Objective: To determine the psychosocial adjustment of children born with a cleft lip and/or palate (CL/P). Design: Longitudinal analyses of psychosocial outcomes and cross-sectional comparison with published norms. Setting: Retrospective clinical audit at a UK cleft center. Participants: Data available for 1174 participants born with a CL/P at ages 5 (n = 658), 10 (n = 415), and 15 (n = 171), with longitudinal data for a subset of the sample at 5 and 10 (n = 168) and 10 and 15 (n = 49). Main Outcome Measure: Parental-report Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Results: The majority of children scored in the average range for overall adjustment. Children born with CL/P had significantly higher mean overall SDQ scores relative to normative data at ages 5 and 10. Longitudinal analysis highlighted that adjustment at age 5 was a significant predictor of adjustment at age 10. Gender was another significant predictor of adjustment at age 5 and 10, with boys reporting more problems than girls. However, effect sizes for the impact of age and gender were small. Cleft type was not a significant predictor of SDQ score at any age. Conclusions: Children aged 5 and 10 years of age born with a cleft may experience greater overall psychosocial difficulties than the general population. The domains on the SDQ on which children experience difficulty may be influenced by age and gender. Future research should focus on the specific impact of cleft-related issues, including speech, language, and hearing difficulties, on psychosocial adjustment.

Objectives: Cognitive decoupling (the ability to distinguish supposition from belief and run thought experiments) is considered one of the key mechanisms in mindfulness, cognitive reflection, and reasoning. Therefore, the present study examined whether a brief mindfulness exercise that explicitly encourages cognitive decoupling can increase cognitive reflection and reasoning. Methods: A total of 156 first and second-year undergraduate students were randomly allocated to either a mindfulness or control condition, before listening to a 15-minute audio recording. The mindfulness audio was a recording of the leaves on a stream exercise that focussed on how to dissociate from thoughts (decentring), whereas the control audio was a recording of a book prologue. Cognitive reflection and reasoning were measured through the expanded cognitive reflection test and a syllogistic reasoning test, both of which encourage an incorrect automatic response rather than a correct rational response. The fivefacet mindfulness questionnaire-short form and the rational-experiential inventory were also administered as trait measures of mindfulness and thinking style (intuitive or rational), respectively. Results: The results showed no significant difference between the mindfulness and control conditions on either of the cognitive tests. However, there was a significant positive correlation between trait mindfulness and trait rationality (r = 0.56). Further analyses showed that the mindfulness subscales of observing, describing, detaching, and acting mindfully were all significant predictors of trait rationality. Conclusions: Trait mindfulness and trait rationality are moderately associated, although more research is required to determine whether mindfulness training can increase cognitive reflection and reasoning.

Imagery techniques which promote positive self-images may help improve aspects of the working self, body satisfaction and affect in individuals with high levels of body dissatisfaction. As such, these imagery techniques warrant further investigation in a clinical population.

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