Although loneliness is a normative experience, there is reason to be concerned about children who are chronically lonely in school. Research indicates that children have a fundamental understanding of what it means to be lonely, and that loneliness can be reliably measured in children. Most of the research on loneliness in children has focused on the contributions of children's peer relations to their feelings of well-being at school. Loneliness in children is influenced by how well accepted they are by peers, whether they are overtly victimized, whether they have friends, and the durability and quality of their best friendships. Findings from this emerging area of research provide a differentiated picture of how children's peer experiences come to influence their emotional well-being.

A large body of literature is available on wound healing in humans. Nonetheless, a standardizedex vivowound model without disruption of the dermal compartment has not been put forward with compelling justification. Here, we present a novel wound model based on application of negative pressure and its effects for epidermal regeneration and immune cell behaviour. Importantly, the basement membrane remained intact after blister roof removal and keratinocytes were absent in the wounded area. Upon six days of culture, the wound was covered with one to three-cell thick K14+Ki67+keratinocyte layers, indicating that proliferation and migration were involved in wound closure. After eight to twelve days, a multi-layered epidermis was formed expressing epidermal differentiation markers (K10, filaggrin, DSG-1, CDSN). Investigations about immune cell-specific manners revealed more T cells in the blister roof epidermis compared to normal epidermis. We identified several cell populations in blister roof epidermis and suction blister fluid that are absent in normal epidermis which correlated with their decrease in the dermis, indicating a dermal efflux upon negative pressure. Together, our model recapitulates the main features of epithelial wound regeneration, and can be applied for testing wound healing therapies and investigating underlying mechanisms.

The inconsistent definition of empathy has had a negative impact on both research and practice. The aim of this article is to review and critically appraise a range of definitions of empathy and, through considered analysis, to develop a new conceptualisation. From the examination of 43 discrete definitions, 8 themes relating to the nature of empathy emerged: “distinguishing empathy from other concepts”; “cognitive or affective?”; “congruent or incongruent?”; “subject to other stimuli?”; “self/other distinction or merging?”; “trait or state influences?”; “has a behavioural outcome?”; and “automatic or controlled?” The relevance and validity of each theme is assessed and a new conceptualisation of empathy is offered. The benefits of employing a more consistent and complete definition of empathy are discussed.

The psychological construct of empathy refers to an intersubjective induction process by which positive and negative emotions are shared, without losing sight of whose feelings belong to whom. Empathy can lead to personal distress or to empathic concern (sympathy). The goal of this paper is to address the underlying cognitive processes and their neural underpinnings that constitute empathy within a developmental neuroscience perspective. In addition, we focus on how these processes go awry in developmental disorders marked by impairments in social cognition, such as autism spectrum disorder, and conduct disorder. We argue that empathy involves both bottom-up and top-down information processing, underpinned by specific and interacting neural systems. We discuss data from developmental psychology as well as cognitive neuroscience in support of such a model, and highlight the impact of neural dysfunctions on social cognitive developmental behavior. Altogether, bridging developmental science and cognitive neuroscience helps approach a more complete understanding of social cognition. Synthesizing these two domains also contributes to a better characterization of developmental psychopathologies that impacts the development of effective treatment strategies.

The ontogeny of human empathy is better understood with reference to the evolutionary history of the social brain. Empathy has deep evolutionary, biochemical, and neurological underpinnings. Even the most advanced forms of empathy in humans are built on more basic forms and remain connected to core mechanisms associated with affective communication, social attachment, and parental care. In this paper, we argue that it is essential to consider empathy within a neurodevelopmental framework that recognizes both the continuities and changes in socioemotional understanding from infancy to adulthood. We bring together neuroevolutionary and developmental perspectives on the information processing and neural mechanisms underlying empathy and caring, and show that they are grounded in multiple interacting systems and processes. Moreover, empathy in humans is assisted by other abstract and domain-general high-level cognitive abilities such as executive functions, mentalizing and language, as well as the ability to differentiate another's mental states from one's own, which expand the range of behaviors that can be driven by empathy.Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction: The prevalence of interpersonal violence among Hispanic youth is high and effective interventions are sparse yet needed to prevent and address interpersonal violence. Theory-based interventions are crucial for creating robust interventions for public health concerns, such as interpersonal violence. Methods: In our systematic literature review, we sought to examine social cognitive theory (SCT)-based Interventions addressing interpersonal violence among Hispanic youth. Searching in both English and Spanish, we used the search engines, PubMed, Google Scholar, CINAHL, Web of Science, and Lilacs, and restricted the years to 2010–2022. Results: Self-efficacy and normative beliefs were the two most commonly addressed SCT constructs in the interventions. SCT-based interventions were found to increase confidence in not engaging in negative behaviors and improve coping skills. Moreover, within the context of implementing SCT-based interventions, school-based interventions and Participatory Action Research, were foundational to the SCT-based interventions. Conclusion: Overall, SCT-based interventions were found to be effective in interpersonal violence mitigation and reduction among Hispanic youths. There was a synergistic effect between the number of SCT constructs incorporated in an intervention and the positive results of the intervention. Thus, future studies are both needed and should robustly incorporate SCT constructs to yield the best possible outcomes.

The affective primacy hypothesis (R. B. Zajonc, 1980) asserts that positive and negative affective reactions can be evoked with minimal stimulus input and virtually no cognitive processing. The present work tested this hypothesis by comparing the effects of affective and cognitive priming under extremely brief (suboptimal) and longer (optimal) exposure durations. At suboptimal exposures only affective primes produced significant shifts in Ss' judgments of novel stimuli. These results suggest that when affect is elicited outside of conscious awareness, it is diffuse and nonspecific, and its origin and address are not accessible. Having minimal cognitive participation, such gross and nonspecific affective reactions can therefore be diffused or displaced onto unrelated stimuli. At optimal exposures this pattern of results was reversed such that only cognitive primes produced significant shifts in judgments. Together, these results support the affective primacy hypothesis.

According to Moravec’s paradox contrary to traditional assumptions, high-level reasoning requires very little computation compared to low-level sensorimotor skills that require enormous computational resources. For example, it is possible to make computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, but extremely difficult or impossible to give them the skills like perception or mobility. Several findings suggest that explanation of Moravec’s paradox is related to the different functions of the human left and right hemispheres.