Eszter Somogyi

The literature on how smartphone and social media use affects adolescent mental health is highly fragmented. To synthesize the evidence, we convened over 120 researchers with diverse perspectives to evaluate 26 commonly cited claims using a Delphi process. A large majority agree that: Adolescent mental health has declined in several Western countries; heavy smartphone and social media use can cause sleep problems; such use correlates with attention problems and behavioural addiction; among girls, social media use may be associated with body dissatisfaction, perfectionism, exposure to mental disorders, harassment and predation. Most other claims were judged to have insufficient evidence due to limited, inconsistent, or non-causal data. Researchers also raised broader concerns, including challenges in measuring mental health and establishing causality, geographic bias in existing evidence, and the need for policies that account for diverse risks and avoid unintended harms. This collective review offers a foundation for future research and policy.

School-based mindfulness programmes (SBMPs) are becoming widely used in primary schools, however findings regarding their effectiveness are controversial. Understanding how children describe and interpret the experience of taking part in these programmes may hold the key for improving their effectiveness. In this study we sought to gather children’s views about a 12-lesson SBMP called Paws b. A week after the completion of the SBMP in five classes of two primary schools, during Personal Social and Health Education (PSHE) lessons, we conducted four focus groups with 8- and 9-year-olds. We randomly selected two girls and two boys from each class to form each focus group. The discussion was led by a different researcher that had not been associated with the delivery of the lessons. A reflexive thematic analysis was conducted on the transcribed data. We identified three major themes in children’s discussions: (1) Mindfulness as instrumental for self-regulation, (2) Continued practice can lead to positive changes, and (3) Embedded memories from Paws b. The themes indicate that children remembered key practices and information, and used them in daily life. They enjoyed the training although not always from the beginning, observed changes in themselves and in their classmates and understood mechanisms through which mindfulness training can have positive effects. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to both the content of this specific SBPM and the way in which the course was delivered.

In humans, interactions with objects are often embedded in communicative exchanges. Objects offer unique affordances to explore, carry functions and hold cultural relevance, which can shape children’s interactions and communication. Research indicates that the use of artificial objects, such as certain toys, helps promote pre-linguistic communication, consequently impacting language development. Given that chimpanzees use objects extensively compared to other great apes, and considering the differences between chimpanzees and bonobos in intrinsic motivation for tool use and the extended developmental period during which they learn to use objects, it is reasonable to expect that objects may influence chimpanzees’ communication. Here, we examined interactions of 31 immature sanctuary-living chimpanzees with non-novel artificial and natural objects and tested their vocal and facial expressions, applying methods previously designed for children. Our results showed an increase in these expressions associated with artificial objects. These findings provide the first empirical evidence that chimpanzee communicative expressions may be influenced by inherent properties of objects, potentially promoting varied communication, comparable to the impact distinctive objects have on pre-linguistic children. By exploring this connection between object-centric interactions and communication, this study reveals deep phylogenetic roots where objects may have shaped great ape communication and possibly evolutionary foundations of language.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a school-based mindfulness programme (SBMP), “Paws b”, on empathy and prosocial behaviour among children aged 7 to 10 years in a school setting. Method: This multi-informant design, randomised controlled trial compared an intervention group to a wait-list control group, involving 133 children aged 7- to 10 years from 10 classrooms. Outcome measures were taken at pre-intervention, post-intervention, and 3-month follow-up and included self-reports of mindfulness and empathy, a sharing task, teacher and peer reports of prosocial behaviours, and sociometry measures. Results: Children in the intervention group were voted as significantly more (a) prosocial by teachers F(1, 127) = 7.35, p = 0.008, η² = 0.055, (b) helpful by peers, F(1, 127) = 9.369, p < 0.003, η² = 0.069, (c) popular by peers, F(1, 127) = 4.90, p = 0.028, η² = 0.037, and (d) showed more reciprocal relationships, t(8) = 2.518, p = 0.036, compared to the wait-list control group. The intervention did not have an effect on mindfulness scores, empathy scores (affective, cognitive, or intention to comfort), or sharing task scores. Conclusions: Findings suggest that, for 7–10-year-olds, the SBMP, Paws b, delivered by a mindfulness teacher, can increase some aspects of prosociality, as judged by peers and teachers, but has no effect on self-assessed empathy. Preregistration: This study was preregistered on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/vm6tp/) on 31.10.2022.

