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40 papers

Mental Health Outcome Trends in a Nationally Representative Sample of Canadian Migrant Adolescents From 2014 to 2022.

Ji D et al. · Jul 1, 2026

Background Migrant youth are at disproportionate risk of mental health challenges. Overcoming barriers to accessing services requires large-scale data to inform policies and interventions. This study maps mental health outcome trends of migrant youth over 8 years. Methods Canadian Health Behavior in School-aged Children study data from 2014, 2018, and 2022 were analyzed for mental health outcome trends. Age-adjusted logistic regressions examined health across years stratified by migrant status, separately by sex. Using nonmigrants as the referent group and 2014 as the referent year, contrasts for disparities were examined across migrant status to test widening, narrowing, or stability in differences of outcome prevalences between migrant and nonmigrant youth. Results Health worsened from 2014 to 2022 among migrants, especially migrant girls. Compared to 2014, life satisfaction, health, and self-confidence for migrant youth dropped in 2022. Health complaints and feeling sad/hopeless increased in 2022 among girls. Migrant youth reported fewer health complaints than nonmigrants in 2018 and 2022. Implications Investment in free/affordable, culturally safe/relevant, confidential school-based mental health supports with avenues for community collaboration are recommended. Conclusions Mental health outcomes worsened from 2014 to 2022, especially among migrants and girls; however, migrant youth exhibit resilience to adversity.

Psychology

Toddlers' Active Gaze Behavior Supports Self-Supervised Object Learning.

Yu Z et al. · Jul 1, 2026

Toddlers learn to recognize objects from different viewpoints with almost no supervision. During this learning, they execute frequent eye and head movements that shape their visual experience. It is presently unclear if and how these behaviors contribute to toddlers' emerging object recognition abilities. To answer this question, we here combine head-mounted eye tracking during dyadic play with unsupervised machine learning. We approximate toddlers' central visual field experience by cropping image regions from a head-mounted camera centered on the current gaze location estimated via eye tracking. This visual stream feeds a neural network model, which uses a biologically plausible unsupervised learning objective. Our experiments demonstrate that a few minutes of such first-person experience suffice to learn strong object representations permitting invariant object recognition. Importantly, by simulating alternative gaze behaviors we show that toddlers' eye movement patterns play a crucial role in this. Our analysis also reveals that the limited size of the central visual field where visual acuity is high plays an important role for successful learning. Together, this highlights the benefits of temporally structured visual experience arising from toddlers' natural interactions with objects. SUMMARY: We combine recordings of toddlers' first-person central visual field experience with biologically inspired self-supervised learning algorithms to model toddlers' development of invariant object recognition. Just a few minutes of toddlers' central visual field experience captured with head-mounted eye tracking suffice to learn strong object representations. Simulated alternative gaze behaviors produce weaker representations, demonstrating the importance of toddlers' active gaze strategies for learning. Our results emphasize the importance of toddlers' eye movements for learning object representations.

Psychology

Newborns' Language Discrimination May Not Reflect Sensitivity to Speech Rhythm: Evidence From Computational Modeling.

Famularo RL et al. · Jul 1, 2026

Human newborns are able to discriminate between certain languages but not others. This ability has long been attributed to sensitivity to rhythm-the temporal regularities in speech of different languages. Here, we demonstrate through a series of computational simulations that this discrimination behavior can be achieved using no temporal information at all. Our results raise the possibility that early language discrimination may be independent of speech rhythm, and call for theoretical reconsideration of how infants learn suprasegmental information in the first few months of their lives. SUMMARY: We simulate newborn language discrimination with machine learning models on naturalistic speech stimuli. Models can discriminate between languages just like newborns, even when rhythmic information is removed. This means that infants' behavior could rely on their ability to perceive global properties of speech, rather than rhythm. Our results challenge theories of how newborns perceive speech, and how that shapes later language.

Psychology

The intergenerational transmission of reflective functioning in adoptive families: A prospective study from pre-adoption to early adolescence.

Fiore S et al. · Jul 1, 2026

Parental reflective functioning is crucial for the development of children's reflective functioning, with cross-sectional evidence supporting this idea. However, there is a lack of long-term, prospective studies in this area and no previous studies have examined parental reflective functioning and child reflective functioning in the context of adoption. Using a structural equation modeling approach, this study addressed this knowledge gap by examining the associations between 96 Belgian adoptive mothers' and fathers' reflective functioning during the transition to adoptive parenthood, their levels of parental reflective functioning during their adopted child's early childhood, and the children's reflective functioning in early adolescence (M age = 12 years, SD = .58, range = 11-13; 17 boys, 11 girls). Findings showed that parents' pre-adoptive reflective functioning was positively associated with parental reflective functioning in early childhood. Parental reflective functioning in early childhood, but not pre-adoptive reflective functioning, predicted child reflective functioning in early adolescence. Maternal reflective functioning mediated the association between pre-adoptive reflective functioning and child reflective functioning. Although the small sample size precludes drawing strong conclusions from this study, this study provides new evidence for the intergenerational transmission of reflective functioning even in the context of adoption. Implications for future research are discussed.

