 studies revealed a high prevalence of sleep problems among youth with OCD and support a bidirectional relationship. Studies largely did not assess hypothesized relationships proposed by the model; support for the model is therefore preliminary. A secondary aim was to assess the impacts of comorbidity and developmental stage. Findings suggest that in childhood, comorbid anxiety disorders may initially predate sleep problems, but they become mutually maintained over time; the role of comorbid depression appears to increase with age. Limitations, future directions, and clinical implications are discussed.
•Sleep problems in youth OCD are understudied compared to other anxiety disorders.•Youth with OCD exhibit more sleep problems and less total sleep time than controls.•Sleep problems are associated with more severe OCD symptoms.•Relationship between OCD & sleep problems may become mutually maintaining with age.•Findings provide guidance for future research and clinical practice.
Seven‐month‐old infants display a robust attentional bias for fearful faces; however, the mechanisms driving this bias remain unclear. The objective of the current study was to replicate the ...attentional bias for fearful faces and to investigate how infants’ online scanning patterns relate to this preference. Infants’ visual scanning patterns toward fearful and happy faces were captured using eye tracking in a paired‐preference task, specifically exploring if the fear preference is driven by increased attention to particular facial features. Infants allocated increased attention toward the fearful face compared to the happy face overall, thus successfully replicating the attentional bias, and greater attention toward the fearful eyes was associated with a greater magnitude of the fear preference. The current findings suggest that the fearful eyes are a salient facial feature in capturing infants’ attention toward the fearful face and that increased scanning of the fearful eyes may be one mechanism driving the overall fear preference. In addition, scanning patterns, and attention to critical features specifically, are highlighted as a strategy for examining the mechanisms underlying the development of emotion recognition abilities in infancy.
•Temperament does not systematically influence study dropout at 3 or 7 months.•Dropout is not stable across age or tasks –ERP, eye tracking, still-face, free-play.•Findings support utility of running ...multiple studies at a single laboratory visit.
In this study, we examined whether infant temperament predicted study dropout at 3.5 and 7 months and whether dropout was stable across time. Dropout was measured across four experimental tasks (free-play, ERP, still-face, and eye tracking). Temperament was not related to dropout at either timepoint. Dropout was not stable across time, nor was it stable across tasks. These findings suggest that individual differences in temperament are not systematically related to study completion across experimental tasks with varied requirements. These findings additionally suggest that dropout is not consistent across tasks, which may support the utility of multi-study data collection methods.
Objectives
Low-income youth are at greater risk for persistent exposure to environmental stressors and they face a number of barriers to accessing mental health treatment. Furthermore, it is unclear ...whether interventions developed for youth more generally are effective for this vulnerable population. The objective of this systematic review was to review and summarize the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions delivered in low-income schools (Grades 3–9) on psychological functioning.
Methods
Searches were conducted in PsycINFO, Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, and MEDLINE, which led to the inclusion of eight studies in the current review (seven unique samples). Study interventions, methodologies, and individual characteristics were reviewed and summarized.
Results
Findings were inconsistent across studies, but some improvements were reported for externalizing and internalizing symptoms, emotional regulation, and perceived stress. Feasibility data were limited, with findings of high enrollment and retention, moderate levels of student-reported satisfaction, and low adherence to at-home practice.
Conclusions
Although diverse interventions were delivered across studies, these results suggest that school-based mindfulness interventions may have potential for increasing access to intervention for low-income youth. Strengths and limitations of the literature are reviewed, and future directions are discussed.
Infants’ visual processing of emotion undergoes significant development across the first year of life, yet our knowledge regarding the mechanisms underlying these advances is limited. Additionally, ...infant emotion processing is commonly examined using static faces, which do not accurately depict real-world emotional displays. The goal of this study was to characterize 7-month-olds’ visual scanning strategies when passively viewing dynamic emotional expressions to examine whether infants modify their scanning patterns depending on the emotion. Eye-tracking measures revealed differential attention towards the critical features (eyes, mouth) of expressions. The eyes captured the greatest attention for angry and neutral faces, and the mouth captured the greatest attention for happy faces. A time-course analysis further elucidated at what point during the trial differential scanning patterns emerged. The current results suggest that 7-month-olds are sensitive to the critical features of emotional expressions and scan them differently depending on the emotion. The scanning patterns presented in this study may serve as a link to understanding how infants begin to differentiate between expressions in the context of emotion recognition.
Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is a treatment that delivers 100% oxygen at increased atmospheric pressures. The efficacy of HBOT for treating pain has been described in various animal pain models ...and may have clinical efficacy in the treatment of human chronic pain syndromes. We present our experience with posttraumatic Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) type 2 in a patient who underwent 15 sessions of HBOT. A 41-year-old male with one-year history of CRPS of left foot followed by left ankle fracture demonstrated less pain, decreased swelling, less allodynia, and improvement in skin color and range of motion of the lower limb after 3 weeks of HBOT. Patient was back to work for the first time in over a year. HBOT may be considered as a valuable therapeutic tool in the treatment of long-standing CRPS.
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