Health and social care professional standards need to be updated to advance leadership and action for environmental sustainability and planetary health.

BACKGROUND: Human health is inextricably linked to planetary health. The desire to nurture and protect both concurrently requires the mitigation of healthcare-associated environmental harms and global initiatives that support sustainable lifestyles. Health leadership is important to bring adequate attention and action to address planetary health challenges. Health professionals are central to this endeavour, but the will and energy of a few will not be adequate to address this urgent challenge. STUDY: We present an appraisal of the current UK health professional standards, frameworks and curricula to identify content related to planetary health and environmental sustainability. RESULTS: No current UK health professional standard provides statements and competencies to guide practising and trainee health professionals to focus on and advance the sustainability agenda within their clinical practice and across wider healthcare systems. CONCLUSION: Update of health professional standards is needed to ensure that health professionals in every specialty are supported and encouraged to lead the implementation of environmentally sustainable practices within the health sector and advocate for planetary health.

How do socioeconomic attainment gaps in early mathematical ability arise?

Socioeconomic attainment gaps in mathematical ability are evident before children begin school, and widen over time. Little is known about why early attainment gaps emerge. Two cross-sectional correlational studies were conducted in 2018-2019 with socioeconomically diverse preschoolers, to explore four factors that might explain why attainment gaps arise: working memory, inhibitory control, verbal ability, and frequency of home mathematical activities (N = 304, 54% female; 84% White, 10% Asian, 1% black African, 1% Kurdish, 4% mixed ethnicity). Inhibitory control and verbal ability emerged as indirect factors in the relation between socioeconomic status and mathematical ability, but neither working memory nor home activities did. We discuss the implications this has for future research to understand, and work towards narrowing attainment gaps.

Can We Boost Preschoolers' Inhibitory Performance Just by Changing the Way They Respond?

Changing the way children make their response appears to sometimes, but not always, boost their inhibitory control-though interpreting existing findings is hampered by inconsistent methods and results. This study investigated the effects of delaying, and changing, the means of responding. Ninety-six preschoolers (Mage 46 months) completed tasks assessing inhibitory control, counterfactual reasoning, strategic reasoning, and false belief understanding. Children responded either immediately or after a delay, and either by pointing with their finger, or with a hand-held arrow. Delaying boosted performance on all tasks except false belief understanding; arrow-pointing only improved strategic reasoning. It is suggested that delay helps children work out the correct response; it is unlikely to help on tasks where this requirement is absent.

Biculturalism, linguistic distance, and bilingual profile effects on the bilingual influence on cognition: A comprehensive multipopulation approach.

The idea that being bilingual benefits one's cognitive development and performance has been greatly challenged over the last years. If such an effect exists, as some studies continue to show, it might actually be restricted to particular contexts and bilingual profiles; not unlikely, considering the enormous diversity in the latter across the world. In this study, we assessed 4 different bilingual populations (N = 201) and 2 monolingual populations (N = 105), in the Balkan region. We formed bilingual groups based on (a) acculturation strategy (bicultural vs. monocultural), (b) linguistic distance, as well as (c) bilingual profile (balanced vs. unbalanced), based on linguistic, affective, and acculturation measures and cluster analysis. Beyond prior work, this allowed us to explore the specific conditions under which any cognitive advantage may be observed in bilinguals. We did not find systematic evidence for positive effects of bilingualism, biculturalism, or a balanced bilingual profile on inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, monitoring, and proactive-reactive control management. The only evidence pointing to an advantage was restricted to Bosnian-Albanian bilinguals (linguistic distance analyses) and their general monitoring capacity. Acculturation strategy though, played an important role in shaping the bilinguals' language profile, and appeared to have independent effects on cognition from bilingualism. On this basis, acculturation should be considered in future explorations of bilingual cognitive development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Temporal Binding, Causation, and Agency: Developing a New Theoretical Framework.

In temporal binding, the temporal interval between one event and another, occurring some time later, is subjectively compressed. We discuss two ways in which temporal binding has been conceptualized. In studies showing temporal binding between a voluntary action and its causal consequences, such binding is typically interpreted as providing a measure of an implicit or pre-reflective "sense of agency." However, temporal binding has also been observed in contexts not involving voluntary action, but only the passive observation of a cause-effect sequence. In those contexts, it has been interpreted as a top-down effect on perception reflecting a belief in causality. These two views need not be in conflict with one another, if one thinks of them as concerning two separate mechanisms through which temporal binding can occur. In this paper, we explore an alternative possibility: that there is a unitary way of explaining temporal binding both within and outside the context of voluntary action as a top-down effect on perception reflecting a belief in causality. Any such explanation needs to account for ways in which agency, and factors connected with agency, has been shown to affect the strength of temporal binding. We show that principles of causal inference and causal selection already familiar from the literature on causal learning have the potential to explain why the strength of people's causal beliefs can be affected by the extent to which they are themselves actively involved in bringing about events, thus in turn affecting binding.

The developmental profile of temporal binding: From childhood to adulthood.