Psychology

Understanding Multi-Victimization: Identifying Socioecological Supports Among Adolescents.

Smith EK et al. · Jul 1, 2026

Background Transgender and gender-diverse adolescents (TGDA) experience multiple victimization types (i.e., multi-victimization) more often than their cisgender peers. While greater socioecological supports are associated with reduced victimization, their role in protecting TGDA against multi-victimization is underexplored. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of health risk behavior survey data from students (N = 4207) across 13 high schools in a mid-sized U.S. city. We compared victimization rates and socioecological support levels (i.e., parental monitoring, perceived social support, food and housing security) and associations between socioecological support and victimization, accounting for between-school differences. We included two-way interactions between gender and socioecological supports. Results TGDA reported more frequent multi-victimization and lower socioecological support than cisgender adolescents. Across all groups, greater socioecological support was associated with experiencing fewer victimization types. Food security was more protective for cisgender girls than cisgender boys. Implications for school health policy, practice, and equity Enhancing socioecological support may reduce multi-victimization for all youth, with TGDA having the greatest need. Schools' advocacy and innovative efforts to bolster socioecological support are critical to TGDA wellbeing. Conclusions Modifiable socioecological supports may reduce adolescent multi-victimization. TGDA have lower support rates and higher multi-victimization rates, suggesting the need for tailored interventions.

Psychology

Two Weeks of Mirror Exposure Enhances Sensorimotor Cortex Activation but not Facial Mimicry in 4-Month-old Infants.

Richmond C et al. · Jul 1, 2026

This study aimed to test the causal role of sensorimotor experience in the development of facial mimicry. We systematically manipulated 4-month-old infants' experience with their own facial actions, and measured the effect on their sensorimotor cortex activation and facial mimicry when they observed others' facial actions. Infants in the mirror condition received two weeks of daily sensorimotor experience with their own facial actions via a toy mirror, while infants in the control condition played with the same toy without the mirror for the same amount of time. Before and after this experience, we measured infants' facial mimicry using electromyography (EMG) and their sensorimotor cortex activation using electroencephalography (EEG) while they observed videos of other infants' facial actions. As predicted, infants in the mirror condition showed a greater increase in sensorimotor cortex activation during the observation of other infants' facial actions than infants in the control condition. However, this greater neural activation did not translate into a greater increase in facial mimicry in the mirror group. These findings suggest that although the neural processing of others' facial actions was enhanced as a result of the sensorimotor training, longer training periods may be necessary for this to lead to greater facial mimicry. SUMMARY: We investigated the role of sensorimotor experience in infant facial mimicry by assigning infants to either a mirror or control condition Infants in the mirror condition received two weeks of daily mirror exposure Mirror training enhanced sensorimotor cortex activity during the observation of facial actions No corresponding increase in facial mimicry was observed.

Psychology

Context matters for the relationship between national identity and perceived democratic quality: National pride as a blind spot.

Hadarics M. · Jul 1, 2026

A growing body of evidence shows that national identity is positively related to attitudes toward societal and political systems. Yet much less is known about contextual factors that may modify this relationship. Distinguishing two facets of national identity-attachment and pride-and focusing on perceived democratic quality as a core system attitude, we test whether the links between these identity dimensions and system attitudes vary with the actual quality of democracy. Using data from 92 countries in the combined World Values Survey/European Values Study (N = 156,658), augmented with country-level indicators, multilevel structural equation models show that the association between national pride and perceived democratic quality is stronger in less democratic countries, whereas the effect of attachment is context-invariant. These findings suggest that national pride is associated with a positively biased perception of democratic quality that diverges from reality in illiberal or weak democracies, thereby complicating the predominantly positive framing of national pride in the social psychological literature on national identity.

Psychology

Sexual prejudice declined across generational cohorts and genders: A cohort sequential latent growth curve model from 2014 to 2024.

