Browse Articles

Humans have a natural ability to recognize emotional cues from the facial expressions of others, as a crucial evolutionary trait to navigate social interactions. This ability likely develops through normal development and social experience, but it is unclear how much influence age and sex have in emotional facial recognition (EFR). In this study, the authors investigate EFR in children and teenagers, and look at whether accurate emotional recognition does occur more in males or females.

Reaching one’s maximum jump height requires optimizing one’s jump techniques. In order to find this optimal jump technique, three high school participants with varying vertical jump (VJ) abilities recorded videos of themselves with varying degrees of maximum/minimum shoulder, knee, and hip angles—with or without respect to the horizontal—at the isometric phase of a regular countermovement (CM) VJ or countermovement jump (CMJ). Results showed that the shoulder angle without respect to the horizontal (SA), knee angle with respect to the horizontal (KAH), and the hip angle with respect to the horizontal (HAH) possessed a more consistent correlation with VJ height across the subjects compared to the same respective angles with opposite relations to the horizontal.

Caffeine is widely consumed across the globe and is most appreciated for its effects as a stimulant. Here the authors investigate whether caffeine consumption affects performance during endurance or strength training. Their results suggest that caffeine consumption enhances endurance training, but not strength training.

Here the authors aimed to understand factors influencing adolescent fentanyl exposure, hypothesizing a positive association between social media usage, socioeconomic factors, and fentanyl abuse among U.S. teens. Their analysis of the Monitoring the Future dataset revealed that a history of suspension and use of marijuana or alcohol were linked to higher fentanyl use, and while not statistically significant, a notable positive correlation between social media use and fentanyl frequency was observed.

Do different physical traits affect teenagers’ initial trust of an unknown person? Would they give greater trust to women and people of similar ethnicity? To test these hypotheses, the authors developed a survey to determine the sets of physical characteristics that affect a person's trustworthiness. They found that gender and expression were the main physical traits associated with how trustworthy an individual looks, while ethnicity was also important.

Authors examine the impact of environmental noise on cognitive processes in teenagers, focusing on five different noise conditions: two types of noise (aircraft and construction) at two different decibel levels (30 dBA and 60 dBA) and a quiet condition.

With increased screen time and exposure to blue light, an increasing number of people have sleep deprivation. Blue light suppresses the release of melatonin and hinders sleep at night. We hypothesized that people could get a greater amount of sleep by controlling the blue light exposure from screen time before bedtime. BBG’s effect on reducing time to fall asleep was significant within the teenage group, but not significant in the adult group. This indicated that BBG could improve the time taken to sleep for young teenagers post screen time in the evening.

Stress and anxiety have become more prevalent issues in recent years with teenagers especially at risk. Recent studies show that experiencing stress while learning can impair brain-cell communication thus negatively impacting learning. Green tea is believed to have the opposite effect, aiding in learning and memory retention. In this study, the authors used Lymnaea stagnalis , a pond snail, to explore the relationship between green tea and a stressor that impairs memory formation to determine the effects of both green tea and stress on the snails’ ability to learn, form, and retain memories. Using a conditioned taste aversion (CTA) assay, where snails are exposed to a sweet substance followed by a bitter taste with the number of biting responses being recorded, the authors found that stress was shown to be harmful to snail learning and memory for short-term, intermediate, and long-term memory.

In this study, the authors examine how knowledge, lack of knowledge, and deception affect the rate of perceived exertion and actual performance of teenagers in sprint training. Their results suggest that fully informing athletes about workout duration yields the fastest and most consistent speeds.

This study investigated how fashion brand personalities are similar to people’s personalities and whether people may prefer a particular clothing brand based on their own personal traits. All together, Stevenson and Scott found that the Big Five Personality Factors are generally not related to participants’ preferred brand personalities. Generally, brands should consider different factors besides the Big Five Personality Factors for identifying potential customers.