Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

Young Chimpanzees and Human Teens Share Risk-Taking Behaviors

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by ScienceDaily.

Adolescent chimpanzees share some of the same risk-taking behaviors as human teens, but they may be less impulsive than their human counterparts, according to new research. The study gets at age-old nature/nurture questions about why adolescents take more risks: because of environment or because of biological predispositions?

"Adolescent chimpanzees are in some sense facing the same psychological tempest that human teens are," said lead researcher Alexandra Rosati, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology and anthropology at the University of Michigan. "Our findings show that several key features of human adolescent psychology are also seen in our closest primate relatives."

The researchers conducted two tests involving food rewards with 40 wild-born chimpanzees at a sanctuary in the Republic of Congo. The chimpanzees voluntarily participated in the games in order to receive food treats. The research was published online in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

n the first test, adolescent and adult chimpanzees could choose between two containers in a gambling task. One container always contained peanuts, a food that chimpanzees somewhat like. The other container concealed either an unliked food -- a cucumber slice -- or a favorite food -- a banana slice. The chimpanzees could play it safe and get the peanuts, or take a chance for some coveted banana at the risk of ending up with unappetizing cucumber.

During several rounds of the test, adolescent chimpanzees took the risky option more often than adult chimpanzees, but adolescents and adults had similar negative reactions when they received cucumber.

The second test, modeled after the famous "marshmallow test" with human children, examined delayed gratification where chimpanzees could receive one banana slice immediately or wait for one minute to receive three slices.

Both adolescent and adult chimpanzees chose the greater delayed reward at a similar rate. Human teens tend to be more impulsive than adults so they would be more likely to take the immediate reward.

Risk-taking behavior in both adolescent chimpanzees and humans appears to be deeply biologically ingrained, but increases in impulsive behavior may be specific to human teens, Rosati said.

Source: ScienceDaily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/01/230123092539.htm

Basketball Better for Building Stronger Bones in Youth Athletes Than Track

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by StudyFinds.

According to a recent study, youth athletes who play multidirectional sports like basketball, instead of unidirectional sports like track, are able to build stronger bones that decrease their risk of bone injury in adulthood.

The findings are in line with other recommendations that say that younger children should play a variety of sports that require them to move in various directions, then wait until they’re older to switch to a sport that they want to hone in on. By then, they’re more likely to have a stronger structural foundation, which supports less risk of stress injury.

“There is a common misperception that kids need to specialize in a single sport to succeed at higher levels. However, recent data indicate that athletes who specialize at a young age are at a greater risk of an overuse injury and are less likely to progress to higher levels of competition,” says Stuart Warden, associate dean for research and Chancellor’s Professor in the Indiana University School of Health and Human Sciences, in a statement.

In this study, Warden and team used high-resolution imaging to assess the shin bone by the ankle and bones in the feet, where bone stress injuries often are found in runners. They discovered that athletes who did running as well as multidirectional sports had 10-20% stronger bones than those who just ran.

Source: StudyFinds
https://studyfinds.org/basketball-bone-strength-children-track/

Pandemic Stress Literally Caused Teen Brains to Age by Several Years

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by StudyFinds.

Stress from the COVID-19 pandemic led to teenagers’ brains physically aging faster, new research reveals. Stanford University scientists report that pandemic-related stressors have literally altered the brain structure of adolescents, making them appear several years older in comparison to their peers prior to the global health crisis.

In 2020 alone, the study notes that reports of anxiety and depression among adults skyrocketed by over 25 percent. The new findings, published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, reveal that the neurological and mental health impact of COVID on teenagers may have been even worse.

“We already know from global research that the pandemic has adversely affected mental health in youth, but we didn’t know what, if anything, it was doing physically to their brains,” says first author Ian Gotlib, the David Starr Jordan Professor of Psychology in the School of Humanities & Sciences, in a media release.

