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Loneliness is common in young people, yet there are few evidence-based interventions to manage youth loneliness. Understanding the ways in which young people cope with social isolation may inform the development of targeted loneliness programmes for young people. During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic when social restrictions were at a peak, 2500 young people aged 12–25 years were asked to report freely on coping strategies that they would recommend to peers to manage isolation and loneliness. The coding of qualitative responses suggested that young people recommended a range of different coping strategies, which we grouped into categories: contact seeking, approach, distraction, self-care, self-talk, self-compassion, and gratitude. Regression analyses showed that age, sex and socioeconomic background were associated with recommendation of some of the coping strategies. Paradoxically, recommendation of self-compassion was associated with higher levels of loneliness, while recommendation of approach and self-talk was associated with higher levels of wellbeing. This study highlights the importance of exploring how young people manage loneliness, a complex process that involves various strategies and is associated with an individual's demographic characteristics.

Despite the reliability of intelligence measures in predicting important life outcomes such as educational achievement and mortality, the exact configuration and neural correlates of cognitive abilities remain poorly understood, especially in childhood and adolescence. Therefore, we sought to elucidate the factorial structure and neural substrates of child and adolescent intelligence using two cross-sectional, developmental samples (CALM: N = 551 (N = 165 imaging), age range: 5–18 years, NKI-Rockland: N = 337 (N = 65 imaging), age range: 6–18 years). In a preregistered analysis, we used structural equation modelling (SEM) to examine the neurocognitive architecture of individual differences in childhood and adolescent cognitive ability. In both samples, we found that cognitive ability in lower and typical-ability cohorts is best understood as two separable constructs, crystallized and fluid intelligence, which became more distinct across development, in line with the age differentiation hypothesis. Further analyses revealed that white matter microstructure, most prominently the superior longitudinal fasciculus, was strongly associated with crystallized (gc) and fluid (gf) abilities. Finally, we used SEM trees to demonstrate evidence for developmental reorganization of gc and gf and their white matter substrates such that the relationships among these factors dropped between 7–8 years before increasing around age 10. Together, our results suggest that shortly before puberty marks a pivotal phase of change in the neurocognitive architecture of intelligence. Keywords: Neurocognitive reorganization, Crystallized intelligence, Fluid intelligence, White matter, Structural equation modelling

Adolescence has been proposed to be a sensitive period of social development, during which the social environment has a heightened effect on brain and behaviour. As such, negative social experiences, such as social exclusion, may have particularly detrimental effects on psychological well-being. However, little is known about how social exclusion affects cognitive performance during this time of life. Here, we compared the effects of exclusion between adolescence and adulthood. We recruited 98 females in three age groups: young adolescents (N = 36, aged 10.1–14.0), mid-adolescents (N = 35, aged 14.3–17.9) and adults (N = 27, aged 18.3–38.1). All age groups showed reductions in mood after exclusion, compared to inclusion, in a virtual ball-tossing game. Young adolescents also showed reduced verbal working memory accuracy following exclusion. There was no effect of exclusion on visuo-spatial working memory in any age group. These results suggest young adolescent girls’ verbal working memory accuracy was affected by a short, virtual social exclusion experience. This highlights the importance of the social environment in adolescence and underlines the need to consider age differences in response to exclusion in the design and timing of social exclusion interventions in schools. Keywords: Cyberball, Sensitive period, Adolescence, n-back, Visuo-spatial working memory, Mood