Background Mindfulness based interventions ( MBI s) are an increasingly popular way of attempting to improve the behavioural, cognitive and mental health outcomes of children and adolescents, though there is a suggestion that enthusiasm has moved ahead of the evidence base. Most evaluations of MBI s are either uncontrolled or nonrandomized trials. This meta‐analysis aims to establish the efficacy of MBI s for children and adolescents in studies that have adopted a randomized, controlled trial ( RCT ) design. Methods A systematic literature search of RCT s of MBI s was conducted up to October 2017. Thirty‐three independent studies including 3,666 children and adolescents were included in random effects meta‐analyses with outcome measures categorized into cognitive, behavioural and emotional factors. Separate random effects meta‐analyses were completed for the seventeen studies ( n = 1,762) that used an RCT design with an active control condition. Results Across all RCT s we found significant positive effects of MBI s, relative to controls, for the outcome categories of Mindfulness, Executive Functioning, Attention, Depression, Anxiety/Stress and Negative Behaviours, with small effect sizes (Cohen's d ), ranging from .16 to .30. However, when considering only those RCT s with active control groups, significant benefits of an MBI were restricted to the outcomes of Mindfulness ( d = .42), Depression ( d = .47) and Anxiety/Stress ( d = .18) only. Conclusions This meta‐analysis reinforces the efficacy of using MBI s for improving the mental health and wellbeing of youth as assessed using the gold standard RCT methodology. Future RCT evaluations should incorporate scaled‐up definitive trial designs to further evaluate the robustness of MBI s in youth, with an embedded focus on mechanisms of action.

Adolescence is a period of social, psychological and biological development. During adolescence, relationships with others become more complex, peer relationships are paramount and social cognition develops substantially. These psychosocial changes are paralleled by structural and functional changes in the brain. Existing research in adolescent neurocognitive development has focused largely on averages, but this obscures meaningful individual variation in development. In this Perspective, we propose that the field should now move toward studying individual differences. We start by discussing individual variation in structural and functional brain development. To illustrate the importance of considering individual differences in development, we consider three sources of variation that contribute to neurocognitive processing: socioeconomic status, culture and peer environment. To assess individual differences in neurodevelopmental trajectories, large-scale longitudinal datasets are required. Future developmental neuroimaging studies should attempt to characterize individual differences to move toward a more nuanced understanding of neurocognitive changes during adolescence.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in the widespread implementation of social distancing measures. Adhering to social distancing may be particularly challenging for adolescents, for whom interaction with peers is especially important. We argue that young people's capacity to encourage each other to observe social distancing rules should be harnessed.

The present study concerns individual differences in gesture production. We used correlational and multiple regression analyses to examine the relationship between individuals’ cognitive abilities and empathy levels and their gesture frequency and saliency. We chose predictor variables according to experimental evidence of the functions of gesture in speech production and communication. We examined 3 types of gestures: representational gestures, conduit gestures, and palm-revealing gestures. Higher frequency of representational gestures was related to poorer visual and spatial working memory, spatial transformation ability, and conceptualization ability; higher frequency of conduit gestures was related to poorer visual working memory, conceptualization ability, and higher levels of empathy; and higher frequency of palm-revealing gestures was related to higher levels of empathy. The saliency of all gestures was positively related to level of empathy. These results demonstrate that cognitive abilities and empathy levels are related to individual differences in gesture frequency and saliency.

During adolescence, individuals are particularly susceptible to social influence. One explanation for this is that social stimuli have a heightened reward value at this age. To date, most evidence for heightened social reward in adolescence is found in the animal literature. Human adolescents show increased activation in fronto-striatal brain regions to rewarding social stimuli, but also to negative social stimuli, suggesting that adolescence may be a period of hypersensitivity to all social stimuli. Additional evidence from humans and animals suggest that the presence of others may heighten the value of non-social rewards; these findings should be incorporated into theories of social reward in adolescence.

Social influence occurs when an individual's thoughts or behaviours are affected by other people. There are significant age effects on susceptibility to social influence, typically a decline from childhood to adulthood. Most research has focused on negative aspects of social influence, such as peer influence on risky behaviour, particularly in adolescence. The current study investigated the impact of social influence on the reporting of prosocial behaviour (any act intended to help another person). In this study, 755 participants aged 8–59 completed a computerized task in which they rated how likely they would be to engage in a prosocial behaviour. Afterwards, they were told the average rating (in fact fictitious) that other participants had given to the same question, and then were asked to rate the same behaviour again. We found that participants' age affected the extent to which they were influenced by other people: children (8–11 years), young adolescents (12–14 years) and mid‐adolescents (15–18 years) all significantly changed their ratings, while young adults (19–25 years) and adults (26–59 years) did not. Across the three youngest age groups, children showed the most susceptibility to prosocial influence, changing their reporting of prosocial behaviour the most. The study provides evidence that younger people's increased susceptibility to social influence can have positive outcomes.

Adolescents are particularly susceptible to social influence. Here, we investigated the effect of social influence on risk perception in 590 participants aged eight to fifty-nine-years tested in the United Kingdom. Participants rated the riskiness of everyday situations, were then informed about the rating of these situations from a (fictitious) social-influence group consisting of teenagers or adults, and then re-evaluated the situation. Our first aim was to attempt to replicate our previous finding that young adolescents are influenced more by teenagers than by adults. Second, we investigated the social-influence effect when the social-influence group's rating was more, or less, risky than the participants' own risk rating. Younger participants were more strongly influenced by teenagers than by adults, but only when teenagers rated a situation as more risky than did participants. This suggests that stereotypical characteristics of the social-influence group – risk-prone teenagers - interact with social influence on risk perception.

Human beings seek out social interactions as a source of reward. To date, there have been limited attempts to identify different forms of social reward, and little is known about how the value of social rewards might vary between individuals. This study aimed to address both these issues by developing the Social Reward Questionnaire (SRQ), a measure of individual differences in the value of different social rewards. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was run on an initial set of 75 items (N = 305). Based on this analysis, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was then conducted on a second sample (N = 505) with a refined 23-item scale. This analysis was used to test a six-factor structure, which resulted in good model fit (CFI = 0.96, RSMEA = 0.07). The factors represent six subscales of social reward defined as follows: Admiration; Negative Social Potency; Passivity; Prosocial Interactions; Sexual Reward; and Sociability. All subscales demonstrated good test-retest reliability and internal consistency. Each subscale also showed a distinct pattern of associations with external correlates measuring personality traits, attitudes, and goals, thus demonstrating construct validity. Taken together, the findings suggest that the SRQ is a reliable, valid measure that can be used to assess individual differences in the value experienced from different social rewards.