Spontaneous discovery of novel task solutions in children.

Children often perform worse than adults on tasks that require focused attention. While this is commonly regarded as a sign of incomplete cognitive development, a broader attentional focus could also endow children with the ability to find novel solutions to a given task. To test this idea, we investigated children's ability to discover and use novel aspects of the environment that allowed them to improve their decision-making strategy. Participants were given a simple choice task in which the possibility of strategy improvement was neither mentioned by instructions nor encouraged by explicit error feedback. Among 47 children (8-10 years of age) who were instructed to perform the choice task across two experiments, 27.5% showed a full strategy change. This closely matched the proportion of adults who had the same insight (28.2% of n = 39). The amount of erroneous choices, working memory capacity and inhibitory control, in contrast, indicated substantial disadvantages of children in task execution and cognitive control. A task difficulty manipulation did not affect the results. The stark contrast between age-differences in different aspects of cognitive performance might offer a unique opportunity for educators in fostering learning in children.

Communicating the diagnosis of cancer or depression: Results of a randomized controlled online study using video vignettes.

BACKGROUND: Communicating a diagnosis is highly important, yet complex, especially in the context of cancer and mental disorders. The aim was to explore the communication style of an oncologist vs. psychotherapist in an online study. METHODS: Patients (N = 136: 65 cancer, 71 depression) were randomly assigned to watch a standardized video vignette with one of two communication styles (empathic vs. unempathic). Outcome measures of affectivity, information recall, communication skills, empathy and trust were applied. RESULTS: Regardless of diagnosis, empathic communication was associated with the perception of a significantly more empathic (p < 0.001, ηpartial2  = 0.08) and trustworthy practitioner (p = 0.014, ηpartial2  = 0.04) with better communication skills (p = 0.013, ηpartial2  = 0.05). Cancer patients reported a larger decrease in positive affect (p < 0.001, ηpartial2  = 0.15) and a larger increase in negative affect (p < 0.001, ηpartial2  = 0.14) from pre- to post-video than depressive patients. Highly relevant information was recalled better in both groups (p < 0.001, d = 0.61-1.06). CONCLUSIONS: The results highlight the importance of empathy while communicating both a diagnosis of cancer and a mental disorder. Further research should focus on the communication of a mental disorder in association with cancer.