Gotlib explains that changes in brain structure occur naturally as people age. During puberty and early teenage years, adolescents experience increased growth in both the hippocampus and the amygdala.

By comparing MRI scans from 163 children performed before and during the pandemic, Prof. Gotlib’s study discovered that this developmental process sped up among teenagers who experienced COVID-19 lockdowns.

Until now, accelerated changes in “brain age” have only appeared in children dealing with “chronic adversity” — such as violence or neglect. Prof. Gotlib says that although those experiences have a connection to poor mental health outcomes later in life, it’s still unclear if the changes in brain structure during the pandemic will have the same effect. “It’s also not clear if the changes are permanent,” adds Gotlib, the director of the Stanford Neurodevelopment, Affect, and Psychopathology (SNAP) Laboratory.

“Will their chronological age eventually catch up to their ‘brain age’? If their brain remains permanently older than their chronological age, it’s unclear what the outcomes will be in the future. For a 70- or 80-year-old, you’d expect some cognitive and memory problems based on changes in the brain, but what does it mean for a 16-year-old if their brains are aging prematurely?”

Source: StudyFinds
https://studyfinds.org/pandemic-teen-brains-age-faster/

Kids Who Feel Poorer Than Their Friends More Likely to Have Mental Health Problems

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by HealthDay.

Youngsters who try to keep up with richer friends are more likely to have worse mental health than those who feel economically equal, a new study reveals.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge say feeling poorer can lead to lower self-esteem, anxiety, and behavior problems such as anger issues or hyperactivity. Those who felt equal in wealth had much higher self-esteem and behaved better socially, with those who felt poorer or richer than their friends being more likely to bully others.

Researchers link their findings to a difficulty to feel a sense of belonging when feeling economically inadequate.

“Adolescence is an age of transitions, when we use social comparisons to make self-judgments and develop our sense of self,” says study lead author Blanca Piera Pi-Sunyer, a Cambridge Gates Scholar and PhD candidate in the university’s Department of Psychology, in a media release.

“A sense of our economic position not just in wider society, but in our immediate environment, might be problematic for our sense of belonging,” Piera Pi-Sunyer adds. “Belonging is particularly important for well-being and psychosocial functioning during adolescence.”

“It may be that feeling different in any way at a time when belonging is important increases the risk of interpersonal difficulties such as bullying,” the researcher continues. “Our research suggests that wealth comparisons with those around us might contribute to a sense of social and personal self-worth when we are young.”

The researchers analyzed perceived economic inequality within friendship groups of 12,995 11-year-olds in the United Kingdom. They surveyed children who were born between 2000 and 2002 and gathered data on their family income.

The self-esteem of those who thought they were poorer than their friends was six to eight percent lower than those who felt equal. They also scored 11 percent lower in well-being than those who saw themselves as economically equal to their friends.

The children who felt poor in their friendship groups were 17 percent more likely to report being bullied compared to those who felt they were in the same financial position as their friends. On the flip side, those who felt richer or poorer than friends were three to five percent more likely to bully others.

The study was published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

Source: StudyFinds
https://studyfinds.org/kids-feel-poorer-mental-health/

Bedtime Breakthrough: Study Finds 2 Ways to Help Teens Get More Sleep

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by StudyFinds.

If you know a teen in need of more regular shut-eye, researchers from Rush University Medical Center have two suggestions: teach them strong time management skills and consider trying bright light therapy.

Adolescents and teens need roughly eight to 10 hours of sleep daily for ideal well-being. Ironically, the adolescent mind develops in such a way that most teens find it very easy to stay up late. Add in the nuisance of a new academic school year throwing sleeping rhythms further out of whack, and it’s very common for teens to experience sleep deprivation, daytime fatigue, and changes in mood and focus.

Researchers explain that the average teen often deals with two competing forces when it comes to sleep: school obligations necessitate an early bedtime, but on a biological level, teenagers naturally want to stay up late.

