Pain is Associated With Poorer Grades, Reduced Emotional Well-Being, and Attention Problems in Adolescents.

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of the present study was to determine whether pain is associated with specific aspects of academic performance, that is, poorer grades, and with factors critical to an adolescent's academic performance, that is, decreased emotional well-being and attention problems. We hypothesized that the association between pain and school grades is mediated by emotional well-being and attention problems. METHODS: In a cross-sectional study, we collected data from 2215 pupils, ages 12 to 13 years. Pain (no, occasional, and frequent), emotional well-being, and attention problems were measured with self-rating scales. Dutch, English, and math grades were taken as an index of academic performance. RESULTS: Frequent pain in adolescents was associated with poorer grades (Dutch P=0.02 and math P=0.01). Both occasional and frequent pain were associated with reduced emotional well-being (P<0.001) and reduced self-reported attention (P<0.001). However, the association between pain and lower grades disappeared when controlling for emotional well-being and attention. DISCUSSION: The present study shows that the association between pain and Dutch adolescents grades is mediated by reduced emotional well-being and attention problems. The association between pain and math grades is mediated by emotional problems. The results suggest that an intervention targeted at pain in adolescents could have a positive effect on their emotional well-being, attention, and school performance.

Children's representations of another person's spatial perspective: Different strategies for different viewpoints?

The current study investigated development and strategy use of spatial perspective taking (i.e., the ability to represent how an object or array of objects looks from other viewpoints) in children between 8 and 12years of age. We examined this ability with a task requiring children to navigate a route through a model city of wooden blocks from a 90° and 180° rotated perspective. We tested two hypotheses. First, we hypothesized that children's perspective-taking skills increase during this age period and that this process is related to a co-occurring increase in working memory capacity. Results indeed showed clear age effects; accuracy and speed of perspective-taking performance were higher in the older age groups. Positive associations between perspective-taking performance and working memory were observed. Second, we hypothesized that children, like adults, use a mental self-rotation strategy during spatial perspective taking. To confirm this hypothesis, children's performance should be better in the 90° condition than in the 180° condition of the task. Overall, the results did show the reversed pattern; children were less accurate, were slower, and committed more egocentric errors in the 90° condition than in the 180° condition. These findings support an alternative scenario in which children employ different strategies for different rotation angles. We propose that children mentally rotated their egocentric reference frame for 90° rotations; for the 180° rotations, they inverted the left-right and front-back axes without rotating their mental position.

Effects of a classroom intervention with spatial play materials on children's object and viewer transformation abilities.

Children practice their spatial skills when playing with spatial toys, such as construction materials, board games, and puzzles. Sex and SES differences are observed in the engagement in such spatial play activities at home, which relate to individual differences in spatial performance. The current study investigated the effects of explicitly providing spatial play activities in the school setting on different types of spatial ability. We presented 8- to 10-year-old children with a short and easy-to-adopt classroom intervention comprising a set of different spatial play materials. The design involved a pretest-posttest comparison between the intervention group (n = 70) and a control group without intervention (n = 70). Effects were examined on object transformation ability (i.e., a paper-and-pencil mental rotation and paper folding task) and viewer transformation ability (i.e., a hands-on 3D spatial perspective-taking task). Results showed specific effects: there were no differences between the intervention and control group in progress on the two object transformation tasks. Substantial improvements were found for the intervention group compared to the control group on the viewer transformation task. Training progress was not related to sex and socioeconomic background of the child. These findings support the value of spatial play in the classroom for the spatial development of children between 8 and 10 years of age. (PsycINFO Database Record

Implicit and Explicit Gender Beliefs in Spatial Ability: Stronger Stereotyping in Boys than Girls.

Sex differences in spatial ability are a seriously debated topic, given the importance of spatial ability for success in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and girls' underrepresentation in these domains. In the current study we investigated the presence of stereotypic gender beliefs on spatial ability (i.e., "spatial ability is for boys") in 10- and 12-year-old children. We used both an explicit measure (i.e., a self-report questionnaire) and an implicit measure (i.e., a child IAT). Results of the explicit measure showed that both sexes associated spatial ability with boys, with boys holding more male stereotyped attitudes than girls. On the implicit measure, boys associated spatial ability with boys, while girls were gender-neutral. In addition, we examined the effects of gender beliefs on spatial performance, by experimentally activating gender beliefs within a pretest-instruction-posttest design. We compared three types of instruction: boys are better, girls are better, and no sex differences. No effects of these gender belief instructions were found on children's spatial test performance (i.e., mental rotation and paper folding). The finding that children of this age already have stereotypic beliefs about the spatial capacities of their own sex is important, as these beliefs may influence children's choices for spatial leisure activities and educational tracks in the STEM domain.