I can see myself helping: The effect of self-awareness on prosocial behaviour.

Many studies indicate that increasing self-awareness leads to individuals reflecting on their values and ideals (Silvia & Duval, 2001). This self-reflection appears to increase prosocial behaviour (Berkowitz, 1987). However, previously studies typically manipulated self-awareness in situations in which the individual may have felt pressure from the researcher to help. Thus, experimenter pressure to behave prosocially confounds the self-awareness explanation provided in past research. We used a novel experimental paradigm to manipulate self-awareness and remove the researcher's presence to decrease the likelihood that the participant would conform to experimenter demand. Participants were 36 college students (Mage  = 19.52; 25 women). The results indicated a strong probability that the experimental condition participants were more prosocial than control condition participants. These findings provide additional support for the hypothesis that self-reflection increases prosocial behaviour, even without experimenter demands. These findings and the importance of studying objective self-awareness in light of the coronavirus are discussed.

Learning Mindsets and Well-Being and Ill-Being Among Osteopathic Medical Students.

Importance: Given the high rates of burnout and associated negative mental health outcomes (eg, depression, suicidal ideation, substance abuse) among medical students and physicians, it is imperative to identify strategies for supporting the future health workforce, particularly when considering trends indicating a future shortage of physicians. Understanding the associations of medical school students' learning mindsets (eg, growth mindset, purpose and relevance, and sense of belonging) with indicators of well-being (eg, flourishing) and ill-being (eg, burnout) could provide a foundation for future research to consider when attempting to combat the negative mental health trends among medical students and physicians. Objectives: To understand the associations of medical school students' learning mindsets (ie, their beliefs about themselves as learners and their learning environment) with critical student health outcomes (ie, well-being and ill-being). Design, Setting, and Participants: This survey study used a nationally representative sample of first-year osteopathic medical school students across the US who responded to a survey of learning mindsets as well as measures of well-being and ill-being in fall 2022. Data were analyzed from January to April 2024. Main Outcomes and Measures: Learning mindsets were categorized as growth mindset, purpose and relevance, and sense of belonging. Well-being was categorized as flourishing and resilience, and ill-being was categorized as burnout and psychological symptoms. Outcomes were regressed on learning mindset and demographics variables, and interactions of demographic variables and learning mindsets were assessed. Results: A total of 7839 students were surveyed, and 6622 students (mean [SD] age, 25.05 [3.20]; 3678 [55.5%] women) responded and were included in analyses. The 3 learning mindsets were significantly associated with flourishing (growth mindset: b = 0.34; 95% CI, 0.23 to 0.45; P < .001; purpose and relevance: b = 2.02; 95% CI, 1.83 to 2.20; P < .001; belonging uncertainty: b = -0.98; 95% CI, -1.08 to -0.89; P < .001) and resilience (growth mindset: b = 0.28; 95% CI, 0.17 to 0.40; P < .001; purpose and relevance: b = 1.62; 95% CI, 1.43 to 1.82; P < .001; belonging uncertainty: b = -1.50; 95% CI, -1.60 to -1.40; P < .001) well-being outcomes and burnout (growth mindset: b = -0.09; 95% CI, -0.11 to -0.07; P < .001; purpose and relevance: b = -0.29; 95% CI, -0.32 to -0.25; P < .001; belonging uncertainty: b = 0.28; 95% CI, 0.26 to 0.30; P < .001) and psychological symptoms (growth mindset: b = -0.22; 95% CI, -0.30 to -0.14; P < .001; purpose and relevance: b = -0.51; 95% CI, -0.64 to -0.38; P < .001; belonging uncertainty: b = 1.33; 95% CI, 1.27 to 1.40; P < .001) ill-being outcomes, even when controlling for important demographic characteristics (eg, race and ethnicity, gender identity, age). Furthermore, several significant interactions indicated that these learning mindsets may be particularly salient for students from historically marginalized communities: there was a significant interaction between growth mindset and race and ethnicity (b = 0.58; 95% CI, 0.08 to 1.09, P = .02), such that growth mindset was more strongly associated with flourishing among American Indian or Alaska Native, Black, Latine, or Native Hawaiian students. Conclusions and Relevance: These findings suggest that identifying strategies for supporting students' learning mindsets may be an effective way to support medical student well-being and reduce ill-being, particularly among students from historically marginalized backgrounds.

Personality traits predict attitudes toward individuals with intellectual disability.

