To Örebro University

Aging is typically accompanied by a decline in working memory (WM) capacity, even in the absence of pathology. Proficient WM requires cognitive control processes that can retain goal-relevant information for easy retrieval and resolve interference from irrelevant information. Aging has been associated with a reduced ability to resolve proactive interference (PI) in WM, leading to impaired retrieval of goal-relevant information. It remains unclear how age-related differences in the ability to resolve PI in WM are related to patterns of resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in the brain. Here, we investigated the association between PI in WM and rsFC cross-sectionally (n = 237) and 5 years longitudinally (n = 134) across the adult life span by employing both seed-based and data-driven approaches. Results revealed that the ability to resolve PI was associated with differential patterns of inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) rsFC in younger/middle-aged adults (25-60 years) and older adults (65-80 years) in two clusters centered in the vermis and caudate. Specifically, more PI was associated with stronger inferior frontal gyrus-vermis connectivity and weaker inferior frontal gyrus-caudate connectivity in older adults, while younger/middle-aged adults showed associations in the opposite directions with the identified clusters. Longitudinal analyses revealed that a reduced ability to control PI was associated with reduced inferior frontal gyrus-insula and inferior frontal gyrus-anterior cingulate cortex connectivity in older adults, while younger/middle-aged adults showed associations in the opposite direction with these clusters. Whole brain multivariate pattern analyses showed age-differential patterns of rsFC indicative of age-related structural decline and age-related compensation. The current results show that rsFC is associated with the ability to control PI in WM and that these associations are modulated by age.

Technology use is often implicated in adolescent sleep difficulties, yet experimental evidence confirming its impact on bedtime is critically lacking. This study tested whether online socialising with friends delays bedtime compared to non-social online media use, while also considering the roles of friendship quality and personality. Seventeen pairs of female friends (N = 34; ages 16–18 years) spent two nights in a sleep laboratory: one night online socialising with their friend in another room (WhatsApp + Netflix), and one night watching Netflix alone without socialising. Condition order was counterbalanced across pairs. Bedtime was behaviorally observed using infrared cameras. The following morning, participants reported who initiated sleep and their reasons for going to bed. They also completed questionnaires on friendship quality, co-rumination, self-control, bedtime procrastination, and a sleep diary. Multilevel models accounted for the nested structure of repeated assessments within individuals within dyads. On average, participants went to bed later during online socialising than during non-social online use, although this difference was not statistically significant. However, higher friendship quality significantly predicted longer bedtime delays during online socialising, with delays up to 72 min. Feeling sleepy was the primary reason for sleep onset, rather than social motivations. Additionally, there were clear associations between self-reported sleep initiation and bedtime procrastination and behavioural observations of earlier and later bedtimes, respectively. These experimental findings suggest that online socialising may delay adolescent bedtimes, particularly among those with high-quality friendships. These results underscore the importance of addressing peer dynamics and individual differences in supporting healthy adolescent sleep.

Prior research has established that insomnia is predctive of pain in adolescents and that psychological mechanisms have a crucial role in this relationship. Adolescent girls report more insomnia and pain than boys, yet little is known of gender differences in how insomnia influences pain. This study assessed gender differences in levels and trajectories of insomnia and pain during adolescence, and whether rumination and negative mood mediated the effect of insomnia on pain. Longitudinal survey data measured on 5 annual occasions (Nbaseline = 2,767) were analyzed in a multigroup longitudinal serial mediation model. A final model was generated with insomnia as the predictor, rumination and depressed mood as mediators, pain as the outcome, and gender the grouping variable. The results showed that insomnia predicted pain in adolescents, with an effect 3.5 times larger in girls than boys. Depressed mood was the main mediator in boys. In girls, rumination was the only significant mediator. There were significant gender differences in the effects of insomnia on rumination and pain, and in the effects of rumination on depressed mood and pain, with stronger effects in girls. These results highlight that girls and boys should be considered separately when studying the relationship between insomnia and pain. PERSPECTIVE: Levels of insomnia and pain are progressively higher in adolescent girls than boys, across adolescence. The predictive strength of insomnia symptoms for future pain is 3.5 times greater in girls, with distinct gender-specific underlying pathways: rumination partially mediates this effect in girls, while depressed mood does so in boys.

