Mental health and socio-cognitive predictors of adherence to COVID-19 social distancing rules in adolescents in England.

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted governments worldwide to introduce social distancing measures, including school closures and restrictions on in-person socialising. However, adherence to social distancing was challenging for many - particularly adolescents, for whom social interaction is crucial for development. The current study aimed to identify individual-level influences on adherence to social distancing in a longitudinal sample of adolescents aged 11-20 years in England, who took part in a randomised controlled trial.

Psychological mechanisms underlying the biased interpretation of numerical scientific evidence.

Do people use their statistical expertise selectively to reach preferred conclusions when evaluating scientific evidence, with those more expert showing more preferential bias? We investigated this motivated numeracy account of evidence evaluation but came to a different account for biased evaluation. Across three studies ( = 2,799), participants interpreted numerical data from gun control intervention studies. In Studies 1 and 2, participants reached accurate conclusions more frequently from scientific data when those data aligned with their political preferences than when they did not, an attitude congeniality effect.

Investigation of the mental health and cognitive correlates of psychological decentering in adolescence.

The ability to notice and reflect on distressing internal experiences from an objective perspective, often called psychological decentering, has been posited to be protective against mental health difficulties. However, little is known about how this skill relates to age across adolescence, its relationship with mental health, and how it may impact key domains such as affective executive control and social cognition. This study analysed a pre-existing dataset including mental health measures and cognitive tasks, administered to adolescents in Greater London and Cambridge (mean age (SD) = 14.

Affective control in adolescence: The influence of age and depressive symptomatology on working memory.

People exhibit marked individual variation in their ability to exercise cognitive control in affectively charged situations. Affective control is typically assessed in laboratory settings by comparing performance in carefully constructed executive tasks performed in both affectively neutral and affectively charged contexts. There is some evidence that affective control undergoes significant improvement throughout adolescence, though it is unclear how adolescents deemed at risk of developing depression exercise affective control despite poor affective control being identified as a contributing factor to ongoing mental ill health in adulthood.

Sustaining attention in affective contexts during adolescence: age-related differences and association with elevated symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Sustained attention, a key cognitive skill that improves during childhood and adolescence, tends to be worse in some emotional and behavioural disorders. Sustained attention is typically studied in non-affective task contexts; here, we used a novel task to index performance in affective versus neutral contexts across adolescence (= 465; ages 11-18). We asked whether: (i) performance would be worse in negative versus neutral task contexts; (ii) performance would improve with age; (iii) affective interference would be greater in younger adolescents; (iv) adolescents at risk for depression and higher in anxiety would show overall worse performance; and (v) would show differential performance in negative contexts.

Constructing the "home-side" of a scientific legacy: Mary Everest Boole, pedagogy, and domesticity.

The Victorian writer Mary Everest Boole (1832-1916) developed an idiosyncratic pedagogical treatment of arithmetic, algebra, and logic. Her pedagogy favored active, child-directed learning, and is now generally admired as ahead of its time, though it must be deciphered through fairly eccentric delivery. A recurring theme in Mrs.

Bringing the history of mathematics home: Entangled practices of domesticity, gender, and mathematical work.

Although much scholarship on nineteenth and twentieth century mathematics has focused on processes of professionalization, historical mathematicians themselves rarely experienced their lives as neatly divisible into the professional and the private. Taking marriage as a focal point, this introduction brings the fruitful historiography of gender, collaborative couples, and domesticity in science into a broader conversation with the history of mathematics. By historicizing marriage and its relationship to mathematical careers, we lay the groundwork for the special issue which uncovers the myriad ways in which spousal collaboration and support have been central to mathematical work.

Intermediate science knowledge predicts overconfidence.

Lackner et al. found science overconfidence peaks at intermediate levels of knowledge. Those with intermediate knowledge also hold the most negative attitudes toward scientists.

Susceptibility to prosocial and antisocial influence in adolescence following mindfulness training.

Mindfulness training programmes have shown to encourage prosocial behaviours and reduce antisocial tendencies in adolescents. However, less is known about whether training affects susceptibility to prosocial and antisocial influence. The current study investigated the effect of mindfulness training (compared with an active control) on self-reported prosocial and antisocial tendencies and susceptibility to prosocial and antisocial influence.

Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of universal school-based mindfulness training compared with normal school provision in reducing risk of mental health problems and promoting well-being in adolescence: the MYRIAD cluster randomised controlled trial.

Background: Systematic reviews suggest school-based mindfulness training (SBMT) shows promise in promoting student mental health.

Objective: The My Resilience in Adolescence (MYRIAD) Trial evaluated the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of SBMT compared with teaching-as-usual (TAU).

Methods: MYRIAD was a parallel group, cluster-randomised controlled trial.

The impact of mindfulness training in early adolescence on affective executive control, and on later mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: a randomised controlled trial.

Background: Previous research suggests that mindfulness training (MT) appears effective at improving mental health in young people. MT is proposed to work through improving executive control in affectively laden contexts. However, it is unclear whether MT improves such control in young people.

Effectiveness of universal school-based mindfulness training compared with normal school provision on teacher mental health and school climate: results of the MYRIAD cluster randomised controlled trial.

Background: Education is broader than academic teaching. It includes teaching students social-emotional skills both directly and indirectly through a positive school climate.

Objective: To evaluate if a universal school-based mindfulness training (SBMT) enhances teacher mental health and school climate.

Do mindfulness-based programmes improve the cognitive skills, behaviour and mental health of children and adolescents? An updated meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.

