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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic can have a serious impact on children and adolescents' mental health. We focused on studies exploring its traumatic effects on young people in the first 18 months after that the pandemic was declared, distinguishing them also according to the type of informants (self-report and other-report instruments). Objective: We applied a meta-analytic approach to examine the prevalence of depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder, and psychological distress among children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic, considering the moderating role of kind of disorder and/or symptom, type of instrument, and continent. Method: We used PsycINFO, PubMed, and Scopus databases to identify articles on the COVID-19 pandemic, applying the following filters: participants until 20 years of age, peer-review, English as publication language. Inclusion required investigating the occurrence of disorders and/or symptoms during the first 18 months of the pandemic. The search identified 26 publications. Results: The meta-analysis revealed that the pooled prevalence of psychological disorders and/or symptoms for children and adolescents, who were not affected by mental health disturbances before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, was 0.20, 95% CI [0.16, 0.23]. Moreover, we found a moderating role of type of instrument: occurrence was higher for self-report compared to other-report instruments. Conclusions: The study presented an analysis of the psychological consequences for children and adolescents of the exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic, soliciting further research to identify factors underlying resilience. Notwithstanding limitations such as the small number of eligible articles and the fact that we did not examine the role of further characteristics of the studies (such as participants' age or design), this meta-analysis is a first step for future research documenting the impact of such an unexpected and devastating disaster like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Following disasters, children and adolescents can use coping strategies to feel better. A growing body of studies investigated the relation between them and maladjustment/adjustment, i.e., negative symptomatology/positive indicators of development. Yet, these constructs are studied separately. Objective: We conducted two meta-analyses to examine the mean correlation between disaster-related coping strategies and indicators of maladjustment/adjustment following natural disasters in children and adolescents, considering the role of some moderators. Methods: We used PsycINFO, PubMed, Eric, and Scopus databases to identify articles on natural disasters (filters: participants [less than or equal to] 18 years at the disaster, peer-review, English language). Inclusion required investigating the relation between at least one coping strategy and at least one indicator of maladjustment (e.g., post-traumatic stress disorder, depression) and/or adjustment (e.g., self-efficacy, emotion understanding), for a total of 26 studies (k = 64, n = 9692, for maladjustment; k = 37, n = 3504, for adjustment).There were global positive significant correlations between coping strategies and negative symptomatology (r[subscript pooled] = 0.23) for maladjustment, and positive indicators (r[subscript pooled] = 0.17) for adjustment. Negative symptomatology positively correlated with escape (r = 0.19), social isolation (r = 0.15), submission (r = 0.64), and opposition (r = 0.16); positive indicators positively correlated with problem solving (r = 0.31), social support (r = 0.22), and submission (r = 0.30). We found a moderating role of age, disaster type, and continent for maladjustment. Conclusions: The study presented an analysis of the coping strategies that can be effective for children and adolescents dealing with natural disasters.

The present contribution aims at presenting an assessment tool (i.e., the TALK-assessment) built to evaluate the language development and school readiness of Italian preschoolers before they enter primary school, and its predictive validity for the children's reading and writing skills at the end of the first year of primary school. The early literacy competences of 98 preschoolers were assessed and the statistical proprieties (item difficulty level and Discrimination Index, and the factorial structure using Confirmatory Factor Analysis) of each subtest of the assessment were presented (Study 1). Results showed that the subtests of the tool have good psychometric properties, with the only exception of the morpho-syntactic comprehension task, and are adequate for use with preschoolers in the school context. Study 2 investigated the early literacy skills of a group of 62 preschoolers and their reading and writing abilities at the end of primary school 1st grade. The scores obtained in the phonological awareness task of the final version of the assessment in preschool significantly predicted children's reading scores 12 months later, at primary school. The scores obtained in the lexical comprehension and morpho-syntactic production (i.e., sentence repetition) tasks of the final version of the assessment in preschool significantly predicted children's writing scores 12 months later, at primary school. The assessment has specific characteristics that make it a valuable candidate for adoption in educational settings, both to identify fragile areas in time to modify the children's developmental paths to literacy and to prevent future language and literacy difficulties at primary school.

