Fluency in mental arithmetic is regarded as a foundational math skill typically measured as a single construct with pencil and paper-based assessments. Here we introduce a novel tablet-based paradigm that allows for the rapid assessment of single-digit fluency while also capturing trial to trial information. We administered our tablet-based assessment of single digit arithmetic across a large (n=914), diverse cohort of 3rd- 7th grade students (ages 7-13 years). The tablet-based paradigm enabled us to analyze performance across individual items, allowing us to capture established effects, such as operation and operand distance. We also distinguished problems that are common in arithmetic tests from those that are generally excluded from such assessments. Fluency with problems commonly included in arithmetic assessments also proved to be a stronger predictor of achievement on state-mandated standardized tests than traditional aggregate raw scores. This fluency across problem sets also partially mediated the relationship between parental income and mathematics achievement. Finally, we explore how speed-accuracy tradeoffs differ across these two problem types and find that they become more similar as a function of both age and overall math achievement. We propose that assessing single-digit arithmetic with this novel tablet-based paradigm reliably replicates known effects from laboratory based studies in an efficient 3-minute session. This form of assessment is vital for large-scale datasets looking to explore the development of mathematical cognition.

Coins are used for everyday economic exchanges. The present work examines the relation between the size and monetary value of coins within large coin sets. European participants were asked to decide whether the monetary sum of a set of euro coins was smaller/larger than a given reference value. The results showed that this monetary value judgment was improved when the semantic information of the coins was congruent with their visual size in the real world, compared with judgments based on incongruent (uniform or inverted) information. Distinguishing between units (0.01, 0.02, 0.05), tens (0.1, 0.2, 0.5) and mixed categories, we further found that the size congruency effect depended on stimulus characteristics. The positive correlation between coin size and value, leading to improved monetary judgments, supports the existence of a sensory integration of the monetary and physical properties of coins.

Mathematical knowledge is essential to function properly in our modern society. It is therefore crucial for teachers and clinicians to be able to assess learners’ mathematical abilities with validity, reliability, and speed. Here we describe a new tablet-based assessment app designed to measure math fluency, the Stanford Mental Arithmetic Response Time Evaluation (SMARTE) tool. SMARTE consists of three 2-minutes tasks (non-symbolic dot enumeration, math fluency, and math recall). We analyzed data from 6,855 participants (3,262 female, mean age: 12.97 years) who completed SMARTE in year 3 of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive DevelopmentSM study. Because of the COVID-19 crisis, 2,682 participants were tested online while 1,159 participants were tested in person as the original protocol called for. Our analyses revealed that the SMARTE score and sub-scores highly correlated with each other. Overall fluency metrics revealed more problems per unit time were completed in the laboratory setting, yet a host of experimental contrasts that manipulated the cognitive demands across problem types produced equivalent effects across both settings, suggesting these effects are quite robust across variations in study setting.

Objective: To test two non-exclusive mechanisms by which parental monitoring might reduce teen substance use. The first mechanism is that monitoring increases punishment for substance use, since parents who monitor more are more likely to find out when substance use occurs (M1). The second mechanism is that monitoring directly prevents/averts teens from using substances in the first place for fear that parents would find out (M2).Method: 4,503 teens ages 11-15 years old in 21 communities across the U.S. (51% female, 9% Black, 17% Hispanic) completed a survey reporting on parents’ monitoring/knowledge and teen’s substance use.Results: We found no support for M1: Parents with greater parental monitoring were not more likely to be aware when the teen had used substances (odds ratios=0.79-0.93, ps=.34-.85), so they could not have increased the rate of punishment. We found support for M2: When asked directly, teens identified instances in which they planned to or had a chance to use substances but did not because their parents got in the way or would have found out (p<.01). Had all those opportunities of substance use occurred rather than been averted by parents, the rate of substance use in the sample would have been 1.4 times higher.Conclusion: In this community-based sample of teens, we failed to support prior punishment-centric theories of how monitoring might reduce teen substance use. Rather, monitoring may directly discourage teens from using substances regardless of whether it increases parents’ awareness of substance use or results in more punishment.

