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Child-centered communication in pediatric oncology can be challenging. We aimed to review communication interventions with children about cancer treatment and prognosis to identify potentially effective child-centered communication models and approaches. We updated a previous review on communication interventions in oncology and searched MEDLINE, Scopus, and PsychINFO for studies indexed between October 2019 up to October 2022. We further searched for ongoing studies on ClinicalTrials.gov. Communication interventions targeting pediatric oncology patients (below 18 years), with outcomes of communication, psychological symptoms or satisfaction in the target population were eligible. We identified 685 titles/abstracts, screened the full text of 34 studies and included only one published study and two ongoing studies. The published study tested a communication tool to help clinicians inform adolescents about treatment options and facilitate shared decision-making. No communication models were identified. We drew on knowledge from existing studies and guidelines to develop a new child-centered communication model.

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The emotional experience and the type of communication about cancer within the family are important factors for successful coping with pediatric oncology. The main purpose is to study mother's and children's emotional experiences concerning cancer, whether they communicate openly about the disease, and relationships between the type of communication and the different emotions expressed by the children. Fifty-two cancer patients aged 6-14 years and their mothers were interviewed in separate sessions about the two central themes of the study: emotional experiences and type of communication. Analyses of response categories were performed to subsequently compare the age-groups and the mother-child responses. According to the results, mothers expressed emotions such as fear, sadness, or anxiety, while children report sadness, pain, but also happiness. Significant positive correlations were observed between mothers' sadness and older children's sadness, mothers' anxiety and children's fear, and mothers' anxiety and children's happiness. Regarding communication type, mothers tend to hide information about the disease from younger children and to provide direct information to the older children. Children usually prefer to communicate their concerns to parents; however, children whose mothers convey anxiety are more likely to prefer to communicate with others. These results support the idea that parents should talk honestly with their children, explaining their illness in an age-appropriate way, and encouraging them to share their emotional experiences. Further studies are needed from a developmental perspective to understand the disease management of children and families.

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Recent research has challenged the extended idea that when presented with conflicting information provided by different sources, children, as do adults, make epistemic judgments based on the past accuracy of each source. Instead, individuals may use relatively simple, but adaptive non-epistemic strategies. Here we examined how primary-school children (N = 114) and undergraduate students (N = 57) deal with conflicting information provided by two key sources of information in their day-to-day lives: their teacher and the Internet. In order to study whether the inaccuracy of a source generated a decline in trust, we manipulated this variable between participants: teacher-wrong and Internet-wrong conditions. For this, we first presented two baseline trials, followed by the accuracy manipulation, and finally, two post-test trials. Analyses were performed on group performance as well as on individual performance, to explore the individual patterns of responses. Results revealed that most participants showed no preference for any source during baseline, with no age differences in their overall choices. Crucially, when a given source provided inaccurate information about a familiar issue, most children and adults did not lose trust on this source. We propose tentative explanations for these findings considering potential differences in the participants' strategies to approach the task, whether or not epistemic.

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When many people say the same thing, the individual is more likely to endorse this information than when just a single person says the same. Yet, the influence of consensus information may be modulated by many personal, contextual and cultural variables. Here, we study the sensitivity of Chinese (N = 68) and Spanish (N = 82) preschoolers to consensus in social decision making contexts. Children faced two different types of peer-interaction events, which involved (1) uncertain or ambiguous scenarios open to interpretation (social interpretation context), and (2) explicit scenarios depicting the exclusion of a peer (moral judgment context). Children first observed a video in which a group of teachers offered their opinion about the events, and then they were asked to evaluate the information provided. Participants were assigned to two conditions that differed in the type of consensus: Unanimous majority (non-dissenter condition) and non-unanimous majority (dissenter condition). In the dissenter condition, we presented the conflicting opinions of three teachers vs. one teacher. In the non-dissenter condition, we presented the unanimous opinion of three teachers. The general results indicated that children's sensitivity to consensus varies depending both on the degree of ambiguity of the social events and the presence or not of a dissenter: (1) Children were much more likely to endorse the majority view when they were uncertain (social interpretation context), than when they already had a clear interpretation of the situation (moral judgment context); (2) The presence of a dissenter resulted in a significant decrease in children's confidence in majority. Interestingly, in the moral judgment context, Chinese and Spanish children differed in their willingness to defy a majority whose opinion run against their own. While Spanish children maintained their own criteria regardless of the type of condition, Chinese children did so when an "allied" dissenter was present (dissenter condition) but not when confronting a unanimous majority (non-dissenter condition). Tentatively, we suggest that this difference might be related to culture-specific patterns regarding children's deference toward adults.