With this unique, conflicting relationship in mind, study authors decided to conduct a two-week intervention experiment focused on targeting the circadian system using a variety of different behavioral measures. The end goal: helping teens stick to a better nighttime routine.

First, each participant underwent bright light therapy on two weekend mornings for a total of two and a half hours. A treatment for circadian rhythm sleep disorders, bright light therapy involves remaining within a certain distance of a bright white light. The patient does not have to stare directly at the light, just facing its general direction will suffice. The idea is this type of therapy helps “reset” the circadian clock, helping teens wake up earlier and making it easier to fall asleep earlier at night.

After that, participating teens received time management tools and learned how to better address and navigate barriers to an earlier bedtime, like limiting certain after-school activities. Ultimately, researchers were able to shift the teens’ bedtime by an hour and a half. Total sleep time also increased by about an hour.

“The interesting thing is that teens with late circadian clocks shifted by up to two hours earlier,” said Stephanie J. Crowley, PhD, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and the director of the Pediatric Chronobiology and Sleep Research Program at RUSH. “And the teens who had an earlier circadian clock didn’t need to be shifted any earlier. They just needed the behavioral support of trying to manage their time in the evening and increase their sleep duration.”

The study was published in the journal SLEEP.

Source: StudyFinds
https://studyfinds.org/help-teens-get-more-sleep/

Early Puberty in Girls Surged in the Pandemic, But Why?

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by SceinceAlert.

Among the laundry list of health problems COVID has inflicted on the world's population, one of the more perplexing could be an increase in the number of girls experiencing what is known as idiopathic precocious puberty – abnormally early onset of puberty.

Precocious puberty for girls is defined as signs of secondary sexual characteristics emerging before the age of eight. Just how many girls that encompasses is difficult to say with confidence as measures of the condition's prevalence vary considerably around the world.

More than one study has spotted the spike in numbers during the early months of the pandemic of what is typically a rare condition, highlighting a potential link between the virus and a trigger for early adolescence.

Now a study presented at the 60th Annual European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology Meeting in Rome suggests it might not have anything to do with the infection at all. Rather, the time spent during lockdowns scrolling through smart devices for hours on end could be to blame.

Researchers from Gazi University and Ankara City Hospital in Turkey exposed 18 immature female rats to a spectrum of light predominantly emitted by our LED screens for relatively short or long periods each day, finding those bathed in the blue-tinged light for longer bouts showed the hallmarks of maturity sooner than the rest.

"We have found that blue light exposure, sufficient to alter melatonin levels, is also able to alter reproductive hormone levels and cause earlier puberty onset in our rat model. In addition, the longer the exposure, the earlier the onset," says endocrinologist and lead author Aylin Kilinç Uğurlu from Gazi University.

The reasons for the early surge of hormones are also something of a mystery. Putting aside forms of cancer or other disorders of the nervous system, a good proportion are idiopathic, meaning there's just no obvious cause.

So when the number of girls reporting an idiopathic form of precocious puberty in Turkey jumped from 25 in April 2019 to 58 in March 2020, researchers were stumped, proposing anything from high-calorie foods to the fear of the pandemic might be to blame.

One intriguing possibility was the stark rise in the use of smart devices. Or, to be more precise, a significant increase in time spent exposed to the blue light emitted from our phones and tablets each day.

Using rats as a more convenient test subject, the team of researchers demonstrated this hypothesis could have a lot going for it.

Not only did the female rats exposed to double the duration of blue light each day undergo their rodent version of puberty at a relatively younger age than their peers, they also had lower melatonin levels and higher levels of the reproductive chemical signals oestradiol and luteinizing hormone.

"As this a rat study, we can't be sure that these findings would be replicated in children, but these data suggest that blue light exposure could be considered as a risk factor for earlier puberty onset," said Uğurlu.

This research was presented at the 60th Annual European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology Meeting.

