Early institutionalized care disrupts the development of emotion processing in prosody.

Millions of children worldwide are raised in institutionalized settings. Unfortunately, institutionalized rearing is often characterized by psychosocial deprivation, leading to difficulties in numerous social, emotional, physical, and cognitive skills. One such skill is the ability to recognize emotional facial expressions. Children with a history of institutional rearing tend to be worse at recognizing emotions in facial expressions than their peers, and this deficit likely affects social interactions. However, emotional information is also conveyed vocally, and neither prosodic information processing nor the cross-modal integration of facial and prosodic emotional expressions have been investigated in these children to date. We recorded electroencephalograms (EEG) while 47 children under institutionalized care (IC) (n = 24) or biological family care (BFC) (n = 23) viewed angry, happy, or neutral facial expressions while listening to pseudowords with angry, happy, or neutral prosody. The results indicate that 20- to 40-month-olds living in IC have event-related potentials (ERPs) over midfrontal brain regions that are less sensitive to incongruent facial and prosodic emotions relative to children under BFC, and that their brain responses to prosody are less lateralized. Children under IC also showed midfrontal ERP differences in processing of angry prosody, indicating that institutionalized rearing may specifically affect the processing of anger.

Attitudes and knowledge towards plant-based diets of young adults across four European countries. Exploratory survey.

This study explored consumer awareness, knowledge and attitudes towards a plant-based diet (PBD) in Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Spain. Furthermore, it assessed knowledge and attitudinal determinants of whether consumers consider the term PBD more appealing than VTD (vegetarian) or VND (vegan). An online survey was conducted among young adults (age 18-30 years) (n = 438) in October 2018. It showed that awareness of the term PBD differed significantly among the countries and was lowest in Spain. Nearly all respondents reported awareness of the terms VTD and VND. Overall, respondents had limited knowledge of a PBD composition and many respondents considered the term PBD equivalent to VND. A neutral to slightly positive attitude towards a PBD was found, and specifically positive regarding health, environment and animal welfare. Many Belgian and Dutch respondents perceived the term PBD as more appealing than VND, while many Danish and Spanish respondents were more indifferent. Knowledge about PBDs and perceiving such diets as tasty and enjoyable contributed significantly to the likelihood of perceiving the term PBD as more appealing than VTD and VND. The concept 'plant-based diet' is promising for future health promotion initiatives in Europe, with special focus on provision of adequate information.

Effect of School-Based Educational Intervention on Promoting Healthy Dietary Habits in Danish Schoolchildren: The FOODcamp Case Study.

The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of the school-based educational intervention "FOODcamp" on dietary habits among 6th-7th graders (aged 11-13 years), focusing on the food groups: fruits and vegetables, fish, meat, discretionary food, and sugar-sweetened beverages. In this cluster-based quasi-experimental controlled intervention study, 16 intervention classes (322 children) and 16 control classes (267 children) from nine schools were recruited during the school year 2019-2020. The children were asked to record their food intake for four consecutive days (Wednesday to Saturday) before (baseline) and after (follow-up) attending FOODcamp, using a validated self-administered web-based dietary record. Eligible dietary intake registrations from 124 and 118 children from the control and interventions classes, respectively, were included in the final statistical analysis. Hierarchical mixed model analysis was used to evaluate the effect of the intervention. No statistically significant effects of participating in FOODcamp were found on the average food intake of the food groups eaten regularly (vegetables, fruit, vegetables/fruit/juice combined, or meat) (p > 0.05). Among the food groups not eaten regularly (fish, discretionary foods, and sugar-sweetened beverages), a non-significant tendency to lower odds of consuming sugar-sweetened beverages from baseline to follow-up (OR = 0.512; 95% CI: 0.261-1.003; p = 0.0510) was seen among FOODcamp participants compared to control participants. In conclusion, this study found no effect of the educational intervention FOODcamp on the dietary intake of vegetables, fruit, vegetable/fruit/juice combined, meat, fish, or sugar-sweetened beverages. The intake frequency of sugar-sweetened beverages tended to decrease among FOODcamp participants.

Language Outcomes in Adults with a History of Institutionalization: Behavioral and Neurophysiological Characterization.

Impoverished early care environments are associated with developmental deficits in children raised in institutional settings. Despite the accumulation of evidence regarding deficits in general cognitive functioning in this population, less is known about the impact of institutionalization on language development at the level of brain and behavior. We examined language outcomes in young adults and adolescents raised in institutions (n = 23) as compared to their socioeconomic status and age peers raised in biological families (n = 24) using a behavioral language assessment and linguistic event-related potentials (ERPs). Controlling for intelligence, adults with a history of institutionalization demonstrated deficits in lexical and grammatical development and spelling. Analyses of ERP data revealed significant group differences in the dynamic processing of linguistic stimuli. Adults with a history of institutionalization displayed reduced neural sensitivity to violations of word expectancy, leading to reduced condition effects for temporo-spatial factors that tentatively corresponded to the N200, P300/N400, and phonological mismatch negativity. The results suggest that language is a vulnerable domain in adults with a history of institutionalization, the deficits in which are not explained by general developmental delays, and point to the pivotal role of early linguistic environment in the development of the neural networks involved in language processing.