Clarke EV et al. · Jul 1, 2026

Despite attitudes towards the LGBTQIA+ community improving in recent years, older (vs younger) cohorts still report higher rates of sexual prejudice. To date, it is unclear if this generational difference emerges due to normative ageing or the distinct social norms in which each generation was born and raised (cohort effects). This pre-registered study clarifies the issue by utilizing cohort sequential latent growth curve modelling to examine the developmental trajectory of sexual prejudice for men and women across 11 annual waves of longitudinal panel data (N = 63,558). Our results reveal a period effect in which older (vs younger) cohorts and men (vs women) display higher initial mean levels of sexual prejudice. But due to shared social conditions, most cohorts experience comparable curvilinear declines in sexual prejudice across time. Collectively, our results highlight the malleability of sexual prejudice across the lifespan and demonstrate the need to examine the socio-political environment when taking a lifespan development perspective on anti-LGBTQIA+ attitudes.

Psychology

Initiation of High-Potency Benzodiazepine Prescriptions Among Survivors of Severe Trauma.

Oldner A et al. · Jul 1, 2026

Background Trauma is a major public health concern that often leads to long-term psychological distress and chronic pain. Benzodiazepines (BZDs) are sometimes prescribed for anxiety, insomnia, or acute stress-related symptoms, but long-term use is associated with dependence and adverse outcomes. The extent to which BZDs are initiated after trauma, and their implications for long-term health, remain poorly understood. This study aimed to assess the association between trauma exposure and initiation of high-potency BZDs, identify risk factors within the trauma cohort and examine the association between new BZD use and long-term mortality. Methods We conducted a population-based cohort study using data from a regional trauma registry linked to Swedish national health registers. New initiation of BZD prescriptions was defined as filling at least one prescription within 6 months after trauma. Multivariable logistic regression was used to assess associations between trauma exposure and BZD initiation and to identify risk factors within the trauma cohort. Cox proportional hazards regression evaluated the association between new BZD use and 6-18-month mortality. Results The study included 12,206 BZD-naive trauma patients and 66,801 matched controls. Trauma exposure was independently associated with new high-potency BZD use. Within the trauma cohort, risk factors included older age, psychiatric comorbidity, substance abuse, pre-traumatic opioid or sedative-hypnotic drug use, penetrating trauma, and higher injury severity. New BZD use was associated with markedly elevated 6-18-month mortality (adjusted HR 2.9, 95% CI 2.0-4.2, p Conclusions Trauma exposure independently predicted initiation of high-potency BZDs among previously BZD-naive patients. Psychiatric comorbidity, substance use, and greater injury severity were important risk factors. The association between new BZD use and increased long-term mortality underscores the need for cautious prescribing and structured follow-up after trauma. Editorial comment This study examines initiation of high-potency benzodiazepines among previously naive survivors of severe trauma using linked registry data. It shows that trauma exposure is strongly associated with new benzodiazepine use, particularly in older, comorbid, and vulnerable patients. Initiation is also associated with higher subsequent mortality, likely reflecting underlying clinical and psychosocial risk rather than a causal drug effect.

Psychology

Immediate Effects of Delayed Auditory Feedback on Stuttering: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Literature Published 2000-2024.

Iimura D et al. · Jul 1, 2026

Purpose This systematic review and meta-analysis evaluated the fluency- enhancing effect of DAF alone in individuals with developmental stuttering. Methods Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, we searched multiple databases for studies published between 2000 and 2024. Eligible studies examined DAF conditions applied to speech tasks with stuttering-related outcomes. Meta-analyses were conducted using a random-effects model, with subgroup analyses by disfluency type, delay time, speech task, stuttering severity, and participant age. Results Of the 194 records screened, eight studies involving a total of 98 participants in total met the inclusion criteria, and five studies involving 61 participants were eligible for quantitative synthesis. Each study included 8-20 participants ranging from school-age children to adults. Most participants were male, and stuttering severity ranged from mild to severe. DAF conditions were evaluated using oral reading and spontaneous speech/monologue tasks. Meta-analysis revealed no significant overall benefit of DAF compared with normal auditory feedback (NAF; mean difference = -1.46, 95% CI [-4.83, 1.91]). Conclusion DAF alone does not consistently reduce disfluencies; however, specific populations and conditions may derive greater benefits from it. Larger, well-controlled studies are needed to clarify its therapeutic potential and clinical applications. What this paper adds What is already known on this subject Delayed auditory feedback (DAF) has been reported to improve fluency in people who stutter and is used in several assistive devices. However, its independent effect remains unclear because DAF is often combined with other altered auditory feedback conditions. What this study adds to existing knowledge This systematic review and meta-analysis evaluated the exclusive effect of DAF on stuttering. The results indicate that DAF alone does not consistently reduce disfluency compared with NAF, although certain conditions (e.g., shorter delays or reading tasks) may show greater benefits. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Clinicians should interpret the fluency-enhancing effects of DAF cautiously when used alone. Further well-controlled studies are needed to determine which individuals and speech contexts may benefit most from DAF-based interventions.

Psychology