Background: Explaining individual differences in people's attitudes toward individuals with intellectual disability (ID) is important for increasing social inclusion of people with ID. The aim of the current study was to replicate and extend past research by formulating a single model of attitudes toward individuals with ID with several predictors: personality traits, quality and quantity of contact, perceived knowledge of ID, social desirability, and demographics. Methods: A sample of 221 undergraduate students in the United States completed several surveys in a lab setting: the Mental Retardation Attitude Inventory-Revised, the Big Five Inventory, McManus et al.'s measures of contact with and perceived knowledge of ID, and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. Results: Results replicated previous findings by showing quality of contact was the strongest predictor of attitudes. Additionally, we found openness to experience and agreeableness remained significant predictors after holding all other variables constant. A follow-up mediation analysis demonstrated that quality of contact mediated the relations from openness and agreeableness to attitudes. Conclusions: Findings suggest personality factors can influence attitudes toward individuals with ID, and further emphasize the importance of quality of contact. Implications for the social inclusion of individuals with ID are discussed.

Everyday Memory in People with Down Syndrome.

Although memory functions in people with Down Syndrome (DS) have been studied extensively, how well people with DS remember things about everyday life is not well understood. In the current study, 31 adolescents/young adults with DS and 26 with intellectual disabilities (ID) of mixed etiology (not DS) participated. They completed an everyday memory questionnaire about personal facts and recent events (e.g., school name, breakfast). They also completed a standard laboratory task of verbal long-term memory (LTM) where they recalled a list of unrelated words over trials. Results did not indicate impaired everyday memory, but impaired verbal LTM, in people with DS relative to people with mixed ID. Furthermore, the laboratory verbal LTM task predicted everyday memory for both groups after taking into account mental age equivalent. Our research showed both an independence and a connection between everyday memory and the standard laboratory memory task and has important research and clinical implications.

The Acquisition of Survey Knowledge by Individuals With Down Syndrome.

People with Down syndrome often exhibit deficiencies in wayfinding activities, particularly route learning (e.g., Courbois et al., 2013; Davis et al., 2014; Farran et al., 2015). Evidence concerning more sophisticated survey learning has been sparse. In the research reported here, two experiments are reported that evaluated survey learning of youth with DS and typically developing children (TD) matched on mental age. In Experiment 1, participants learned two overlapping routes consisting of three turns each through a virtual environment depicting 9 square city blocks. Following acquisition, they were tested on multiple measures of survey knowledge: finding a shortcut, identifying the direction of landmarks not currently visible from their location in the environment, and recognizing a bird's-eye representation of the overall environment. Under these conditions, which should provide relatively optimal opportunities for survey learning, the participants with DS performed comparably to TD participants matched on non-verbal ability on all of our measures of survey learning. Hence, we concluded that people with DS can acquire some survey knowledge when tasked with learning a small environment and given the opportunity to do so. In Experiment 2, the experimenter navigated participants through a large, relatively complex, virtual environment along a circuitous path, beginning and ending at a target landmark. Then, the participants were placed at a pre-specified location in the environment that they had viewed previously and instructed to navigate to the same target (a door) using the shortest possible path from their current location. They completed the task three times: once after being shown the environment one time, once after three exposures, and once after five exposures. Results indicated that the participants with DS exhibited significantly less skill at identifying the shortcut than did the TD participants, with differences emerging as the number of exposures increased. Participants with DS were also less able to recall landmarks at the end of the experiment. Overall, however, the performance of both groups was relatively poor in both experiments - with the performance of participants with DS being worse as conditions became less optimal. These results were discussed in terms of underlying mechanisms that may account for variations in survey learning as environmental complexity increases.

Auditory and visual sustained attention in Down syndrome.

BACKGROUND: Sustained attention (SA) is important to task performance and development of higher functions. It emerges as a separable component of attention during preschool and shows incremental improvements during this stage of development. AIMS: The current study investigated if auditory and visual SA match developmental level or are particular challenges for youth with DS. Further, we sought to determine if there were modality effects in SA that could predict those seen in short-term memory (STM). METHODS AND PROCEDURES: We compared youth with DS to typically developing youth matched for nonverbal mental age and receptive vocabulary. Groups completed auditory and visual sustained attention to response tests (SARTs) and STM tasks. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Results indicated groups performed similarly on both SARTs, even over varying cognitive ability. Further, within groups participants performed similarly on auditory and visual SARTs, thus SA could not predict modality effects in STM. However, SA did generally predict a significant portion of unique variance in groups' STM. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Ultimately, results suggested both auditory and visual SA match developmental level in DS. Further, SA generally predicts STM, though SA does not necessarily predict the pattern of poor auditory relative to visual STM characteristic of DS.