Uncertainty monitoring by young children in a computerized task

Why we should focus more attention on uncertainty distress and intolerance of uncertainty in adolescents and emerging adults

Sivertsen et al. (2023) showed that adolescents endorsing high levels of internalizing and externalizing symptoms are at risk of increased mental health problems during emerging adulthood and suggested the existence of both homotypic and heterotypic continuities of mental disorders over time. Since adolescence and emerging adulthood are transition periods highly intertwined with uncertainty, the present perspective contextualizes the findings by Sivertsen et al. (2023) in relation to the extant literature on intolerance of uncertainty and the recently developed Uncertainty Distress Model. Moreover, it claims for further research addressing the way adolescents and emerging adults process and deal with uncertainty. Indeed, focusing more attention on the implications of trans-situational and trans-diagnostic constructs such as uncertainty distress and intolerance of uncertainty in these life stages may hold great promise to design and implement effective mental health prevention programs.

Young children spontaneously devise an optimal external solution to a cognitive problem

Metacognition plays an essential role in adults' cognitive offloading decisions. Despite possessing basic metacognitive capacities, however, preschool-aged children often fail to offload effectively. Here, we introduced 3- to 5-year-olds to a novel search task in which they were unlikely to perform optimally across trials without setting external reminders about the location of a target. Children watched as an experimenter first hid a target in one of three identical opaque containers. The containers were then shuffled out of view before children had to guess where the target was hidden. In the test phase, children could perform perfectly by simply placing a marker in a transparent jar attached to the target container prior to shuffling, and then later selecting the marked container. Children of all ages used this external strategy above chance levels if they had seen it demonstrated to them, but only the 4- and 5-year-olds independently devised the strategy to improve their future performance. These results suggest that, when necessary for optimal performance, even 4- and 5-year-olds can use metacognitive knowledge about their own future uncertainty to deploy effective external solutions.

Divide and Conquer

We assessed the ability of preschool children to assign the most difficult tasks to a symbolic helper. First, children were taught that a toy "helper" could aid them in remembering the location of a hidden item. Children preferentially assigned the helper to the objectively most difficult locations to remember. Each child then completed eight more tests, assessing a range of different skills such as counting, object identification, and word reading. Children again could assign some stimuli in each task to the helper, leaving the remaining stimuli for themselves to respond to in the given tasks. They were not explicitly told to assign the hardest stimulus to the helper. However, children consistently still did so in most tasks, although some tasks showed an effect of age where older children were more proficient in assigning the objectively more difficult stimuli to the helper. These results highlight a potential form of metacognition in young children in which they can monitor difficulty across varied kinds of assessments and use a generalized tool for asking for help that does not require verbal responding.

Intolerance of Uncertainty, anxiety, and worry in children and adolescents: A meta-analysis

BACKGROUND

Intolerance of uncertainty (IU) has been implicated in the development and maintenance of worry and anxiety in adults and there is an increasing interest in the role that IU may play in anxiety and worry in children and adolescents.

METHOD

We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to summarize existing research on IU with regard to anxiety and worry in young people, and to provide a context for considering future directions in this area of research. The systematic review yielded 31 studies that investigated the association of IU with either anxiety or worry in children and adolescents.

RESULTS

The meta-analysis showed that IU accounted for 36.00% of the variance in anxiety and 39.69% in worry. Due to the low number of studies and methodological factors, examination of potential moderators was limited; and of those we were able to examine, none were significant moderators of either association. Most studies relied on questionnaire measures of IU, anxiety, and worry; all studies except one were cross-sectional and the majority of the studies were with community samples.

LIMITATIONS

The inclusion of eligible studies was limited to studies published in English that focus on typically developing children.

CONCLUSIONS

There is a strong association between IU and both anxiety and worry in young people therefore IU may be a relevant construct to target in treatment. To extend the existing literature, future research should incorporate longitudinal and experimental designs, and include samples of young people who have a range of anxiety disorders.