Online synchronous chat, or ‘Live Chat’, is distinguished by its real-time, anonymous, and text-based nature. There is limited understanding of the characteristics of those who choose Live Chat services compared to Blended Services. This study examined the demographic, psychosocial, and service engagement profiles of young people using the Irish Live Chat service, Jigsaw Live Chat, compared with those attending Jigsaw’s Blended (in-person and/or video) support Service. Routine service-based data were analysed from 1,313 Live Chat and 3,604 Blended Service users. Reasons for attendance among Live Chat users seeking mental health support were analysed using content analysis. Live Chat users were more likely to be gender-diverse, older, and to report higher psychological distress than Blended Service users. Anxiety and low mood were common presenting issues. Attendance reasons varied, with over one-third citing multiple issues and many experiencing persistent distress. A minority attended for information or while waiting for other support. Overall, users reported high satisfaction. Live Chat users waited an average of 2.5 minutes, compared with typical waits of 1–2 months for the Blended Service. These findings highlight Live Chat as a distinct and essential access point for highly distressed and underserved youth, particularly those with minority gender and sexual identities.

Learning a second language (L2) is challenging partly due to perceptual strategies inherited from learners’ first language. For example, speakers of tone languages like Mandarin over-use pitch in English prosody perception and production. We developed a novel training paradigm to help Mandarin learners adopt more native-like strategies by enhancing their use of duration relative to pitch cues during prosody categorization. After prosody training, participants used duration more during phrase boundary categorization but showed no clear change for contrastive focus and lexical stress, suggesting that cue weighting training is most effective when targeting a feature’s primary cue. The control group, who practiced English vocabulary, relied more on pitch in lexical stress categorization and phrase boundary production after training, suggesting that without targeted instruction, listeners default to existing strategies. Our findings demonstrate that although default strategies in L2 speech perception are difficult to resist, lifelong perceptual habits can be adjusted with training.

The study examined the effects of sociolinguistic background, nonverbal reasoning, and phonological working memory (WM) on heritage language (L1) and second language (L2) skills in Heritage Bilingual (HB) children attending preschool, considering relationships between L1 and L2 abilities. A total of 108 HB children completed vocabulary, morphosyntactic, nonverbal reasoning, and phonological WM tasks in both L1 and Italian (L2). Sociolinguistic background, including socio-economic status and linguistic history, was assessed through parental interviews. The analysis of reciprocal correlations between L1 and L2 showed within-language relationships and cross-language correlations only for morphosyntactic skills. Sociolinguistic background significantly influenced vocabulary skills, particularly in L1, while nonverbal reasoning impacted morphosyntactic skills, especially in L2. The findings highlight the importance of supporting families in enriching linguistic input in the heritage language and underscore the role of nonverbal reasoning and phonological WM in developing L2 competencies.

Executive attention, an underlying mechanisms enabling self-regulation, can be behaviorally indicated by post-error slowing (PES) – a delay in reaction time following an error. PES develops during early childhood – plausibly shaped by genetic and environmental factors. We tested whether mothers’ and children’s PES predicted their post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms during a real-life stressful situation, and how each one’s PTSD symptoms moderated the other’s. Ninety-five kindergarten-aged children and mother pairs participated. In T1, participants’ PES was measured during a laboratory task. About 1.5 years afterwards, six months after a national traumatic event, mothers reported their own and their child’s PTSD symptoms (T2). Key findings show that for mothers with high PTSD symptoms, children with more developed PES at T1 showed less PTSD symptoms at T2. In contrast, for mothers with low PTSD symptoms, children’s PES was unrelated to their PTSD symptoms. For mothers of children with high PTSD symptoms, those with less developed PES at T1 showed high PTSD symptoms at T2. Mothers of children with low symptoms showed no such relation. The models explained 61.1% of children’s and 51% of mothers’ PTSD symptoms. These findings provide evidence for the protective effect of self-regulation against PTSD, and the mutual dyadic moderating effects of its manifestation.

In the decades since Nolen-Hoeksema’s (1991) original work on response styles, research on rumination has flourished within psychological science. This literature often emphasizes the association of impaired problem-solving with rumination. Spikes in the prevalence of rumination coincide with the entry into adolescence, as youth become increasingly sensitive to social feedback and interpersonal relationships. This article introduces the idea that rumination represents a socially reinforced process in adolescent girls, who are particularly likely to engage in rumination and to find interpersonal stress aversive. In the event that relationships evoke distress, girls may be able to generate solutions through ruminative coping; however, they are unwilling to accept and enact these solutions when these solutions have the potential to be further socially disruptive. Although ruminative inaction may have grave consequences for the moods of youth, it maintains an interpersonal harmony that some youth may prioritize and, in the process, avoids changing a social milieu, angering or displeasing others, or generating unwanted social controversy or conflict. This serves as reinforcement for ruminative coping, creating the risk that rumination will become an entrenched habit with the potential to further erode mood over time.