Question: Mindfulness-based programmes (MBPs) are an increasingly popular approach to improving mental health in young people. Our previous meta-analysis suggested that MBPs show promising effectiveness, but highlighted a lack of high-quality, adequately powered randomised controlled trials (RCTs). This updated meta-analysis assesses the-state-of the-art of MBPs for young people in light of new studies.

Protocol for a randomised controlled trial investigating an intervention to boost decentering in response to distressing mental experiences during adolescence: the decentering in adolescence study (DECADES).

Introduction: Decentering describes the ability to voluntarily adopt an objective self-perspective from which to notice internal, typically distressing, stressors (eg, difficult thoughts, memories and feelings). The reinforcement of this skill may be an active ingredient through which different psychological interventions accrue reductions in anxiety and/or depression. However, it is unclear if decentering can be selectively trained at a young age and if this might reduce psychological distress.

The Logician in the Archive: John Venn's Diagrams and Victorian Historical Thinking.

Like the overlapping circles of his famous diagrams, English probability theorist, logician, and historian John Venn (1834-1923) operated at a site of productive intersection. Across a career comprising seemingly disparate pursuits, Venn exhibited an epistemic apparatus shaped by a mathematical probability, formal logic, and British historicism. Scholarly interest in Venn has tended to isolate these elements; I argue that a deep continuity joined his projects.

The early course and treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder in very young children: diagnostic prevalence and predictors in hospital-attending children and a randomized controlled proof-of-concept trial of trauma-focused cognitive therapy, for 3- to 8-year-olds.

Background: The introduction of developmentally adapted criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has improved the identification of ≤6-year-old children with clinical needs. Across two studies, we assess predictors of the development of PTSD in young children (PTSD-YC), including the adult-led acute stress disorder (ASD) diagnosis, and provide proof of principle for cognitive-focused therapy for this age range, with the aim of increasing treatment options for children diagnosed with PTSD-YC.

Method: Study 1 (N = 105) assessed ASD and PTSD-YC diagnosis in 3- to 8-year-old children within one month and at around three months following attendance at an emergency room.

Decentering as a core component in the psychological treatment and prevention of youth anxiety and depression: a narrative review and insight report.

Decentering is a ubiquitous therapeutic concept featuring in multiple schools of psychological intervention and science. It describes an ability to notice to day-to-day psychological stressors (negative thoughts, feelings, and memories) from an objective self-perspective and without perseverating on the themes they represent. Thus, decentering dampens the impact and distress associated with psychological stressors that can otherwise increase mental ill health in vulnerable individuals.

The anti-scientists bias: The role of feelings about scientists in COVID-19 attitudes and behaviors.

Across three studies, we investigated who expresses concern for COVID-19, or coronavirus, and engages in behaviors that are consistent with slowing the spread of COVID-19. In Studies 1 and 2 ( = 415,  = 199), those with warmer feelings toward scientists were more concerned and engaged in greater COVID-preventative behaviors, regardless of partisanship. That is, an anti-scientists bias was related to lessened concern and toward less preventive behaviors.

Cognitive and emotional correlates of belief in political misinformation: Who endorses partisan misbeliefs?

Across two studies, we investigated how much cognitive variables and emotional dynamics anticipated endorsement of politically partisan misbeliefs. In Study 1 ( = 298), those with lower levels of cognitive ability endorsed more political misbeliefs regardless of whether those beliefs aligned with their political preferences. However, emotional investment in political parties and outcomes predicted who endorsed misbeliefs in a partisan manner.

Jumping to conclusions: Implications for reasoning errors, false belief, knowledge corruption, and impeded learning.

In schizophrenia research, patients who "jump to conclusions" in probabilistic reasoning tasks tend to display impaired decision-making and delusional belief. In five studies, we examined whether jumping to conclusions (JTC) was similarly associated with decision impairments in a nonclinical sample, such as reasoning errors, false belief, overconfidence, and diminished learning. In Studies 1a and 1b, JTC was associated with errors stimulated by automatic reasoning, oddball beliefs such as conspiracy theories, and overconfidence.

Susceptibility to prosocial and antisocial influence in adolescence.

Introduction: Adolescents are particularly susceptible to social influence and previous studies have shown that this susceptibility decreases with age. The current study used a cross-sectional experimental paradigm to investigate the effect of age and puberty on susceptibility to both prosocial and antisocial influence.

Methods: Participants (N = 520) aged 11-18 from London and Cambridge (United Kingdom) rated how likely they would be to engage in a prosocial (e.

Obligation at zero acquaintance.

Social obligation begins far before people establish explicit cooperative relationships. Research on trust suggests that people feel obligated to trust other people even at zero acquaintance, thus trusting complete strangers even though they privately expect to be exploited. Such obligations promote mutually beneficial behavior among strangers and likely help people build goodwill needed for more long-lasting relationships.

Consistency just feels right: Procedural fluency increases confidence in performance.

Incidental features of a stimulus can increase how easily it is processed, which can then increase confidence in task performance. Here, we examine the impact of fluency stemming from procedural features embedded in a task rather than in the features of a stimulus. We propose that manipulating the consistency of procedural features over a series of stimuli can produce procedural fluency, a metacognitive sense of ease in processing that can inflate confidence without boosting accuracy.

Optimising subjective anterior eye grading precision.

Purpose: To establish the optimum grading increment which ensured parity between practitioners while maximising clinical precision.

Methods: Second year optometry students (n = 127, 19.5 ± 1.