(Press-News.org) The capability to reflect on their own mental state and that of others continues to develop throughout adolescence, with mentalizing scores varying by gender and personality traits, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Alex Desatnik of University College London, UK, and colleagues.
It has been established that the human brain undergoes a number of important changes during adolescence, especially in the “social brain” regions associated with social cognition. One of the key constructs capturing multiple facets of social cognition is mentalizing—the ability to reflect on one’s own mental states and those of others, and talk about those mental states. Psychological mindedness is a partially overlapping construct referring to a personal ability to see relationships among thoughts, feelings and actions.
In the new work, the researchers analyzed data on 432 adolescents and young adults, ages 14 to 30, who were recruited from two independent schools and two universities. Participants completed a questionnaire that included the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire, often used as a measure of mentalizing, the Psychological Mindedness Scale, which gauges mindedness, and the Ten Item Personality Inventory.
The researchers found that mentalizing scores increased gradually over time and peaked in young adulthood. Across all age groups, females had consistently higher mentalizing scores than males. For females, scores increased the most between the age group 17-18 and the age group 20+ (effect size d=1.07, 95% CI 1.52-.62). For males, scores increased both between age 14 and the age group 15-16 (d=0.45, 95% CI .82-.07) and between the 17-18 and 20+ age groups (d=0.6, 95% CI 1.08- 0.1). Similar trends in score increases were seen for psychological mindedness. Significant positive correlations were found between mentalizing and the personality traits of Agreeableness, Openness to Experience, and Conscientiousness.
The authors conclude that mentalizing and psychological mindedness capacities mature in line with developmental changes throughout adolescence and into early adulthood. Moreover, the data suggest that age, gender, and personality traits should all be considered to establish a fully integrative picture of social-cognitive development in adolescence.
The authors add: “Our new research sheds light on continuous development of social understanding from age fourteen well into our twenties, and associated gender differences, with impacts for mental health and education.”
#####
In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0286500
Citation: Desatnik A, Bird A, Shmueli A, Venger I, Fonagy P (2023) The mindful trajectory: Developmental changes in mentalizing throughout adolescence and young adulthood. PLoS ONE 18(6): e0286500. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286500
Author Countries: UK, Israel
Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.
END
Young people learn gradually to reflect on mental states, peaking in young adulthood
Mentalizing scores are higher for females and for more agreeable, conscientious and open adolescents
2023-06-21
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Monarch butterflies are more likely to survive their long migrations if they have more and larger white spots on their wings, possibly because it gives them an aerodynamic advantage
2023-06-21
###
Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0286921
Article Title: How the monarch got its spots: Long-distance migration selects for larger white spots on monarch butterfly wings
Author Countries: USA
Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work. END ...
One in ten NHS healthcare workers experienced suicidal thoughts during pandemic, study finds
2023-06-21
Approximately one in ten NHS healthcare workers experienced suicidal thoughts during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, finds a new University of Bristol-led study published in PLOS ONE today [21 June].
Concerns were raised about the risk of suicide among healthcare workers during the pandemic after a number of high-profile cases were reported in the media. Researchers from the University of Bristol, King’s College London and UCL (University College London), sought to investigate the prevalence and incidence of suicidal thoughts and behaviour among NHS healthcare workers in England and their relationship with occupational ...
Repurposed drug shows promise for treating cardiac arrhythmias
2023-06-21
Ruxolitinib, a drug that is already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treating certain cancers and skin conditions, is effective at inhibiting CaMKII, a protein kinase linked to cardiac arrhythmias.
In a new study published June 21, 2023, in Science Translational Medicine, researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Chicago invented a new reporting technique to monitor activity of CaMKII while screening the effects of nearly 5,000 FDA approved drugs on human cells that expressed the ...
Urgent action needed to further improve child survival in Ethiopia: Study
2023-06-21
New global research on child mortality rates in Ethiopia shows while there has been a significant decline in these rates in past three decades, too many children under the age of five are still dying.
The analysis found the mortality rate in the under-five demographic decreased by almost 4.5 per cent every year between 1990 and 2019.
However, despite the progress, it’s still one of the highest rates in the world with an estimated 190,000 under 5 deaths in 2019 at the rate of 52 deaths per 1000 livebirths. The country’s neonatal mortality rate is 26.6 deaths per 1000 livebirths.
Lead author Dr Gizachew Tessema from the Curtin School of Population ...
Quantum interference can protect and enhance photoexcitation
2023-06-21
When a photon interacts with a material, an interaction occurs that causes its atoms to change their quantum state (a description of the physical properties of nature at the atomic level). The resulting state is called, aptly, photoexcitation. These photoexcitations are conventionally assumed to kill one another when they come near each other, radically limiting their density and mobility. This in turn limits how efficient tools that rely on photoexcitation such as solar cells and light-emitting devices can be.
But in a study published June 19 in the journal Nature Chemistry, scientists at Northwestern University and Purdue University challenge this assumption ...
