BACKGROUND:The mechanisms underpinning associations between sleep and psychiatric conditions are poorly understood, partly due to challenges with longitudinal sleep studies outside the laboratory. Children and young people with rare genetic conditions caused by micro-deletions or -duplications (Copy Number Variants or CNVs) have increased risk of disrupted sleep and poorer neurodevelopmental (ND) outcomes. The 'Sleep Detectives' study aims to investigate this by tracking behavioural and neurophysiological signatures of sleep health in young people with ND risk or ND-CNVs. To optimally achieve this, we worked with families with ND-CNVs and charity partners to co-design our tools, methods, study protocol, and materials. METHOD:We established a Lived Experience Advisory Group (LEAP): nine parents, 13 children and young people with ND-CNVs, and representatives of UK charities Max Appeal and Unique. Together, the research team and LEAP co-designed two in-person family workshops to collect feedback on acceptability of sleep monitoring devices, the design of bespoke cognitive tasks, and overall study protocol. Informal interviews and surveys enabled LEAP members and researchers to reflect and learn from their Patient/Public Involvement (PPI) experiences. RESULTS:Key outputs included pre-workshop information materials, and multiple insights and recommendations, all of which were incorporated iteratively in refining 16 different aspects of the main study design. These included more flexibility in data collection, selection of sleep devices, customisation of cognitive tasks, and improved document language. In a survey, 100% of workshop respondents (15/15) were positive or very positive about the overall study. The PPI process was highly valued by LEAP members, workshop attendees, and the research team. One investigator described it as "reinvigorating my love of research by helping me focus on science that matters". Participating families also established peer support networks. CONCLUSIONS:Involving families affected by ND-CNVs in study co-design maximised opportunities for acceptability, accessibility and scalability. The researchers gained inspiration and deeper understanding of the impact of ND-CNVs on families. Families gained awareness about research, established connections with each other and peer support, and were enthusiastic about future research involvement. This experience empowered families to engage more deeply with the research process and made the PPI work more impactful and inclusive.

Though verbal rehearsal is a frequently endorsed strategy for remembering short lists among adults, there is ambiguity around when children deploy it, and what circumstantial factors encourage them to rehearse. We recoded data from a recent multilab replication of a serial picture memory task in which children were observed for evidence of task-related speech or lip movements to extract finer-grained detail about how children spoke during the task. With these data, we aimed to better understand the manner in which children rehearse and the task scenarios which elicit overt rehearsal. Children in several countries from 5 to 10 years old were tasked with remembering 2-5 nameable pictures in serial order across a 15-second delay. Coders categorized children's speech or lip movements as reflecting fixed rehearsal of the last-presented item only, cumulative rehearsal of all the items presented so far, or some attempt at cumulative rehearsal. We found that most children, regardless of age, did not overtly rehearse at all during presentation of the objects or during the delay period. However, children who sometimes overtly rehearsed recalled longer lists of items than children who did not. Though rare, cumulative rehearsal was most frequently observed for list lengths close to the participant's demonstrated maximum recall length. Critically, on the trials where overt rehearsal was observed, recall improved. This evidence supports previous suggestions that rehearsal strategy, and possibly also its effectiveness, changes with task difficulty, and raises further questions about how verbal rehearsal affects serial recall.

Abstract Background The COVID‐19 pandemic coincides with growing concern regarding the mental health of young people. Older adolescents have faced a particular set of pandemic‐related challenges and demonstrate heightened vulnerability to affective disorders (particularly anxiety). Anxiety symptoms are associated with a range of cognitive difficulties. Older adolescents may therefore be susceptible to pandemic‐related declines in wellbeing and associated cognitive difficulties. Methods At three timepoints, independent samples of young people aged 16–18 years (N = 607, 242, 618 respectively) completed an online survey. Data collection coincided with periods of lockdown (timepoints 1 and 3) and young people returning to school (timepoint 2). The survey assessed subjective impacts of the pandemic on overall wellbeing, anxiety and cognitive function. Results Findings demonstrated the detrimental impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on older adolescents' psychological wellbeing—a finding that was consistent across samples. The majority of young people at each timepoint experienced heightened anxiety. Crucially, pandemic‐related anxiety was associated with self‐identified cognitive difficulties, a pattern of association that was evident at all three timepoints. The nature and extent of these difficulties were predictive of specific pandemic‐related concerns in this age group. Conclusions Older adolescents' experiences of the pandemic are characterised by subjective declines in wellbeing and stable patterns of association between anxiety and self‐identified cognitive difficulties. Implications are discussed with reference to future research and intervention.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic coincides with growing concern regarding the mental health of young people. Older adolescents have faced a particular set of pandemic-related challenges and demonstrate heightened vulnerability to affective disorders (particularly anxiety). Anxiety symptoms are associated with a range of cognitive difficulties. As such, older adolescents may be susceptible to pandemic-related declines in both wellbeing and cognitive function. Methods: At three timepoints, independent samples of young people aged 16-18 years (N = 607, 242, 618 respectively) completed an online survey. Data collection coincided with periods of lockdown (timepoints 1 and 3) and young people returning to school (timepoint 2). The survey assessed subjective impacts of the pandemic on overall wellbeing, anxiety and cognitive function. Results: Findings demonstrated the detrimental impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on older adolescents’ psychological wellbeing. Crucially, heightened anxiety was associated with self-identified cognitive difficulties, and this pattern of association was sustained in subsequent independent samples. Furthermore, the nature and extent of these difficulties were predictive of particular pandemic-related concerns in this age group. Conclusions: Older adolescents’ experiences of the pandemic are characterised by a clear pattern of association between anxiety and self-identified cognitive difficulties, which was sustained over time. Implications are discussed with reference to both future research and intervention. Abbreviations: Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA); Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