Temporal binding refers to a phenomenon whereby the time interval between a cause and its effect is perceived as shorter than the same interval separating two unrelated events. We examined the developmental profile of this phenomenon by comparing the performance of groups of children (aged 6-7, 7-8, and 9-10 years) and adults on a novel interval estimation task. In Experiment 1, participants made judgements about the time interval between (a) their button press and a rocket launch, and (b) a non-causal predictive signal and rocket launch. In Experiment 2, an additional causal condition was included in which participants made judgements about the interval between an experimenter's button press and the launch of a rocket. Temporal binding was demonstrated consistently and did not change in magnitude with age: estimates of delay were shorter in causal contexts for both adults and children. In addition, the magnitude of the binding effect was greater when participants themselves were the cause of an outcome compared with when they were mere spectators. This suggests that although causality underlies the binding effect, intentional action may modulate its magnitude. Again, this was true of both adults and children. Taken together, these results are the first to suggest that the binding effect is present and developmentally constant from childhood into adulthood.

The Role of Executive Functions in Socioeconomic Attainment Gaps: Results From a Randomized Controlled Trial.

The socioeconomic attainment gap in mathematics starts early and increases over time. This study aimed to examine why this gap exists. Four-year-olds from diverse backgrounds were randomly allocated to a brief intervention designed to improve executive functions (N = 87) or to an active control group (N = 88). The study was preregistered and followed CONSORT guidelines. Executive functions and mathematical skills were measured at baseline, 1 week, 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year posttraining. Executive functions mediated the relation between socioeconomic status and mathematical skills. Children improved over training, but this did not transfer to untrained executive functions or mathematics. Executive functions may explain socioeconomic attainment gaps, but cognitive training directly targeting executive functions is not an effective way to narrow this gap.

Causality influences children's and adults' experience of temporal order.

Although it has long been known that time is a cue to causation, recent work with adults has demonstrated that causality can also influence the experience of time. In causal reordering (Bechlivanidis & Lagnado, 2013, 2016) adults tend to report the causally consistent order of events rather than the correct temporal order. However, the effect has yet to be demonstrated in children. Across four preregistered experiments, 4- to 10-year-old children (N = 813) and adults (N = 178) watched a 3-object Michotte-style "pseudocollision." While in the canonical version of the clip, object A collided with B, which then collided with object C (order: ABC), the pseudocollision involved the same spatial array of objects but featured object C moving before object B (order: ACB), with no collision between B and C. Participants were asked to judge the temporal order of events and whether object B collided with C. Across all age groups, participants were significantly more likely to judge that B collided with C in the 3-object pseudocollision than in a 2-object control clip (where clear causal direction was lacking), despite the spatiotemporal relations between B and C being identical in the two clips (Experiments 1-3). Collision judgments and temporal order judgments were not entirely consistent, with some participants-particularly in the younger age range-basing their temporal order judgments on spatial rather than temporal information (Experiment 4). We conclude that in both children and adults, rather than causal impressions being determined only by the basic spatial-temporal properties of object movement, schemata are used in a top-down manner when interpreting perceptual displays. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Memory in narratives and stories: implications for nursing research.

BACKGROUND: Memory, as a concept, is rarely discussed or described in qualitative research. However, memories are central to the stories people tell about their experiences of health and illness, which are often the focus of nursing enquiry. Memories also have the potential to be sensitive or traumatic. AIM: To consider the implications of memory for qualitative research by exploring the following issues: What is memory? What are the implications for using it in research? How can research participants and researchers best be supported in qualitative research when sensitive or traumatic memories are involved? DISCUSSION: Memory is imperfect, complex and dependent on context. Memories are connected to meaning and are central to identity. Qualitative research should appreciate the complexities of memory. Nurses undertaking qualitative research should be mindful of the potentially sensitive or traumatic nature of memories. Both participants and researchers can be affected and care should be taken during the research. CONCLUSION: Memory should not be taken for granted. The meanings underpinning memories are central to qualitative enquiry and are to be valued. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: The strategies described in this paper can support researchers and participants when dealing with traumatic or sensitive memories.

Still More Than a Feeling: Commentary on Cash et al., "Expectancy Effects in the Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response" and Recommendations for Measurement in Future ASMR Research.

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) - the sensory phenomenon experienced by some people in response to visual and auditory stimuli such as whispering - has attracted substantial public attention but is not yet well understood or well established within the scientific community. Recent research published in PeerJ by Cash, Heisick and Papesh (2018) investigated whether ASMR could be a placebo effect (resulting from expectation) rather than a genuine experience triggered by ASMR-inducing stimuli. In this article, we provide a commentary on Cash et al.'s findings and argue that they provide evidence for (rather than against) the veracity of ASMR. We discuss issues regarding the measurement of ASMR and end by providing some recommendations on how to assess ASMR as both a state and a trait, in the hope of galvanising collaborative research efforts in the emerging field of ASMR.

When causality shapes the experience of time: Evidence for temporal binding in young children.

It is well established that the temporal proximity of two events is a fundamental cue to causality. Recent research with adults has shown that this relation is bidirectional: events that are believed to be causally related are perceived as occurring closer together in time-the so-called temporal binding effect. Here, we examined the developmental origins of temporal binding. Participants predicted when an event that was either caused by a button press, or preceded by a non-causal signal, would occur. We demonstrate for the first time that children as young as 4 years are susceptible to temporal binding. Binding occurred both when the button press was executed via intentional action, and when a machine caused it. These results suggest binding is a fundamental, early developing property of perception and grounded in causal knowledge. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQC_MqjxZQQ.