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In this study, the development of comprehension of essential and nonessential aspects of counting is examined in children ranging from 5 to 8 years of age. Essential aspects, such as logical rules, and nonessential aspects, including conventional rules, were studied. To address this, we created a computer program in which children watched counting errors (abstraction and order irrelevance errors) and pseudoerrors (with and without cardinal value errors) occurring during a detection task. The children judged whether the characters had counted the items correctly and were asked to justify their responses. In general, our data show that performance improved substantially with age in terms of both error and pseudoerror detection; furthermore, performance was better with regard to errors than to pseudoerrors as well as on pseudoerror tasks with cardinal values versus those without cardinal values. In addition, the children's justifications, for both the errors and pseudoerrors, made possible the identification of conventional rules underlying the incorrect responses. A particularly relevant trend was that children seem to progressively ignore these rules as they grow older. Nevertheless, this process does not end at 8 years of age given that the conventional rules of temporal and spatial adjacency were present in their judgments and were primarily responsible for the incorrect responses.

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El objetivo de este Tema Monográfico ha sido reunir investigaciones de psicólogos evolutivos y sociales, españoles y extranjeros, en el amplio ámbito del prejuicio y las relaciones intergrupales. Se incluyen trabajos de revisión y estudios empíricos con distintos presupuestos teóricos, procedimientos de investigación y tipo de poblaciones. La mayoría de las contribuciones abordan el estudio de las actitudes de niños, adolescentes y jóvenes hacia la diversidad étnico-racial, el sesgo endogrupal o la identidad étnica, y tres artículos tratan otras formas de prejuicio intergrupal de innegable importancia social en nuestra cultura occidental: los prejuicios hacia la homosexualidad, la discapacidad y la gordura (AU)

The aim of this Special Issue is to gather research from developmental and social psychologists, from Spain and other countries, in the broad area of prejudice and intergroup attitudes. The Monograph includes review papers and empirical studies that present different theoretical assumptions, research procedures, and types of population. Most contributions are related to the study of children’s and youth’s attitudes toward different racial-ethnic groups, in group bias or ethnic identity, and three articles address other forms of prejudice that have an undeniable social significance in our Western societies: biases toward homosexuality, disability, and body size (AU)

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La mayoría de las investigaciones sobre la conciencia étnica y el prejuicio en niños se ha basado en estudios transversales, por lo que tenemos poca información sobre los cambios intraindividuales que ocurren en esta área de desarrollo. ¿Hay una secuencia de desarrollo estable de los diferentes componentes de la conciencia étnica? ¿La preferencia por el endogrupo precede al rechazo del exogrupo, como sugieren los estudios transversales? ¿Y mantienen los niños la misma orientación afectiva hacia diferentes exogrupos? En este artículo se presenta un estudio longitudinal con 50 niños españoles de 4 a 5 años (primera medida) y de 5 a 6 años (segunda medida) en el que se evaluaron varios aspectos de su conciencia étnica y de sus actitudes hacia cuatro grupos (españoles, latinoamericanos, africanos y asiáticos), en un contexto de juego de ordenador. Los resulta-dos mostraron una significativa positividad hacia el endogrupo, pero ausencia de negatividad hacia los exogrupos, tanto en el primer tiempo de medida como en el segundo. De hecho, no hubo diferencias en las atribuciones negativas de los niños al endogrupo y a los exogrupos. Por otra parte, los análisis longitudinales mostraron que la mayoría de los niños no cambió la intensidad de su orientación afectiva hacia cada grupo étnico, un tema que ha recibido poca atención en estudios previos (AU)