Source: ScienceAlert
https://www.sciencealert.com/early-puberty-in-girls-surged-in-the-pandemic-and-we-may-finally-know-why

How Mother-Youth Emotional Climate Helps Adolescents Cope with Stress

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by MedicalXpress.

Transition to middle school can be a stressful time for adolescents. They must adjust to a new peer group and social environment while going through the developmental changes of puberty. A recent University of Illinois study looks at how emotional aspects of parenting can help youth better cope with peer stressors during this transitional period.

The researchers evaluated emotional closeness between fifth-graders and their mothers, gauging how it predicted the youths' ability to deal with social challenges when they started middle school the following year. They combined observations of mother-youth interactions with measures of the youths' biological stress response capacity.

The study, published in The Journal of Early Adolescence, is part of a larger, ongoing project in the research lab of Kelly Tu, examining the mental health and well-being of adolescents and the role of parental involvement. Tu is an associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) at U of I, and co-author of the paper.

"Adolescents often turn to their mothers to discuss peer problems. As mothers give advice, it's not just what they tell adolescents that matters, but also how they are conveying those messages. Therefore, moving beyond mothers' specific suggestions for coping, here we focus on the emotional climate of these conversations," explains Xiaomei Li, doctoral candidate in HDFS and the paper's lead author.

The researchers invited mothers and adolescents in the last semester of fifth grade to the research lab, asking them to spend five minutes talking about a peer problem the youth was facing. The youth also filled out questionnaires reporting on how they typically cope with peer stress, once during fifth grade and again after they started sixth grade the following school year.

During the five-minute conversation, trained observers rated maternal affect (such as smiles, physical and verbal affection, frustration or tension) and dyadic connection or cohesiveness (such as taking turns and communicating smoothly). The researchers also measured youth biological response in the form of their respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), gauging the baseline RSA at rest while they watched a slide show of nature images. RSA measures the variations in heart rate, and higher baseline RSA indicates greater capacity to respond to stressful situations by regulating the heart rate.

Youth who experienced more positive affect and greater cohesiveness during their conversations with mothers reported more active coping and advice-seeking from parents in middle school. In comparison, youth whose mothers displayed less positive affect (or more criticism and lack of interest) and who were less cohesive with their children during the conversation were less able to actively cope with social stress when starting middle school. This was particularly noticeable for kids with lower baseline RSA.

"For some youth who may be biologically dispositioned to be vulnerable to stress, such as displaying lower baseline RSA, the mother's positive, warm affect and a cohesive, collaborative conversation atmosphere appear to be especially important for the development and use of active coping," Li says.

The study was published in The Journal of Early Adolescence.

Source: MedicalXpress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-06-mother-youth-emotional-climate-adolescents-cope.html

The Teen Brain Tunes in Less to Mom’s Voice, More to Unfamiliar Voices

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by Stanford Medicine.

When your teenagers don’t seem to hear you, it’s not simply that they don’t want to clean their room or finish their homework: Their brains aren’t registering your voice the way they did in their pre-teenage years.

Around age 13, kids’ brains no longer find their moms’ voices uniquely rewarding, and they tune into unfamiliar voices more, a new study from the Stanford School of Medicine has found.

The research, which was published in the Journal of Neuroscience, used functional MRI brain scans to give the first detailed neurobiological explanation for how teens begin to separate from their parents.

“Just as an infant knows to tune into her mother’s voice, an adolescent knows to tune into novel voices,” said lead study author Daniel Abrams, Ph.D., clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. “As a teen, you don’t know you’re doing this. You’re just being you: You’ve got your friends and new companions and you want to spend time with them. Your mind is increasingly sensitive to and attracted to these unfamiliar voices.”

In some ways, teens’ brains are more receptive to all voices — including their mothers’ — than the brains of children under 12, the researchers discovered, a finding that lines up with teenagers’ increased interest in many types of social signals.

However, in teenage brains, the reward circuits and the brain centers that prioritize important stimuli are more activated by unfamiliar voices than by those of their mothers. The brain’s shift toward new voices is an aspect of healthy maturation, the researchers said.