Objective: Many studies have shown that parental knowledge/monitoring is correlated with adolescent substance use, but the association may be confounded by the many preexisting differences between families with low versus high monitoring. We attempted to produce more rigorous evidence for a causal relation using a longitudinal design that took advantage of within-family fluctuations in knowledge/monitoring during the COVID-19 pandemic. Method: Youth (N = 8,780, age range = 10.5-15.6 years) at 21 sites across the United States completed up to seven surveys over 12 months. Youth reported on their parents' knowledge/monitoring of their activities and their substance use in the past month. Regressions were fit to within-family changes in youth-perceived knowledge/monitoring and substance use between survey waves. By analyzing within-family changes over time, we controlled for all stable, a priori differences that exist between families with low versus high levels of youth-perceived knowledge/monitoring. Results: Youth initially denying substance use were significantly more likely to start reporting use when they experienced a decrease in the level of perceived knowledge/monitoring (relative risk [RR] = 1.18, p < .001). Youth initially endorsing substance use were significantly more likely to stop reporting use when they experienced an increase in the level of perceived knowledge/monitoring (RR = 1.06; p < .001). Associations were similar or larger when adjusting for several time-varying potential confounders. Conclusion: In a large, sociodemographically diverse sample, within-family changes in youth-perceived parental knowledge/monitoring over time were robustly associated with changes in youths' engagement in substance use. Findings lend support to the hypothesis that parent knowledge/monitoring is causally related to substance involvement in early adolescence.

During the COVID‐19 pandemic, families have experienced unprecedented financial and social disruptions. We studied the impact of preexisting psychosocial factors and pandemic‐related financial and social disruptions in relation to family well‐being among N = 4091 adolescents and parents during early summer 2020, participating in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive DevelopmentSM Study. Poorer family well‐being was linked to prepandemic psychosocial and financial adversity and was associated with pandemic‐related material hardship and social disruptions to routines. Parental alcohol use increased risk for worsening of family relationships, while a greater endorsement of coping strategies was mainly associated with overall better family well‐being. Financial and mental health support may be critical for family well‐being during and after a widespread crisis, such as the COVID‐19 pandemic.

OBJECTIVE:During the COVID-19 pandemic, adolescents and families have turned to online activities and social platforms more than ever to maintain well-being, connect remotely with friends and family, and online schooling. However, excessive screen use can have negative effects on health (e.g., sleep). This study examined changes in sleep habits and recreational screen time (social media, video gaming), and their relationship, before and across the first year of the pandemic in adolescents in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. METHOD:Mixed-effect models were used to examine associations between self-reported sleep and screen time using longitudinal data of 5,027 adolescents in the ABCD Study, assessed before the pandemic (10-13 years) and across six time points between May 2020 and March 2021 (pandemic). RESULTS:Time in bed varied, being higher during May-August 2020 relative to pre-pandemic, partially related to the school summer break, before declining in October 2020 to levels lower than pre-pandemic. Screen time steeply increased and remained high across all pandemic time points relative to pre-pandemic. Higher social media use and video gaming were associated with shorter time in bed, later bedtimes, and longer sleep onset latency. CONCLUSIONS:Sleep behavior and screen time changed during the pandemic in early adolescents. More screen time was associated with poorer sleep behavior, before and during the pandemic. While recreational screen usage is an integral component of adolescent's activities, especially during the pandemic, excessive use can have negative effects on essential health behaviors, highlighting the need to promote balanced screen usage. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Understanding the cognitive processes central to mathematical development is crucial to addressing systemic inequities in math achievement. We investigate the "Groupitizing" ability in 1209 third to eighth graders (mean age at first timepoint = 10.48, 586 girls, 39.16% Asian, 28.88% Hispanic/Latino, 18.51% White), a process that captures the ability to use grouping cues to access the exact value of a set. Groupitizing improves each year from late childhood to early adolescence (d = 3.29), is a central predictor of math achievement (beta weight = .30), is linked to conceptual processes in mathematics (minimum d = 0.69), and helps explain the dynamic between the ongoing development of non-symbolic number concepts, systemic educational inequities in school associated with SES, and mathematics achievement (minimum beta weight = .11) in ways that explicit symbolic measures may miss.

