Executive attention modulates the facilitating effect of electronic storybooks on information encoding in preschoolers.

Interactive features and multimedia elements in electronic storybooks might enhance knowledge acquisition in children due to the playful learning experience they provide. However, to date, there is no systematic research on the long-term efficacy of storybooks, and the individual cognitive factors that influence information processing when using these apps. Therefore, in Experiment 1, we focused on long-term improvements. Children (M = 5.55 years, SD = 0.51, N = 33) were divided into an Interactive App group (N = 16) and a Print Book group (N = 17), then they were exposed to a story. Their recall performance was measured immediately after the exposure and three weeks later. In Experiment 2, we focused on individual differences in cognitive factors (working memory and sustained attention). Children (M = 5.56 years, SD = 0.62, N = 32) were exposed to three stories with interactive, multimedia-only elements and an audio-only condition. Caregivers were asked to fill out the ADHD Rating Scale-IV regarding each child. According to our results, in Experiment 1, children in the Interactive App group performed better compared to the Print Book group and this improvement persisted over time. In Experiment 2, we replicated the results of Experiment 1, however, children with poorer sustained attentional abilities performed worse in multimedia and interactive conditions compared to the audio-only condition. Our results indicate that electronic storybooks can facilitate learning because they enhance encoding efficacy. However, the benefit is only evident in children with good attentional control abilities. Our results guide parents and educators on how to choose and design age-appropriate applications for learning.

Psychological well-being, risk factors, and coping strategies with social isolation and new challenges in times of adversity caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

OBJECTIVE: COVID-19 triggers anxiety and fear due to several reasons, and thus, dealing with it requires prolonged coping mechanisms. When the number of infections soared, to slow the spread, many governments decided to close universities and dormitories and move teaching to online platforms. The majority of the university students decided to move back home to their parents changing their social lives. Here, we aimed to point to risk, as well as protective factors, and understand the influence of these factors on both physical and psychological indicators of well-being. Further, to discover how university students cope with maintaining their social lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHOD: We collected online survey data from multiple university sources. Participants (N = 605) completed measures of emotion regulation strategies, knowledge on the disease, contamination fear, perceived social support, worrying and intolerance of uncertainty, quality of sleep, well-being, emotional stability, anxiety, and depression. RESULTS: Our results showed that the most prominent risk and protective factors that were most strongly associated with the indicators of well-being were rumination, catastrophizing, positive refocusing, and social support from family; respectively. CONCLUSION: These results have implications for professionals working with and helping (e.g., as counselors) people during the challenges of an emergency.

Individual differences in the experience of body ownership are related to cortical thickness.

The widely used rubber hand illusion (RHI) paradigm provides insight into how the brain manages conflicting multisensory information regarding bodily self-consciousness. Previous functional neuroimaging studies have revealed that the feeling of body ownership is linked to activity in the premotor cortex, the intraparietal areas, the occipitotemporal cortex, and the insula. The current study investigated whether the individual differences in the sensation of body ownership over a rubber hand, as measured by subjective report and the proprioceptive drift, are associated with structural brain differences in terms of cortical thickness in 67 healthy young adults. We found that individual differences measured by the subjective report of body ownership are associated with the cortical thickness in the somatosensory regions, the temporo-parietal junction, the intraparietal areas, and the occipitotemporal cortex, while the proprioceptive drift is linked to the premotor area and the anterior cingulate cortex. These results are in line with functional neuroimaging studies indicating that these areas are indeed involved in processes such as cognitive-affective perspective taking, visual processing of the body, and the experience of body ownership and bodily awareness. Consequently, these individual differences in the sensation of body ownership are pronounced in both functional and structural differences.

"Finding an Emotional Face" Revisited: Differences in Own-Age Bias and the Happiness Superiority Effect in Children and Young Adults.

People seem to differ in their visual search performance involving emotionally expressive faces when these expressions are seen on faces of others close to their age (peers) compared to faces of non-peers, known as the own-age bias (OAB). This study sought to compare search advantages in angry and happy faces detected on faces of adults and children on a pool of children (N = 77, mean age = 5.57) and adults (N = 68, mean age = 21.48). The goals of this study were to (1) examine the developmental trajectory of expression recognition and (2) examine the development of an OAB. Participants were asked to find a target face displaying an emotional expression among eight neutral faces. Results showed that children and adults found happy faces significantly faster than angry and fearful faces regardless of it being present on the faces of peers or non-peers. Adults responded faster to the faces of peers regardless of the expression. Furthermore, while children detected angry faces significantly faster compared to fearful ones, we found no such difference in adults. In contrast, adults detected all expressions significantly faster when they appeared on the faces of other adults compared to the faces of children. In sum, we found evidence for development in detecting facial expressions and also an age-dependent increase in OAB. We suggest that the happy face could have an advantage in visual processing due to its importance in social situations and its overall higher frequency compared to other emotional expressions. Although we only found some evidence on the OAB, using peer or non-peer faces should be a theoretical consideration of future research because the same emotion displayed on non-peers' compared to peers' faces may have different implications and meanings to the perceiver.