Source: Standford Medicine
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/04/teenager-brain-mother-voice.html

Parental Criticism Hurts: A Glimpse Inside the Adolescent Brain

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by MedicalXpress.

It may seem as though adolescents do as they please, but they are more sensitive to their parents' opinions than they may seem. The adolescent brain reacts strongly to parental criticism or praise. These are the results of a study by an interdisciplinary research group of psychologists and neuroscientists from Leiden University.

An impressive 63 adolescents from 12 to 18 years old participated in the study. During an MRI scan of their brains, they were shown compliments, neutral feedback, or criticism of their personality; the compliments, feedback, or criticism seemed to come from their parents. "On a screen in the MRI they saw feedback from their parent: "Your father thinks you're mean," or, "Your mother thinks you're intelligent." As both parents and adolescents had previously completed questionnaires about these personality traits, the adolescents perceived the parents' comments to be realistic, says researcher Lisanne van Houtum.

After each point of praise or criticism, the adolescents indicated their mood. Unsurprisingly, their mood improved after receiving a compliment and deteriorated after receiving a negative comment, particularly when this criticism did not match their self-image.

Not only did the parental comments do something to the adolescents' self-confidence, but the adolescent brain reacted very differently to compliments than to criticism, as the scans showed. Criticism activated regions of the brain that are involved in processing emotions and pain, regions that are also activated when people experience physical pain. Both criticism and compliments cause activity in areas of the brain that are related to social cognition, such as understanding other people's emotions and intentions.

"What the results of the scans show is that criticism really does seem to 'hurt.' This pain does not seem to be less in adolescents with a relatively more-positive self-image and who feel their parents are warmer. Interestingly, we did not find that parental praise activates the reward system in the brain," the researcher says.

Source: MedicalXpress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-04-parental-criticism-glimpse-adolescent-brain.html

Just 10% of Kids with ADHD Outgrow It, Study Finds

*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on MedicalXpress.

Most children diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) don't outgrow the disorder, as widely thought. It manifests itself in adulthood in different ways and waxes and wanes over a lifetime, according to a study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Study authors from 16 institutions in the United States, Canada, and Brazil said decades of research characterize ADHD as a neurobiological disorder typically first detected in childhood that persists into adulthood in approximately 50% of cases. But this study found just 10% of children completely outgrow it.

"Although intermittent periods of remission can be expected in most cases, 90% of children with ADHD in the Multimodal Treatment Study of ADHD continued to experience residual symptoms into young adulthood," they wrote.

ADHD is characterized by two main clusters of symptoms, according to researchers. The inattentive symptoms look like disorganization, forgetfulness, and having trouble staying on task. Then there are also the hyperactive, impulsive symptoms. In children, those symptoms look like having a lot of energy, such as running around and climbing on things. In adults, it manifests more as verbal impulsivity, difficulty with decision-making, and not thinking before acting. The disorder affects people differently and looks different depending on what phase of life someone's in.

This study followed a group of 558 children with ADHD for 16 years—from 8-years old to 25 years old. The cohort had eight assessments, every two years, to determine whether they had symptoms of ADHD. The researchers also asked their family members and teachers about their symptoms.

Lead researcher Margaret Sibley, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine and a researcher at Seattle Children's Research Institute said medication and therapy are the two main treatments for ADHD. But, Sibley said, people can pursue their own healthy coping skills as well.

Researchers found that most people who technically no longer meet the criteria for ADHD in adulthood still have some traces of ADHD, but they were managing well on their own.

"The key is finding a job or a life passion that ADHD does not interfere with," Sibley said. "You are going to see a lot of creative people have ADHD because they're able to be successful in their creative endeavors despite having ADHD, whereas people who might be required to do very detail-oriented work at a computer all day—that could be a really hard combination for a person with ADHD."

Source: MedicalXpress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-08-kids-adhd-outgrow.html