Le vertige d’origine cervicale est un diagnostic d’élimination complexe et difficile à établir. Le vertige survient pendant ou juste après une sollicitation sensorielle cervicale. Le patient se plaint plus de sensation d’étourdissement que de vertige vrai avec illusion de mouvement. Des tests cliniques (test de repositionnement céphalique, exploration du réflexe cervico-oculaire, smooth neck torsion test) permettent de mettre en évidence la présence d’un trouble de la somesthésie cervicale qui peut être responsable des vertiges. Cependant, pour établir un diagnostic différentiel et éliminer une cause vestibulaire, il est nécessaire de faire appel à des professionnels spécialisés dans le suivi de ce type de pathologie. L’approche pluridisciplinaire permet d’établir un diagnostic solide, gage d’un traitement pertinent pour le patient.

Our study characterized associations between three indicators of COVID-19's community-level impact in 20 geographically diverse metropolitan regions and how worried youth and their caregivers in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development℠ Study have been about COVID-19. County-level COVID-19 case/death rates and monthly unemployment rates were geocoded to participants' addresses. Caregivers' (vs. youths') COVID-19-related worry was more strongly associated with COVID-19's community impact, independent of sociodemographics and pre-pandemic anxiety levels, with these associations varying by location. Public-health agencies and healthcare providers should avoid adopting uniform "one-size-fits-all" approaches to addressing COVID-19-related emotional distress and must consider specific communities' needs, challenges, and strengths.

Socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with larger COVID-19 disease burdens and pandemic-related economic impacts. We utilized the longitudinal Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study to understand how family- and neighborhood-level socioeconomic disadvantage relate to disease burden, family communication, and preventative responses to the pandemic in over 6,000 youth-caregiver dyads. Data were collected at three timepoints (May–August 2020). Here, we show that both family- and neighborhood-level disadvantage were associated with caregivers' reports of greater family COVID-19 disease burden, less perceived exposure risk, more frequent caregiver-youth conversations about COVID-19 risk/prevention and reassurance, and greater youth preventative behaviors. Families with more socioeconomic disadvantage may be adaptively incorporating more protective strategies to reduce emotional distress and likelihood of COVID-19 infection. The results highlight the importance of caregiver-youth communication and disease-preventative practices for buffering the economic and disease burdens of COVID-19, along with policies and programs that reduce these burdens for families with socioeconomic disadvantage.

According to the Argumentative Theory, human reasoning has an argumentative function, which consists of devising and evaluating arguments for and against various claims. It is however unclear how humans handle conflicting claims they face in everyday life (i.e., "Bob is telling me that Alice is at the library" vs. "Charles is telling me that Alice is at home"). We here investigate human argumentative reasoning in the light of Formal Argumentation, a research field that develops formal methods to give a normative account of argumentation and reasoning about conflicting information. In Formal Argumentation, multiple argumentation semantics that allow selecting sets of jointly acceptable arguments have been proposed. Nonetheless, it is unclear which of these semantics predicts best how humans evaluate the acceptability of conflicting arguments. We conducted an empirical study in which 130 young adults judged natural language arguments. We instructed them to draw the attack relation between the given arguments and to evaluate the acceptability of each of these arguments. Our results show that human judgments on the existence and directionality of attacks between the arguments conform to theoretical predictions from Formal Argumentation. We further found out that some less well-known argumentation semantics predicted human evaluation better than the most well-known semantics. These findings support the cognitive plausibility of variants of Formal Argumentation and bring new insights into reasoning about conflicting information.

Format changes in U.S. schooling in response to the COVID-19 pandemic varied by month and by school district, ranging from exclusively home-based to full in-person learning. The impact of these changes on adolescent schooling experiences, and the factors that mitigate such impact, have been challenging to quantify. To address these challenges we employed bi-monthly repeated surveys of youths (N = 6, 546, aged 13–14 years) in a longitudinal study, starting before the pandemic peak (October 2020) and continuing through one year after the pandemic was declared (March 2021). We investigated how school format (in-person vs. remote) impacted objective time spent on academic activities and the subjective experience of school, and how these were influenced by parental engagement. Periods of exclusive at-home remote schooling were pervasive—reported by more than 60% of youths—and linked to a reduction in school enjoyment and time spent on reading, math, and science. In contrast, such periods were linked to more time with parents or guardians helping with school activities, and the frequency of such parental involvement was associated with reductions in negative feelings about school. Results point to potential pathways to mitigate the negative consequences of future school disruptions.