Reducing bias and stigma associated with medication-assisted treatment improves care
2023-06-21
Medication-assisted treatment (MAT), such as naltrexone, is a well-documented successful treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD). However, there are multiple barriers for clinicians to use MAT, including clinician lack of confidence in using the treatment, their own misconceptions about the patient population, and, until recently, federally required training. Additionally, there is a stigma associated with MAT and the patients who would most benefit from it. Improving access to MAT training and integrating it into clinician programs and curriculums may remove identified barriers, decrease stigma, and enable newly trained clinicians to treat patients.
To address these barriers, ...
UNM researchers find medical cannabis patients who feel 'high' report greater symptom relief but increased negative side effects
2023-06-21
In a new study titled, “Understanding Feeling ‘High’ and Its Role in Medical Cannabis Patient Outcomes,” published in the journal, Frontiers in Pharmacology, researchers at The University of New Mexico, in collaboration with Releaf App™ found that patients who reported feeling “High” experienced 7.7% greater symptom relief and an increase in reporting of positive side effects such as “Relaxed” and “Peaceful.” However, these benefits must be weighed against a more than 20% increase in negative side effect reporting.
Senior author and Associate Professor of Psychology, ...
Screening newborns for "bubble-baby" disease saves lives
2023-06-21
Screening newborns for severe combined immunodeficiency disease (SCID) significantly increases the survival of children after bone marrow transplantation, a new North American study finds.
Published today in The Lancet with an accompanying editorial, the retrospective study was co-led by Elie Haddad, an Université de Montréal medical professor and clinician scientist, pediatrician and immunologist at the UdeM-affiliated CHU Sainte-Justine mother-and-child hospital.
The research shows that the gradual adoption of newborn screening for SCID since 2008 in North America has boosted the survival rate from 73 per cent between 1982 and 2009 to ...
Rain gardens could save salmon from toxic tire chemicals
2023-06-21
Specially designed gardens could reduce the amount of a toxic chemical associated with tires entering our waterways by more than 90 per cent, new research shows.
Tired toxins
The chemical 6PPD-quinone can form when car tires interact with the atmosphere. It enters rivers and streams when rain runs off roads into waterways. It is toxic to coho salmon, rainbow trout and some other fish.
“Rain gardens”, or bioretention cells, are gardens engineered to reduce flooding and soak up contaminants when road runoff is directed ...
New MU study examines variability of water, carbon in Missouri agriculture ecosystems and future impact on crops
2023-06-21
One of the main reasons plants use water is to allow them to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This means that, in plants, the water and carbon cycles are tightly linked. In a new study, researchers from the University of Missouri and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) used this foundational principle to identify sustainable farming practices aimed at helping staple crops like corn and soybeans thrive during extreme weather conditions that have become more common in the Midwest.
This study examined how farming practices affect crop resilience to climate change by examining water and carbon ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
Combining non-invasive brain stimulation and robotic rehabilitation improves motor recovery in mouse stroke model
Chickening out – why some birds fear novelty
Gene Brown, MD, RPh, announced as President of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and its Foundation
Study links wind-blown dust from receding Salton Sea to reduced lung function in area children
Multidisciplinary study finds estrogen could aid in therapies for progressive multiple sclerosis
Final day of scientific sessions reveals critical insights for clinical practice at AAO-HNSF Annual Meeting and OTO EXPO
Social adversity and triple-negative breast cancer incidence among black women
Rapid vs standard induction to injectable extended-release buprenorphine
Galvanizing blood vessel cells to expand for organ transplantation
Common hospice medications linked to higher risk of death in people with dementia
SNU researchers develop innovative heating and cooling technology using ‘a single material’ to stay cool in summer and warm in winter without electricity
SNU researchers outline a roadmap for next-generation 2D semiconductor 'gate stack' technology
The fundamental traditional Chinese medicine constitution theory serves as a crucial basis for the development and application of food and medicine homology products
Outfoxed: New research reveals Australia’s rapid red fox invasion
SwRI’s Dr. Chris Thomas named AIAA Associate Fellow
National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) funding for research on academic advising experiences of Division I Black/African American student-athletes at minority serving institutions
Johri developing artificial intelligence literacy among undergraduate engineering and technology students
Boston Children’s receives a $35 million donation to accelerate development of therapeutic options for children with brain disorders through the Rosamund Stone Zander and Hansjoerg Wyss Translational
Quantum crystals offer a blueprint for the future of computing and chemistry
Looking beyond speech recognition to evaluate cochlear implants
Tracking infectious disease spread via commuting pattern data
Underweight children cost the NHS as much per child as children with obesity, Oxford study finds.
Wetland plant-fungus combo cleans up ‘forever chemicals’ in a pilot study
Traditional Chinese medicine combined with peginterferon α-2b in chronic hepatitis B
APS and SPR honor Dr. Wendy K. Chung with the 2026 Mary Ellen Avery Neonatal Research Award
The Gabriella Miller Kids First Data Resource Center (Kids First DRC) has launched the Variant Workbench
Yeast survives Martian conditions
Calcium could be key to solving stability issues in sodium-ion batteries
Can smoother surfaces prevent hydrogen embrittlement?
Heart rate changes predict depression treatment success with magnetic brain stimulation
[Press-News.org] Young people learn gradually to reflect on mental states, peaking in young adulthoodMentalizing scores are higher for females and for more agreeable, conscientious and open adolescents