Protophones are considered to be precursors of speech. These vocalizations have been notably discussed in relation to toys and their importance for developing language skills. However, little is known about how natural objects, compared to artificial objects, may affect protophone production, an approach that could additionally help reconstruct how language evolved. In the current study, we examined protophone production in 58 infants (4–18 months) while interacting with their caregivers when using natural objects, household items, and toys. The infants were recorded in their home environment, in a rural area in Zambia. The results showed that the infants produced significantly fewer protophones when using natural objects than when using household items or toys. Importantly, this pattern was found only for the younger preverbal infants, and there was no indication in the data that the level of caregiver responsiveness differed with regard to the object type. Furthermore, the infants of the present work selected primarily the household items when exposed to both natural objects and household items. These findings suggest that natural objects are less likely to promote protophone production and, consequently, language skill development than artificial objects in preverbal infants, who seem to favor the latter, perhaps due to their features designed for specific functional purposes. Furthermore, these findings provide empirical evidence that the use of complex tools in social interactions may have helped to promote the evolution of language among hominins.

Is hemisphere lateralization for speech processing linked to handedness? To answer this question, we compared hemisphere lateralization for speech processing and handedness in 18-month-old infants, the age at which infants start to produce words and reach a stable pattern of handedness. To assess hemisphere lateralization for speech perception, we coupled event-related potential (ERP) recordings with a syllable-discrimination paradigm and measured response differences to a change in phoneme or voice (different speaker) in the left and right clusters of electrodes. To assess handedness, we gave a 15-item grasping test to infants. We also evaluated infants’ range of vocabulary to assess whether it was associated with direction and degree of handedness and language brain asymmetries. Brain signals in response to a change in phoneme and voice were left- and right-lateralized, respectively, indicating functional brain lateralization for speech processing in infants. Handedness and brain asymmetry for speech processing were not related. In addition, there were no interactions between the range of vocabulary and asymmetry in brain responses, even for a phoneme change. Together, a high degree of right-handedness and greater vocabulary range were associated with an increase in ERP amplitudes in voice condition, irrespective of hemisphere side, suggesting that they influence discrimination during voice processing.

This longitudinal study investigated the effect of experience with tactile stimulation on infants' ability to reach to targets on the body, an important adaptive skill. Infants were provided weekly tactile stimulation on eight body locations from 4 to 8 months of age (N = 11), comparing their ability to reach to the body to infants in a control group who did not receive stimulation (N = 10). Infants who received stimulation were more likely to successfully reach targets on the body than controls by 7 months of age. These findings indicate that tactile stimulation facilitates the development of reaching to the body by allowing infants to explore the sensorimotor correlations emerging from the stimulation.

The past decade has witnessed a rapid increase in the use of screen media in families, and infants are exposed to screens at younger ages than ever before. The objective of this review is twofold: (1) to understand the correlates and demographic factors determining exposure to screens, including interactive screens, when available, and (2) to study the effects of watching screens and using touchscreens on cognitive development, during the first 3 years of life. We argue that the effects of screen viewing depend mostly on contextual aspects of the viewing rather than on the quantity of viewing. That context includes the behavior of adult caregivers during viewing, the watched content in relation to the child’s age, the interactivity of the screen and whether the screen is in the background or not. Depending on the context, screen viewing can have positive, neutral or negative effects on infants’ cognition.

As a step toward understanding the developmental relationship between handedness and language lateralization, this longitudinal study investigated how infants (N = 21) move their hands in noncommunicative and communicative situations at 2 weeks and at 3 months of age. The authors looked at whether left-right asymmetry in hand movements and in duration of self-touch appeared across conditions and whether the direction of asymmetry depended on the communicative nature of the situation. The authors found that asymmetries appeared less consistently than suggested in literature and did not only depend on the communicative nature of the situation. Instead, hand activity and self-touch patterns depended on age, the presence of the mother, the degree of novelty of the situation, and the presence of an object. The results partly support previous studies that pointed out an early differentiation of communicative hand movements versus noncommunicative ones in infants. It is in terms of the amount of global hand activity, rather than in those of the laterality of hand movements that this differentiation emerged in this study. At 3 months, infants moved their hands more in the communicative conditions than in the noncommunicative conditions and this difference appeared as a tendency already at 2 weeks of age.