Background: Online multiple-text comprehension is a key skill of the 21st Century, yet the study of its relations with boredom in young students has been disregarded. Boredom is an achievement emotion expected to be predicted negatively by antecedents like control and value appraisals and to be associated to a negative performance. Notwithstanding its documented domain-specificity, scarce attention has been paid to investigating these relations with primary-school students in the reading domain, and specifically for online multiple-text comprehension, and to how such relations are moderated by basic cognitive abilities. Aims: Considering separately two settings (homework, test), we studied the mediation of boredom in the relation between control-value appraisals and online multiple-text comprehension in primary-school students, focusing on the moderating role of word-reading fluency. Sample: Participants were 334 fourth and fifth graders. Methods: We evaluated students' reading-related self-efficacy and task-value, reading-related boredom for homework and tests, word-reading fluency, and online multiple-text comprehension. Results: Path analyses revealed negative relations between control-value appraisals and boredom for homework and tests, and between boredom and online multiple-text comprehension for tests only. For the latter, word-reading fluency moderated the relation between appraisals, boredom, and comprehension: Boredom negatively related to comprehension only for students with high word-reading fluency. Conclusions: Findings are discussed focusing on antecedents of online multiple-text comprehension as a literacy skill critical in the 21st Century. We underlined their implications for learning in general and specifically for the current educational changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Achievement Emotions Adjective List (AEAL) is a brief self-report multi-item questionnaire deputed to assess ten achievement emotions, namely enjoyment, pride, hope, relief, relaxation, anxiety, anger, shame, hopelessness, and boredom. This study aimed at describing the initial construction and validation of the AEAL focusing on school-related emotions. We involved 2874 Swiss 10th to 13th graders (M[subscript age] = 16.87, SD = 1.41, 56% females), who completed the 30-item version of the AEAL, a measure of value, and the School Attitude Assessment Survey-Revised. Findings supported the reliability of the instrument. As for construct validity, a ten-factor model best fit the data; also, partial scalar measurement invariance across grade level and gender was confirmed. As for predictive validity, achievement emotions related significantly to control-value appraisals, achievement goals, attitudes towards teachers/classes, attitudes towards school, and motivation/self-regulation, with some exceptions. Findings provide evidence on the goodness of the AEAL to assess secondary students' achievement emotions as a brief, simple, and not-invasive instrument. Implications for research are discussed.

The present review critically assesses the nexus between physical activity, nature exposure and health benefits by analysing environmental measures in green exercise research. A Cochrane-inspired review of systematic studies exposes methodological gaps, emphasising the scarcity of long-term research and the lack of rigorous designed studies. It calls for more robust, varied research designs and improved environmental metrics. The findings advocate for longitudinal research to better comprehend the mental and physical health benefits of exposure to nature. Embracing an ecological-dynamic perspective is recommended to advance our understanding of the intricate connections between activity, environment, and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the enjoyment, boredom, and anxiety of elementary school students and the relations of these emotions with achievement in two domains. Seven-hundred-and-sixty-seven second- and fourth-graders completed an adaptation of the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire-Elementary School (AEQ-ES: Lichtenfeld, Pekrun, Stupnisky, Reiss, & Murayama, 2012) assessing their emotions in their native language and mathematics. The hierarchical model of the instrument was invariant across countries (Italy, Germany, United States), grades, gender, and domains. Anxiety related negatively to achievement, while enjoyment related positively to achievement only in mathematics. Second-graders reported more enjoyment and less boredom and anxiety than fourth-graders. Overall, mathematics resulted in better emotions than native language. The results have implications for future research on achievement emotions in elementary school.

University students are likely to encounter mental health issues throughout their educational journey. Among the various factors that can impact students’ wellbeing, the physical environment can potentially restore cognitive, physiological, and emotional resources, thereby enhancing academic performance, and overall quality of life, while reducing feelings of stress and depression. The Perceived Restorativeness Scale is the most commonly used tool to assess the level of restorativeness derived from the educational physical environment. However, a tailored measure could be a more psychometrically suitable approach to capture the context-specific characteristics of university environments for academic students. This study aimed to validate an instrument that can accurately evaluate university spaces to measure the perceived restorativeness of university students. A total sample of 685 students from two Italian universities participated in the evaluation of the psychometric properties of the Restorativeness at University scale (Rest@US), consisting of 13 items divided into four dimensions: fascination, being-away, scope, and coherence. The hypothesised four-factor model (being-away, fascination, scope, and coherence) demonstrated excellent fit indices in both the calibration and validation samples and was invariant for sex. The scale demonstrates good reliability. Furthermore, criterion validity has been confirmed, highlighting that, in a theoretically consistent manner, the perceived restorativeness of university physical environments from the point of view of students and its dimensions were negatively correlated with techno-overload and study-related workload and positively correlated with perceived performance and psycho-physical wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]