Purpose: Adolescence is characterized by dramatic physical, social, and emotional changes, making teens particularly vulnerable to the mental health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This longitudinal study identifies young adolescents who are most vulnerable to the psychological toll of the pandemic and provides insights to inform strategies to help adolescents cope better in times of crisis. Methods: A data-driven approach was applied to a longitudinal, demographically diverse cohort of more than 3,000 young adolescents (11-14 years) participating in the ongoing Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study in the United States, including multiple prepandemic visits and three assessments during the COVID-19 pandemic (May-August 2020). We fitted machine learning models and provided a comprehensive list of predictors of psychological distress in individuals. Results: Positive affect, stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms were accurately detected with our classifiers. Female sex and prepandemic internalizing symptoms and sleep problems were strong predictors of psychological distress. Parent-and youth-reported pandemic-related psychosocial factors, including poorer quality and functioning of family relationships, more screen time, and witnessing discrimination in relation to the pandemic further predicted youth distress. However, better social support, regular physical activities, coping strategies, and healthy behaviors predicted better emotional well-being. Discussion: Findings highlight the importance of social connectedness and healthy behaviors, such as sleep and physical activity, as buffering factors against the deleterious effects of the pandemic on adolescents' mental health. They also point to the need for greater attention toward coping strategies that help the most vulnerable adolescents, particularly girls and those with prepandemic psychological problems. (c) 2021 Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine.

Parental knowledge/monitoring is negatively associated with adolescents’ depressive symptoms, suggesting monitoring could be a target for prevention and treatment. However, no study has rigorously addressed the possibility that this association is spurious, leaving the clinical and etiological implications unclear. The goal of this study was to conduct a more rigorous test of whether knowledge/monitoring is causally related to depressive symptoms. 7940 youth (ages 10.5–15.6 years, 49% female) at 21 sites across the U.S. completed measures of parental knowledge/monitoring and their own depressive symptoms at four waves 11–22 weeks apart during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, monitoring and depression were examined in standard, between-family regression models. Second, within-family changes in monitoring and depression between assessments were examined in first differenced regressions. Because the latter models control for stable, between-family differences, they comprise a stronger test of a causal relation. In standard, between-family models, parental monitoring and youths’ depressive symptoms were negatively associated (standardized $$\beta$$ = −0.22, 95% CI = [−0.25, −0.20], p < 0.001). In first-differenced, within-family models, the association shrunk by about 55% (standardized $$\beta$$ = −0.10, 95% CI = [−0.12, −0.08], p < 0.001). The magnitude of within-family association remained similar when adjusting for potential time-varying confounders and did not vary significantly by youth sex, age, or history of depressive disorder. Thus, in this community-based sample, much of the prima facie association between parental knowledge/monitoring and youths’ depressive symptoms was driven by confounding variables rather than a causal process. Given the evidence to date, a clinical focus on increasing parental knowledge/monitoring should not be expected to produce meaningfully large improvements in youths’ depression.

Humans possess a numerical intuition that allows them to manipulate large non-symbolic quantities. This ability has been broadly assessed with the help of number comparison tasks involving simultaneously displayed arrays. Many authors pointed out that the manipulation (or the lack thereof) of non-numerical features deeply impacts performance in these tasks, but the specific nature of this influence is not clear. This study investigates the interaction between numerical and non-numerical quantity judgement tasks. Adult participants performed five distinct comparison tasks, each based on a target dimension: numerosity, total area, dot size, convex hull, and mean occupancy. We manipulated the relation between the target and the other dimensions to measure their respective influence on task performance. Results showed that total area and convex hull substantially affected numerosity comparisons. The number of dots conversely acted as an informative dimension when participants had to make a decision based on the total area or the convex hull. Our results illustrate that adults flexibly use non-target dimensions as visual cues to perform comparison judgements. Overall, this suggests that the influence found in numerical comparison tasks is explicit and deliberate rather than due to implicit visual integration processes.