Most previous research on children’s ethnic awareness and prejudice has been based on cross-sectional studies; hence we have little in-formation on the intra-individual changes that occur in this area of development. Is there a stable developmental sequence of the different components of ethnic awareness? Does in-group preference precede out-group rejection, as cross-sectional studies do suggest? And do children maintain the same affective orientation toward different out-groups? We con-ducted a longitudinal study with 50 Spanish children aged 4 to 5 years (first measure) and 5 to 6 years (second measure). We assessed several aspects of their ethnic awareness and attitudes toward four groups (Spaniards, Latin Americans, Africans and Asians), within a computer-game context. Results showed a significant in-group positivity but a lack of out-group negativity, both at time 1 and 2. In fact, children’s negative attributions to the in-group and to the out-groups did not differ. On the other hand, the longitudinal analyses revealed that most children did not change the intensity of their affective orientation to each group, an issue that has received little attention in previous studies (AU)

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En este trabajo se evaluó la conciencia racial y las actitudes tempranas en 50 niños españoles del grupo mayoritario (blancos), divididos en dos grupos de edad (36-48 meses y 60-71 meses). Se desarrollaron un conjunto de tareas que, mediante una entrevista semiestructurada, permitieron obtener una medida del desarrollo cognitivo (tarea de clasificación), medidas socio-cognitivas (tareas de descripción personas, clasificación y la autoidentificación) y medidas afectivas (preferencias y rechazos). Además, se pidió a los niños que hicieran atribuciones sobre la preferencia o rechazo racial de sus madres. En general, las respuestas de los niños en la descripción y clasificación de personas mostraron que el género y el color de la ropa tenían más relevancia que los atributos raciales. En las tareas afectivas, se encontró un sistemático sesgo endogrupal (blanco) y un leve rechazo hacia el exogrupo (negro). La medida de desarrollo cognitivo se relacionaba con la conciencia y actitudes raciales en mayor medida que la edad. Los resultados se comparan con trabajos en los que se ha empleado el mismo procedimiento, pero en un contexto multirracial, y se discuten a partir de los distintos enfoques teóricos y de los continuos cambios sociodemográficos en España (AU)

Racial awareness and early attitudes was assessed in 50 majority-group Spanish children in two age groups (36-48 months and 60-71 months). A series of tasks in a semi-structured interview was administered to test the children’s: Cognitive performance (classification task), socio-cognitive measures (racial awareness by person description, social categorization, and self-identification) and affective measures (preferences and rejections). Children were further asked to make attributions about their mothers’ racial preference and rejection. Overall, children’s responses in person description and social categorization revealed that gender and colour of clothes had more salience in their perception than racial cues. In social affect tasks, children displayed a consistent in-group (White) bias, and a slight but noticeable out-group (Black) rejection. It was found that the cognitive performance measure predicted children’s racial awareness and attitudes better than age did. The findings are compared to our further research, using the same procedure but in a multiracial context, and discussed in the light of theoretical approaches and the continuing sociodemographic transformations in Spain (AU)

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The general purpose of this study was to analyse the developmental relations between the early forms of ethnic attitudes, and the classification abilities of the young child. We designed new cognitive tasks within a detection paradigm adapted to preschoolers and attitudinal tasks that were presented as games in a computer screen. Participants were 75 majority-group children of 3, 4, and 5 years of age. Children's preferences and positive/negative attitudes towards the in-group (Spaniards) and three out-groups (Latin-Americans, Africans, and Asians) were measured. The results showed a remarkable preference and positivity for the in-group, but not out-group derogation. Children's cognitive performance, to a greater extent than their age, was positively associated with in-group favouritism and positivity. On the other hand, we found some interesting differences and developmental changes in children's positive orientation to the out-groups that are discussed in the last section.

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There is a substantial literature documenting pre-schoolers' racial awareness and affect from multiracial societies in North America and a fast-growing body of work from societies that are or were once more racially homogeneous. However, studies in Britain, a racially diverse society, on this developmental period have been curiously rare. This study examined racial awareness and affect of 125 White, Black, and Asian 3--to 5-year-olds in London. Children were tested on cognitive level, person description and classification, race labelling and matching, self-categorization and asked about their racial preference and rejection and inferences about their mothers' preference and rejection. Children were least likely to use race versus other categorical cues to spontaneously describe or classify others, even though the majority correctly sorted others by race labels, matched them to drawings, and categorized themselves by race. With age and increasing cognitive level, children described and categorized others by race more and improved in race matching. White children from age 4 preferred White peers and inferred that their mothers would prefer White children at age 5. Children's own preference and inference about mothers are related. Children did not show race-based rejection, but boys inferred that their mothers would prefer White children and reject Black children. The findings are discussed in relation to racial salience between contexts, previous research, and theories.

