Executive Function and Self-Regulation: Bi-Directional Longitudinal Associations and Prediction of Early Academic Skills.

Despite a tendency to study executive function (EF) and self-regulation (SR) separately, parallel lines of research suggest considerable overlap between the two abilities. Specifically, both show similar developmental trajectories (i.e., develop rapidly in the early years), predict a broad range of overlapping outcomes across the lifespan (e.g., academic success, mental and physical health, and social competence), and have overlapping neural substrates (e.g., prefrontal cortex). While theoretical frameworks diverge in how they reconcile EF and SR - ranging from treating the two as functionally synonymous, to viewing them as related yet distinct abilities - there is no consensus and limited empirical evidence on the nature of their relationship and how this extends developmentally. The current study examined bi-directional longitudinal associations between early EF and SR, and their longitudinal associations with subsequent early academic skills, in a sample of 199 3- to 5-year-old pre-school children. The adopted measures permitted EF and SR to be modelled as composite indices for these analyses, thereby decreasing task-specific components of these associations. Early academic skills were captured by a standardized direct assessment. Bi-directional associations between EF and SR were found, with both accounting for unique variance in early academic skills 7 and 19months later. The current results provide important evidence to distinguish between EF and SR abilities, yet also for their reciprocal influence in situ and across early development.

Correction: Improving Physical Task Performance with Counterfactual and Prefactual Thinking.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0168181.].

In limbo: A systematic review of psychological responses and coping among people with a missing loved one.

OBJECTIVE: This review explored psychological responses and coping among loved ones left behind when a person is missing. METHOD: A systematic search identified 42 studies that reported data gathered among people with a missing loved one regarding psychological symptoms and/or coping strategies. Studies were arranged according to context of disappearance: forced (a result of war/conflict, abduction, forced separation) or unclear (reason unknown)/unspecified circumstances. RESULTS: The most consistent findings for psychological symptoms were reports of depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress, and prolonged grief reactions. When the disappearance was unclear/unspecified, people more often reported use of cognitive avoidance and continuing a bond as coping strategies. When the disappearance was forced, people more often reported use of informal support seeking. CONCLUSIONS: Further research is warranted to clarify (a) the generalizability of findings to those left behind under circumstances where the ambiguity may be greater and (b) the acceptability of various targeted psychological interventions.

Happiness and counterfactual thinking at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

The purpose of this study was to investigate potential differences in emotional expression and counterfactual thought between bronze and silver Olympic medallists. In Study 1, 468 photographs (156 gold medallists, 156 silver medallists, 156 bronze medallists) were obtained of Olympic medal winners standing on the podium at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, and 20 students rated the level of expressed happiness in each photograph. The students were blind to the outcome of the event and an average score for each photograph was used in data analysis. Results showed that gold medallists displayed greater levels of happiness than silver medallists but that silver and bronze medallists showed little difference in their expressed happiness. In Study 2, 192 quotations from bronze and silver medallists were obtained from news outlets, and 20 students rated the expression of counterfactual thought in each quotation. Results showed that compared to bronze medallists, silver medallists had more counterfactual thoughts overall, more counterfactual thoughts about how things could have gone better, and more counterfactual thoughts about their opponents' behaviour. Overall, findings indicate that counterfactual thoughts differ between bronze and silver medallists, but that differences in expressed emotion are likely to be trivial or negligible.

Assessing children's cognitive flexibility with the Shape Trail Test.

In this paper we report an initial validation of the Shape Trail Test-Child Version (STT-CV) with a non-clinical sample of children aged 6 to 9 years. The STT-CV has been developed as an age-appropriate and culturally fair direct downward extension of the Trail Making Test (TMT) for the assessment of cognitive flexibility. Children completed the STT-CV and four established measures of executive functions that assessed working memory, inhibitory control and task switching. Results showed the expected age-based differences in completion times for both parts of the STT-CV (Trail A and Trail B). Children's performance on the STT-CV correlated significantly with all four measures of executive functions. After controlling for the effects of chronological age, completion times for Trail B remained correlated with most other measures of executive functions. These findings provide emerging evidence for the utility of the STT-CV, and highlight the need for designing and using appropriate variants of the TMT in the behavioural assessment of cognitive flexibility in developmentally and culturally diverse populations.

Improving Physical Task Performance with Counterfactual and Prefactual Thinking.

Counterfactual thinking (reflecting on "what might have been") has been shown to enhance future performance by translating information about past mistakes into plans for future action. Prefactual thinking (imagining "what might be if…") may serve a greater preparative function than counterfactual thinking as it is future-orientated and focuses on more controllable features, thus providing a practical script to prime future behaviour. However, whether or not this difference in hypothetical thought content may translate into a difference in actual task performance has been largely unexamined. In Experiment 1 (n = 42), participants performed trials of a computer-simulated physical task, in between which they engaged in either task-related hypothetical thinking (counterfactual or prefactual) or an unrelated filler task (control). As hypothesised, prefactuals contained more controllable features than counterfactuals. Moreover, participants who engaged in either form of hypothetical thinking improved significantly in task performance over trials compared to participants in the control group. The difference in thought content between counterfactuals and prefactuals, however, did not yield a significant difference in performance improvement. Experiment 2 (n = 42) replicated these findings in a dynamic balance task environment. Together, these findings provide further evidence for the preparatory function of counterfactuals, and demonstrate that prefactuals share this same functional characteristic.

Jitter and size effects on vection are immune to experimental instructions and demands.

Both coherent perspective jitter and explicit changing-size cues have been shown to improve the vection induced by radially expanding optic flow. We examined whether these stimulus-based vection advantages could be modified by altering cognitions and/or expectations about both the likelihood of self-motion perception and the purpose of the experiment. In the main experiment, participants were randomly assigned into two groups-one where the cognitive conditions biased participants towards self-motion perception and another where the cognitive conditions biased them towards object-motion perception. Contrary to earlier findings by Lepecq et al (1995 Perception 24 435-449), we found that identical visual displays were less likely to induce vection in 'object-motion-bias' conditions than in 'self-motion bias' conditions. However, significant jitter and size advantages for vection were still found in both cognitive conditions (cognitive bias effects were greatest for non-jittering same-size control displays). The current results suggest that if a sufficiently large vection advantage can be produced when participants are expecting to experience self-motion, it is likely to persist in object-motion-bias conditions.