Background During COVID-19 pandemic, visits have been prohibited in most French ICUs. Psychological effects, for reference persons (RPs), of remote-only communication have been assessed. Methods All RPs of patients referred to ICU for COVID-19 were included. HADS, IES-R, and satisfaction were evaluated at admission, discharge/death, and 3 months. At 3 months, a psychologist provided a qualitative description of RPs’ psychological distress. Results Eighty-eight RPs were included. Prevalence of anxiety and depression was 83% and 73% respectively. At 3 months, lower HADS decrease was associated with patient death/continued hospitalization, and/or sleeping disorders in RPs (p < 0.01). Ninety-nine percent RPs felt the patient was safe (9 [7; 10]/10 points, Likert-type scale), confident with caregivers (10 [9; 10]/10 points), and satisfied with information provided (10 [9; 10]/10 points). All RPs stressed the specific-type of “responsibility” associated with being an RP in a remote-only context, leading RPs to develop narrow diffusion strategies (67%) and restrict the array of contacted relatives to a very few and/or only contacting them rarely. 10 RPs (30%) related the situation to a prior traumatic experience. Conclusion RPs experienced psychological distress and reported that being an RP in a remote-only communication context was a specific responsibility and qualified it as an overall negative experience. Trial registration NCT04385121. Registered 12 May 2020. https://clinicaltrials.gov/.

Previous research has reported that lexical access in bilinguals is language non-selective. In the present study, we explored the extent to which cross-language orthographic neighborhood size (N-size) effects, an index of language non-selectivity, should be dissociated from markedness effects, a sub-lexical orthographic variable referring to the degree of language- shared (unmarked) versus specific (marked) orthography. Two proficiency groups of French/English bilinguals performed an English (L2) lexical decision task with three word and non-word conditions: (1) English words with large French N-size/unmarked orthography (price), (2) small French N-size/unmarked orthography (drive), and (3) small French N-size/marked orthography (write). Evidence was found for orthographic markedness effects, albeit with a different pattern for word and non-word processing: while marked words were facilitated (responded to faster and more accurately) compared to unmarked words, the opposite pattern emerged for non-words. The pattern of results was comparable in both proficiency groups. No evidence emerged for the influence of first language (L1) neighborhood on L2 word or non-word processing. Thus, the results emphasize the need to integrate orthographic markedness as a relevant psycholinguistic variable in bilingual models of visual word recognition such as BIA/+ and to take it into account when investigating cross- language effects and the issue of language non-selectivity during visual word recognition.

Background: During COVID-19 pandemic, visitations have been prohibited in most French ICUs. We aimed to assess psychological effects, for reference persons (RPs), of experiencing remote-only communication with both caregivers and the patient during COVID-19 pandemic.Methods: All RPs of patients referred to ICU for COVID-19 were included. HADS, IES-R, and satisfaction were evaluated at admission, discharge/death and 3 months. At 3 months, an interview with a psychologist provided a qualitative description of RPs’ psychological distress.Results: Eighty-eight RPs were interviewed at patient admission and discharge, and 33 accepted the 3rd month-interview. Prevalence of anxiety and depression symptoms was 65% and 32% respectively at patient admission and 27% and 24% at discharge/death, with a significant decrease between ICU admission and discharge/death (23 [16;31] versus 16 [9;21] points, p<0.01). At 3 months, lower HADS decrease was associated with patient death/continued hospitalization, and/or sleeping disorders in RPs (p<0.01). Despite visit prohibition, 99% RPs felt the patient was safe (9 [7;10]/10 points, Likert-type scale). They also felt confident with caregivers, therapeutic decisions (10 [9;10]/10 points) and satisfied with the manner/frequency information was provided (10 [9;10]/10 points). All RPs stressed the specific-type of “responsibility” associated with being an RP in a remote-only context. The 3 salient themes turned out to be dichotomous variables: positive (9 RPs, 27%) vs. negative (24 RPs, 73%) subjective experience; wide (11 RPs, 33%) vs. narrow (22 RPs, 67%) information diffusion strategies: only a third chose to transmit the information to many relatives. Only 10 RPs (30%) related the situation to a prior traumatic experience.Conclusion: In a distressing situation, remote-only communication allowed RPs to remain involved in decision processes and maintain contact with patient and caregivers.Trial registration: NCT04385121. Registered 12 May 2020. https://clinicaltrials.gov/

The authors investigated whether working memory (WM) plays a significant role in the development of decision making in children, operationalized by the Children's Gambling Task (CGT). A total of 105 children aged 6-7, 8-9, and 10-11 years old carried out the CGT. Children aged 6-7 years old were found to have a lower performance than older children, which shows that the CGT is sensitive to participant's age. The hypothesis that WM plays a significant role in decision making was then tested following two approaches: (a) an experimental approach, comparing between groups the performance on the CGT in a control condition (the CGT only was administered) to that in a double task condition (participants had to carry out a recall task in addition to the CGT); (b) an interindividual approach, probing the relationship between CGT performance and performance on tasks measuring WM efficiency. The between-groups approach evidenced a better performance in the control group. Moreover, the interindividual approach showed that the higher the participants' WM efficiency was, the higher their performance in the CGT was. Taken together, these two approaches yield converging results that support the hypothesis that WM plays a significant role in decision making in children.