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OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to explore the prevalence of negative attitudes toward overweight peers among children using different explicit and implicit measures, and to analyze their relationships with some aspects of their body image. METHOD: A total of 120 children aged 6-11 years were interviewed using a computer program that simulated a game containing several tasks. Specifically, we have applied multiple measures of explicit attitudes toward average-weight/overweight peers, several personal body attitudes questions and a child-oriented version of the Implicit Association Test. RESULTS: Our participants showed important prejudice and stereotypes against overweight children, both at the explicit and implicit levels. However, we found important differences in the intensity of prejudice and its developmental course as a function of the tasks and the type of measurement used to assess it. CONCLUSIONS: Children who grow up in Western societies idealize thinness from an early age and denigrate overweight, to which they associate explicitly and implicitly a series of negative traits that have nothing to do with the weight. As they grow older, they seem to reduce their levels of explicit prejudice, but not the intensity of implicit bias. More research is needed to study in depth prejudice and discrimination toward overweight children from a developmental point of view.

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Los problemas de división con resto son especialmente complejos, como han mostrado numerosos estudios. El objetivo de esta investigación era establecer si las dificultades de los estudiantes procedían de una representación inicial inapropiada o de una interpretación inadecuada de las respuestas numéricas. También queríamos determinar si los tipos de resto se podían agrupar en dos bloques, dependiendo de que la respuesta correspondiese directamente a los términos de la división o no. Evaluamos 49 estudiantes de secundaria con una edad media de 12 años;10 meses. Los participantes resolvieron problemas de Grupos Iguales Partitivos y de Medida con cuatro Tipos de Resto: Resto-no-Divisible, Resto-Divisible, Resto-Resultado y Reajustar-Cociente-Incrementándolo-Parcialmente. Nuestros datos mostraron que: (a) la elección de la división como procedimien-to de resolución fue muy elevada en ambos Modelos de División, aunque los problemas Partitivos fueron más fáciles que los de Medida; (b) el porcentaje de interpretaciones correctas fue superior a los encontrados en otras investigaciones; y (c) cuando la respuesta consistía en el cociente o el resto el éxito fue superior que cuando había que Reajustar-Cociente-Incrementándolo-Parcialmente. Para finalizar, la principal dificultad de los estudiantes al resolver estos problemas parece girar en torno a la representación inicial deficitaria del problema

Division-With-Remainder problems are particularly complex as suggested in many works. The aim of the present research was to establish whether students’ difficulties in these problems came from an inadequate initial representation or from an inadequate final interpretation of the numerical answers. We also wanted to determine whether types of remainders could be grouped into two blocks depending on whether the answer was directly matched to one of the terms of the division or not. To this end, we tested forty-nine secondary students with a mean age of 12 years and 10 months. The participants solved Partitive and Quotitive Equal-Groups problems involving four Types of Remainder: Remainder-Not-Divisible, Remainder-Divisible, Remainder-as-the-Result, and Readjusted-Quotient-by-Partial-Increments. Our data showed that: (a) although the selection of division as the resolution procedure was very high in both Models of Division, Partitive problems were easier than Quotitive ones; (b) the percentage of correct interpretations was higher than the percentages reported in other researches; and (c) success in problems whose answers were the quotient or the remainder was higher than in Readjusted-Quotient-by-Partial-Increments problems. To conclude, the main difficulty of students when solving Division-With-Remainder problems seems to be in the inadequate initial representation of the problem

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The authors studied the developmental stages of children's understanding of upward socioeconomic mobility. They interviewed one hundred 6- to 14-year-old participants from Mexico and Spain and asked them about sources of wealth and factors related to socioeconomic mobility. Categorical analyses of the responses showed few age-related changes but noted some cross-national differences. A different analysis designed to identify levels of understanding showed a significant association between age and type of explanation of socioeconomic mobility. Overall, cross-national comparisons yielded similarities in children's developmental trends, and only slight differences were found with regard to cultural background. The present results contrast with those of studies conducted from the perspective of the social representation theory.

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