Purpose: Evaluate changes in early adolescent substance use during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic using a prospective, longitudinal, nationwide cohort. Methods: Participants were enrolled in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. A total of 7,842 youth (mean age = 12.4 years, range = 10.5-14.6) at 21 study sites across the U.S. completed a three-wave assessment of substance use between May and August 2020. Youth reported whether they had used alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, or other substances in the past 30 days. Data were linked to prepandemic surveys that the same youth had completed in the years 2018-2020, before the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: Past-30-day substance use remained stable in the 6 months since stay-at-home orders were first issued in U.S. states/counties; was primarily episodic (1-2 days in the past month); and was typically limited to a single substance. Using pretest/posttest and age-period designs, we found that compared to before the pandemic, fewer youth were using alcohol and more youth were using nicotine or misusing prescription drugs. During the pandemic, youth were more likely to use substances when they were more stressed by pandemic-related uncertainty; their family experienced material hardship; their parents used alcohol or drugs; or they experienced greater depression or anxiety. Neither engagement in social distancing nor worry about COVID-19 infection was associated with substance use. Several risk factors were stronger among older (vs. younger) adolescents. Conclusions: Among youth in early adolescence, advent of the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with decreased use of alcohol and increased use of nicotine and misuse of prescription drugs. (c) 2021 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Groupitizing – the ability to take advantage of grouping cues to rapidly enumerate sets that otherwise require serial counting – is linked to conceptual aspects of numbers (accessing the cardinality of subgroups) and math (combining the subgroups values) that rapidly emerge during the first years of schooling (Starkey &amp; McCandliss, 2014). Little else is known about its broader role in mathematical development. This study followed the development of groupitizing skill from late childhood through early adolescence (N = 1,209), revealing a pattern of progressive development over these critical years for math achievement. Individual differences were highly predictive of global math achievement from 3rd to 8th grade, above and beyond socioeconomic and cognitive (domain-general and math-specific) predictors. Experimental manipulations of item grouping cues (number of subgroups, numerical composition of subgroups) lead to similar effects that manipulations of operands have on symbolic mathematical reasoning, corroborating the view that groupitizing draws upon the same conceptual processes as symbolic math even in the absence of well-learned symbolic retrieval cues. Finally, we show that groupitizing provides new cognitive insights into the nature of the socioeconomic status achievement gap, which cannot be fully explained by familiarity with specific symbolic math facts learned in school but rather suggest inequities in educational opportunities that promote flexible mastery of conceptual processes. Taken together, groupitizing – as a non-symbolic assessment of conceptual processes in mathematics – could be a critical tool in implicitly assessing math ability.

Fluency in mental arithmetic is regarded as a foundational math skill typically measured as a single construct with pencil and paper-based assessments. Here we introduce a novel tablet-based paradigm that allows for the rapid assessment of single-digit fluency while also capturing trial to trial information. We administered our tablet-based assessment of single digit arithmetic across a large (n=914), diverse cohort of 3rd- 7th grade students (ages 7-13 years). The tablet-based paradigm enabled us to analyze performance across individual items, allowing us to capture established effects, such as operation and operand distance. We also distinguished problems that are common in arithmetic tests from those that are generally excluded from such assessments. Fluency with problems commonly included in arithmetic assessments also proved to be a stronger predictor of achievement on state-mandated standardized tests than traditional aggregate raw scores. This fluency across problem sets also partially mediated the relationship between parental income and mathematics achievement. Finally, we explore how speed-accuracy tradeoffs differ across these two problem types and find that they become more similar as a function of both age and overall math achievement. We propose that assessing single-digit arithmetic with this novel tablet-based paradigm reliably replicates known effects from laboratory based studies in an efficient 3-minute session. This form of assessment is vital for large-scale datasets looking to explore the development of mathematical cognition.

In the field of numerical cognition, researchers conventionally assess non-symbolic numerical abilities with the help of number comparison tasks, in which participants need to compare two arrays. Many studies emphasized that visual (non-numerical) dimensions can serve as strategic cues and influence the decision on numerosity in these tasks. In this study, we suggest the use of a novel paradigm based on the Change Detection paradigm. Here, participants had to simultaneously pay attention to numerical changes and visual changes on a target non-numerical dimension (Individual Area, Total Area, Field Area, or Density). Participants had to detect changes relative to the two dimensions and press response keys indicating either number change or visual change or press both keys. In such a double change detection paradigm, and unlike number comparison tasks, target and covarying dimensions cannot serve as cues to influence the numerical decision. We found that numerical change detection was excellent and stable across the conditions. Further, participants were more likely to falsely consider visual changes as numerical changes than the other way around. Lastly, when both dimensions varied, participants more frequently missed visual changes than numerical changes. Overall, our findings show that numerosity was the most salient visual dimension. From a methodological perspective, such a double change detection paradigm could be of critical interest to assess numerical abilities for future studies.