Individuals who believe intelligence is malleable (a growth mindset) are better able to bounce back from failures than those who believe intelligence is immutable. Event-related potential (ERP) studies among adults suggest this resilience is related to increased attention allocation to errors. Whether this mechanism is present among young children remains unknown, however. We therefore evaluated error-monitoring ERPs among 123 school-aged children while they completed a child-friendly go/no-go task. As expected, higher attention allocation to errors (indexed by larger error positivity, Pe) predicted higher post-error accuracy. Moreover, replicating adult work, growth mindset was related to greater attention to mistakes (larger Pe) and higher post-error accuracy. Exploratory moderation analyses revealed that growth mindset increased post-error accuracy for children who did not attend to their errors. Together, these results demonstrate the combined role of growth mindset and neural mechanisms of attention allocation in bouncing back after failure among young children.

People with advanced cancer are at heightened risk of desire for hastened death (DHD), suicidal ideation (SI), and completed suicide. Loss of Meaning (LoM), a component of demoralization, can be elevated by a cancer diagnosis and predicts DHD and SI in this population. We completed a randomized controlled trial in which psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy (PAP) produced rapid and sustained improvements in depression, demoralization, and hopelessness in people with cancer. Converging epidemiologic and clinical trial findings suggests a potential antisuicidal effect of this treatment. To probe our hypothesis that PAP relieves SI through its beneficial impacts on depression and demoralization (LoM in particular), we performed secondary analyses assessing within- and between-group differences with regard to LoM and an SI composite score. Among participants with elevated SI at baseline, PAP was associated with within-group reductions in SI that were apparent as early as 8 h and persisted for 6.5 months postdosing. PAP also produced large reductions in LoM from baseline that were apparent 2 weeks after treatment and remained significant and robust at the 6.5 month and 3.2 and 4.5 year follow-ups. Exploratory analyses support our hypothesis and suggest that PAP may be an effective antisuicidal intervention following a cancer diagnosis due to its positive impact on hopelessness and demoralization and its effects on meaning-making in particular. These preliminary results implicate psilocybin treatment as a potentially effective alternative to existing antidepressant medications in patients with cancer that are also suicidal, and warrant further investigation in participants with elevated levels of depression and suicidality.

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Children enter preschool with temperament traits that may shape or be shaped by their social interactions in the peer setting. We collected classroom observational measures of positive emotionality (PE), negative emotionality (NE), effortful control (EC), and peer social play relationships from 2 complete preschool classrooms (N = 53 children) over the course of an entire school year. Using longitudinal social network analysis, we found evidence that children's traits shaped the formation of play relationships, and that the traits of children's playmates shaped the subsequent development of children's own traits. Children who exhibited high levels of NE were less likely to form social play relationships over time. In addition, children were more likely to form play relationships with peers who were similar to their own levels of PE. Over the course of the school year, children's level of PE and EC changed such that they became more similar to their playmates in levels of these traits. Finally, we observed moderate to strong rank-order stability of behavioral observations of PE, NE, and EC across the school year. Our results provide evidence for the effects of traits on the formation of play relationships, as well as for the role of these play relationships in shaping trait expression over time. (PsycINFO Database Record

Interactions between cognitive control and affective processes, such as defensive reactivity, are intimately involved in healthy and unhealthy human development. However, cognitive control and defensive reactivity processes are often studied in isolation and rarely examined in early childhood. To address these gaps, we examined the relationships between multiple neurophysiological measures of cognitive control and defensive reactivity in young children. Specifically, we assessed two event-related potentials thought to index cognitive control processes – the error-related negativity (ERN) and error positivity (Pe) – measured across two tasks, and two markers of defensive reactivity processes – startle reflex and resting parietal asymmetry – in a sample of 3- to 7-year old children. Results revealed that measures of cognitive control and defensive reactivity were related such that evidence of poor cognitive control (smaller ERN) was associated with high defensive reactivity (larger startle and greater right relative to left parietal activity). The strength of associations between the ERN and measures of defensive reactivity did not vary by age, providing evidence that poor cognitive control relates to greater defensive reactivity across early childhood years.

Parent reports of temperament are used to study many important topics in child development, such as whether boys and girls differ in their levels of emotional reactivity and self-regulation. However, questions regarding measurement equivalence in parental reports of temperament are largely unexplored, despite the fact that this issue is critical for drawing the correct conclusions from mean-level comparisons. In the current study, measurement invariance across boys and girls (as targets), and mothers and fathers (as informants), was investigated in the Child Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Rothbart et al., 2001) using a sample of children ranging in age from 3 to 7 years (N = 605). Several instances of non-invariance were identified across both girls and boys, and mothers and fathers. An evaluation of effect size indices suggests that the practical impact of this non-invariance ranges from negligible to moderate. All told, this study illustrates the importance of taking a psychometrically informed approach to the use of parent reports of child temperament.

Anxiety disorders are among the earliest emerging disorders and most common mental health problem across the lifespan. A common characteristic of individuals with anxiety is poor attentional and cognitive control. Therefore, researchers are interested in how cognitive functioning relates to anxiety in young children. In particular, research has demonstrated associations between anxiety and electrophysiological markers of cognitive control skills such as the error-related negativity (ERN). The nature of the anxiety-ERN relationship is not well understood, however. The purpose of the present study was to examine: 1) the association between the ERN and diagnostically-defined symptoms of different anxiety disorders; and 2) the extent to which disorder-specific symptoms of anxiety moderated the association between ERN and behavioral performance on a Go/No-Go task in a sample of 139 children 5–8 years of age (70 females and 69 males). Results suggest that more separation anxiety disorder (SAD) symptoms are associated with a smaller ΔERN, even after controlling for other anxiety disorder symptoms. Children with more SAD symptoms showed higher error rates and failed to exhibit the expected association between ΔERN and behavioral performance, suggesting ineffective error-monitoring in young children with SAD problems.

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