Cross-cultural equivalence of parental ratings of child difficulties during the pandemic: Findings from a six-site study.

OBJECTIVES: The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) has been shown to be invariant across informants, developmental stage and settings, but tests of cross-cultural equivalence are limited to adolescents' self-reports. The COVID-19 pandemic makes this gap particularly pertinent, given the need to understand whether distinct government approaches (e.g., school closures) are uniquely associated with variability in children's psychosocial outcomes and the reliance on parents' ratings for young children. METHODS: Within a Confirmatory Factor Analysis framework, we tested the cross-cultural measurement invariance of the SDQ across six countries: Australia, China, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom and USA, using a sample of 1761 parents of 3- to 8-year-olds (M = 5.76, SD = 1.09). RESULTS: A five-factors model showed good fit to the data and partial cross-cultural scalar invariance. In this sample, Swedish parents reported the fewest peer problems (Cohen's d = 0.950) and the highest prosocial scores (Cohen's d = 0.547), whilst British parents reported the greatest child emotional (Cohen's d = 0.412) and hyperactivity problems (Cohen's d = 0.535). CONCLUSIONS: The present results indicate that the parent-version of the SDQ is appropriate for use and comparison across different contexts during the pandemic.

Yawning Detection Sensitivity and Yawning Contagion.

Contagious yawning-the urge to yawn when thinking about, listening to, or viewing yawning-is a well-documented phenomenon in humans and animals. The reduced yawn contagion observed in the autistic population suggested that it might be empathy related; however, it is unknown whether such a connection applies to nonclinical populations. We examined influences from both empathy (i.e., autistic traits) and nonempathy factors (i.e., individuals' perceptual detection sensitivity to yawning, happy, and angry faces) on 41 nonclinical adults. We induced contagious yawning with a 5-minute video and 20 yawning photo stimuli. In addition, we measured participants' autistic traits (with the autism-spectrum quotient questionnaire), eye gaze patterns, and their perceptual thresholds to detect yawning and emotion in human face photos. We found two factors associated with yawning contagion: (a) those more sensitive to detect yawning, but not other emotional expressions, displayed more contagious yawning than those less sensitive to yawning expressions, and (b) female participants exhibited significantly more contagious yawning than male participants. We did not find an association between autistic trait and contagious yawning. Our study offers a working hypothesis for future studies, in that perceptual encoding of yawning interacts with susceptibility to contagious yawning.