ABSTRACT
Pediatric stroke can result in long-term impairments across attention, functional communication and motor domains. The current paper utilized parent reports of the Behavioral Assessment System for Children 2nd Edition and the Pediatric Stroke Outcome Measure to examine children's social skills and withdrawal behavior within a pediatric stroke population. Using the Canadian Pediatric Stroke Registry at The Hospital for Sick Children, data were analyzed for 312 children with ischemic stroke. Children with ischemic stroke demonstrated elevated parent-reported social skills problems (observed = 20.51%, expected = 14.00%) and clinically elevated social withdrawal (observed = 11.21%, expected = 2.00%). Attentional problems significantly contributed to reduced social skills, F (3,164) = 30.68, p < 0.01, while attentional problems and neurological impairments accounted for increased withdrawal behavior, F (2, 164) = 7.47, p < 0.01. The presence of a motor impairment was associated with higher social withdrawal compared to individuals with no motor impairment diagnosis, t(307.73) = 2.25, p < .025, d = 0.25, 95% CI [0.42, 6.21]. The current study demonstrates that children with stroke who experience motor impairments, attentional problems, reduced functional communication skills, and neurological impairments can experience deficits in their social skills and withdrawal behavior.
ABSTRACT
Face masks became prevalent across the globe as an efficient tool to stop the spread of COVID-19. A host of studies already demonstrated that masks lead to changes in facial identification and emotional expression processing. These changes were documented across ages and were consistent even with the increased exposure to masked faces. Notably, mask-wearing also changes the state of the observers in regard to their own bodies and other agents. Previous research has already demonstrated a plausible association between observers' states and their perceptual behaviors. Thus, an outstanding question is whether mask-wearing would alter face recognition abilities. To address this question, we conducted a set of experiments in which participants were asked to recognize non-masked faces (Experiment 1), masked faces (Experiment 2) and novel objects (Experiment 3) while they were either masked or unmasked. Mask wearing hindered face perception abilities but did not modulate object recognition ability. Finally, we demonstrated that the decrement in face perception ability relied on wearing the mask on distinctive facial features (Experiment 4). Together, these findings reveal a novel effect of mask-wearing on face recognition. We discuss these results considering the plausible effect of somatosensory stimulation on visual processing as well as the effect of involuntary perspective taking.