There is an increased interest in using social robots to assist older adults during their daily life activities. As social robots are designed to interact with older users, it becomes relevant to study these interactions under the lens of social cognition. Gaze following, the social ability to infer where other people are looking at, deteriorates with older age. Therefore, the referential gaze from robots might not be an effective social cue to indicate spatial locations to older users. In this study, we explored the performance of older adults, middle-aged adults, and younger controls in a task assisted by the referential gaze of a Pepper robot. We examined age-related differences in task performance, and in self-reported social perception of the robot. Our main findings show that referential gaze from a robot benefited task performance, although the magnitude of this facilitation was lower for older participants. Moreover, perceived anthropomorphism of the robot varied less as a result of its referential gaze in older adults. This research supports that social robots, even if limited in their gazing capabilities, can be effectively perceived as social entities. Additionally, this research suggests that robotic social cues, usually validated with young participants, might be less optimal signs for older adults.

Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12369-022-00926-6.

Introduction: The popular and scientific literature point at technology use as one of the main reasons for adolescents’ sleep deprivation. However, controlled studies into one of the most common uses of technology – online socializing – are lacking, along with the recognition of individual differences in the link between technology use and sleep. This experiment with adolescent girls aimed to 1) test whether socializing online with a friend delayed bedtimes compared to only watching Netflix, 2) investigate individual and friendship characteristics that may explain later bedtimes on the social night, 3) explore reasons for going to bed as perceived by the participants.

Method: Adolescent girls (N = 34, Mage = 16.8, range 16-18) came to the lab with a close girlfriend on two nights on two consecutive weeks and were randomly assigned to either i) Netflix + WhatsApp with the friend, ii) Netflix only, counterbalanced to minimise order effects. Self-selected bedtimes were directly observed using infrared cameras while measures of friendship quality, co-rumination, self-control, bedtime procrastination, and chronotype were self-reported at baseline, the reasons for going to bed were asked in the morning using VAS (1-10). 

Results: Participants went to sleep on average at 22:25 (0:53) on the Netflix only night and 22:35 (0:46) on the social night, thus delaying their bedtimes for an average of 10 minutes on the social night. This difference was not significant and there was large variability. The girls who delayed their bedtimes on the social night as compared to the Netflix only night were more likely to report lower self-control [F(1,31)=4.01, η2=.115] and higher friendship quality scores [F(1,31)=6.05, η2=.163], no other significant differences were found. The strongest reason for going to bed on the social night was “feeling sleepy” (M = 6.8) rather than not wanting to “let my friend down” (M = 4.0) or being “absorbed in the conversation” (M = 3.8).

Conclusion: Girls with lower self-control and higher friendship quality tended to delay their bedtimes when they were able to socialize online with a friend. Therefore, taking into account individual differences and peer dynamics may help enhance sleep interventions in adolescence.

Mentalizing, where humans infer the mental states of others, facilitates understanding and interaction in social situations. Humans also tend to adopt mentalizing strategies when interacting with robotic agents. There is an ongoing debate about how inferred mental states affect gaze following, a key component of joint attention. Although the gaze from a robot induces gaze following, the impact of mental state attribution on robotic gaze following remains unclear. To address this question, we asked forty-nine young adults to perform a gaze cueing task during which mental state attribution was manipulated as follows. Participants sat facing a robot that turned its head to the screen at its left or right. Their task was to respond to targets that appeared either at the screen the robot gazed at or at the other screen. At the baseline, the robot was positioned so that participants would perceive it as being able to see the screens. We expected faster response times to targets at the screen the robot gazed at than targets at the non-gazed screen (i.e., gaze cueing effect). In the experimental condition, the robot's line of sight was occluded by a physical barrier such that participants would perceive it as unable to see the screens. Our results revealed gaze cueing effects in both conditions although the effect was reduced in the occluded condition compared to the baseline. These results add to the expanding fields of social cognition and human-robot interaction by suggesting that mentalizing has an impact on robotic gaze following.