A recent Registered Replication Report (RRR) of the development of verbal rehearsal during serial recall revealed that children verbalized at younger ages than previously thought, but did not identify sources of individual differences. Here, we use mediation analysis to reanalyze data from the 934 children ranging from 5 to 10 years old from the RRR for that purpose. From ages 5 to 7, the time taken for a child to label pictures (i.e. isolated naming speed) predicted the child’s spontaneous use of labels during a visually presented serial reconstruction task, despite no need for spoken responses. For 6- and 7-year-olds, isolated naming speed also predicted recall. The degree to which verbalization mediated the relation between isolated naming speed and recall changed across development. All relations dissipated by age 10. The same general pattern was observed in an exploratory analysis of delayed recall for which greater demands are placed on rehearsal for item maintenance. Overall, our findings suggest that spontaneous phonological recoding during a standard short-term memory task emerges around age 5, increases in efficiency during the early elementary school years, and is sufficiently automatic by age 10 to support immediate serial recall in most children. Moreover, the findings highlight the need to distinguish between phonological recoding and rehearsal in developmental studies of short-term memory.

Null Hypothesis Significance Testing is a statistical procedure widely used in cognitive development research. There is widespread concern that the results of this statistical procedure are misinterpreted and lead to unsubstantiated claims about studies’ outcomes. Two particularly pertinent issues for research on cognitive development are: i) treating a non-significant result as evidence of no difference or no effect, and ii) treating a non-significant result in one group/condition and a significant result in another as evidence of a difference between groups/conditions. The current study focuses on quantifying the extent to which these two issues can be observed in the published literature on cognitive development. To this end, we will systematically search for empirical studies investigating cognitive development in 0-to-16-year-old children that have been published at two time points, namely in 1999 and 2019. For each of the two issues, we will extract information from 300 published articles, 150 per publication year.

Work by Flavell, Beach, and Chinsky indicated a change in the spontaneous production of overt verbalization behaviors when comparing young children (age 5) with older children (age 10). Despite the critical role that this evidence of a change in verbalization behaviors plays in modern theories of cognitive development and working memory, there has been only one other published near replication of this work. In this Registered Replication Report, we relied on researchers from 17 labs who contributed their results to a larger and more comprehensive sample of children. We assessed memory performance and the presence or absence of verbalization behaviors of young children at different ages and determined that the original pattern of findings was largely upheld: Older children were more likely to verbalize, and their memory spans improved. We confirmed that 5- and 6-year-old children who verbalized recalled more than children who did not verbalize. However, unlike Flavell et al., substantial proportions of our 5- and 6-year-old samples overtly verbalized at least sometimes during the picture memory task. In addition, continuous increase in overt verbalization from 7 to 10 years old was not consistently evident in our samples. These robust findings should be weighed when considering theories of cognitive development, particularly theories concerning when verbal rehearsal emerges and relations between speech and memory.

A1 Background Working memory may provide a means of holding information in mind that reduces susceptibility to false memories. In contrast anxiety might make individuals’ more prone to false memory intrusions, particularly those with an emotional content. A2 Objectives and Research questions This project explores whether any such protection depends on individuals’ working memory capacity, levels of anxiety, the amount of to-be-remembered information, and the nature of intrusion probes. A3 Participants At least fifty adult participants will be assessed. A4 Study method Participants will complete a version of a working memory task in which a pre-load of semantically-related words is followed by a period of distraction, and then a recognition test. The amount of information to be remembered will be varied across trials, as will whether the memory items prompt a neutral or negatively-valenced false memory. The nature of distraction will be varied between participants. Participants’ short-term memory capacity and state and trait levels of anxiety will also be measured.

A1 Working memory has become a key mechanism in accounting for the general attentional and cognitive control difficulties observed in anxious individuals. Mixed empirical findings regarding the nature and extent of these difficulties suggest the need for more nuanced accounts of the anxiety-working memory relationship. This study investigates working memory performance in older adolescents under conditions of varying attentional demand. The relationship between attentional demand, working memory load and levels of anxiety will be assessed with regards to individuals’ susceptibility to distraction and any resulting impairments in working memory performance. A3 Participants At least A4 Study method Participants will complete a Brown-Peterson task in which a pre-load of words is followed by a period of distraction, and then a test of recall accuracy. A novel manipulation varies the attentional demands of the task at either storage or distraction. Self-report attentional control difficulties and state and trait anxiety will also be assessed.