Body dissatisfaction (BD) often arises from the discrepancy between a person's perceived body and an 'ideal' body. Mass media's adult-targeted body 'ideals' also reach children and shape their body perceptions. BD is arising at increasingly younger ages in global north populations, however, there is scant research investigating media impacts on children's body perceptions in Latin American contexts. We longitudinally investigated the relationships of television viewing, age and gender with children's body size perceptual accuracy and child and adult body size ideals among Nicaraguan primary school children (N = 170) living in rural communities with systematically varying media access. As expected, general body size accuracy increased with age. Girls, and not boys, who watched more television desired slimmer adult bodies, and showed greater own-body size accuracy. Findings show shared and context-specific patterns compared with global north samples, with media and developmental maturation each shaping different aspects of body perception.
The present study aimed to investigate (1) the development of probabilistic reasoning before formal instruction, measured yearly from 3rd grade preschool to 3rd grade elementary school and (2) the role of early numerical abilities measured in 2nd year preschool and vocabulary knowledge, measured at the beginning of 3rd year preschool for probabilistic reasoning. For the present study, 292 children (150 girls) were longitudinally followed from preschool (M-age = 4y10m) until the 3rd grade of elementary school. Probabilistic reasoning abilities were assessed by evaluating children's performance on three tasks: (a) distinguish certain from uncertain events, (b) compare probabilities, and (c) create equal probabilities. Children grew steadily regarding all probabilistic reasoning tasks (i.e., distinguish certain from uncertain events, p < 0.001, eta(2)(G) = 0.31; compare probabilities, p < 0.001, eta(2)(G) = 0.42; create equal probabilities, p < 0.001, eta(2)(G) = 0.14), but the growth occurred later on the third task. Furthermore, early numerical abilities predicted children's ability to compare probabilities, and early vocabulary knowledge predicted the performance across all three probabilistic reasoning tasks and the growth in the ability to create equal probabilities.
Children are vulnerable to disease, yet are poor at recognizing and avoiding sickness. We recruited 5-9-year-olds (N = 120, 38% female, 60% White, 48% Hispanic/Latine) to test whether children's sickness sensitivity can be improved through training. Children randomly assigned to engage in a game-based disease training, compared to a control group, showed greater improvement in pre- to post-training sickness avoidance accuracy, reported using facial features of lassitude (e.g., drooping eyelids) more often when trying to determine facial health, and had higher disgust sensitivity. However, we did not find support for our hypothesis that younger children benefitted more from training than older children. These findings suggest that children's sickness sensitivity may be malleable. Developing interventions for children's pathogen avoidance, that account for the flexibility of children's disease detection system, may reduce disease transmission and improve public health.Trial Registration: This study was pre-registered on the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/25jx4 and as a https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.70024
We report an updated perspective on what autistic rituals and routines are because there is too little recognition of their variable appearances and underpinning functions. We conducted a novel Constructivist Grounded Delphi study with autistic young people as experiential experts (n = 12) to reach consensus over three rounds. Participants were aged 12-18 years, mean age 15.6 years. Seven reported male gender, five reported female gender. Seven reported White ethnicity, three reported Mixed and two reported Asian ethnicities without giving further details. There were a range of views over whether rituals and routines were the same, similar, or different, but routines were consistently made up of rituals. Rituals were autistic when they had a 'have to do it' quality, met personal limits (number, order, colour) and managed anxiety by subjectively organising the day (often linked to a belief that things will be OK). Examples were attention to left/right when dressing, counting when walking, or ending social interactions in a set way. Routines organised activities of daily living and were used mostly at meals and bedtime. Autistic rituals and routines were characterised by their emotional meaning and the disruption to wellbeing when denied. We share this update with autistic people, their families, clinicians and researchers who align with a non-pathologizing approach.
Children begin to tell antisocial lies by 2.5 years of age; however, prosocial lies do not emerge until around 4 years. What may account for this developmental gap? This study tested whether reputational concern may contribute to the ontogeny of prosocial lying. One hundred and fifty-one children aged 4-7 years were randomly assigned to either a reputation-prime or a no-prime condition and were tested using a novel, repeated-measure task designed to elicit prosocial lying. Children were recruited from a metropolitan city and a rural community in the United States to examine whether urban vs. rural contexts may also influence prosocial lying. Results revealed that the reputation-prime appeared to increase prosocial lying in urban children, but it had the opposite effect in rural children, indicating that the effect of reputation on children's prosocial lying may depend on urban vs. rural aspects of cultural context. Additionally, children became increasingly likely to lie over successive trials, suggesting that prosocial lying may have a self-reinforcing effect.