The ability to follow the gaze of others deteriorates with age. This decline is typically tested with gaze cueing tasks, in which the time it takes to respond to targets on a screen is faster when they are preceded by a facial cue looking in the direction of the target (i.e., gaze cueing effect). It is unclear whether age-related differences in this effect occur with gaze cues other than the eyes, such as head orientation, and how these vary in function of the cue-target timing. Based on the perceived usefulness of social robots to assist older adults, we asked older and young adults to perform a gaze cueing task with the head of a NAO robot as the central cue. Crucially, the head was viewed from the back, and so its eye gaze was conveyed. In a control condition, the head was static and faced away from the participant. The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between cue and target was 340 ms or 1000 ms. Both age groups showed a gaze cueing effect at both SOAs. Older participants showed a reduced facilitation effect (i.e., faster on congruent gazing trials than on neutral trials) at the 340-ms SOA compared to the 1000-ms SOA, and no differences between incongruent trials and neutral trials at the 340-ms SOA. Our results show that a robot with non-visible eyes can elicit gaze cueing effects. Age-related differences in the other effects are discussed regarding differences in processing time.

Robots can direct human attention using their eyes. However, it remains unclear whether it is the gaze or the low-level motion of the head rotation that drives attention. We isolated these components in a non-predictive gaze cueing task with a robot to explore how limited robotic signals orient attention. In each trial, the head of a NAO robot turned towards the left or right. To isolate the direction of rotation from its gaze, NAO was presented frontally and backward along blocks. Participants responded faster to targets on the gazed-at site, even when the eyes of the robot were not visible and the direction of rotation was opposed to that of the frontal condition. Our results showed that low-level motion did not orient attention, but the gaze direction of the robot did. These findings suggest that the robotic gaze is perceived as a social signal, similar to human gaze.

Previous studies have established a bidirectional relationship between sleep and pain, and mood has been proposed as a mediator of this relationship. There are only a limited number of longitudinal studies examining the mediational role of mood, and the directionality of effects between sleep, pain and mood is uncertain. Also, and despite the high prevalence of pain and sleep problems during adolescence, these relationships have rarely been examined in a longitudinal sample of adolescents. Here, longitudinal survey data with five yearly measurements was used to examine the bidirectional relationship between insomnia symptoms and pain across adolescence (Mbaseline age = 13.65 years, Nbaseline = 2766). We also explored if depressed mood, positive affect and anxious mood function as mediators in both directions of the sleep-pain relationship. Utilizing latent variables for insomnia, pain and mood at multiple time-points, the data was analyzed with cross-lagged panel models for longitudinal data with structural equation modeling. Current results confirmed a bidirectional relationship between insomnia symptoms and pain, where the effect of insomnia symptoms on pain was stronger than vice versa. Depressed mood and anxious mood mediated the effect of insomnia symptoms on pain, but not the reverse effect of pain on insomnia symptoms. Positive affect did not serve as a mediator in either direction. These findings add novel insights into the temporal directionality of sleep, pain and mood during adolescence, suggesting a temporal path from sleep to pain, via mood, rather than a reciprocal relationship between the constructs.

The onset of both chronic pain and insomnia is high during adolescence. Although a bidirectional relationship between pain and insomnia has support, how pain and sleep co-develop throughout adolescence remains unknown. Sleep–wake patterns, pre-sleep behavior and pre-sleep arousal may influence the co-development of pain and insomnia. Four waves of longitudinal self-report data were used (Nbaseline = 2767, Agebaseline M = 13.65 years, SD = 0.65). Multidimensional growth mixture modeling was used to identify four subgroups of adolescents with different concurrent trajectories of pain and insomnia. The trajectories followed each other across time in all classes: one class of consistently low pain and insomnia (68.7%), one class with persistent high symptoms (4.9%), as well as one class of increasing (13.9%), and one of decreasing (12.5%), trajectories. Later sleep–wake patterns and more pre-sleep cognitive-emotional arousal predicted both increasing and decreasing trajectories of concurrent pain and insomnia. The current study showed that developmental trajectories of pain and insomnia follow each other within adolescents and across adolescence. Both sleep-phase focused interventions as well as psychological interventions that focus on pre-sleep cognitive-emotional arousal may prove beneficial for adolescents with comorbid pain and insomnia.