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Learning how to regulate emotions is a significant developmental milestone in a child's life. It is important to understand which activities help children cope with emotionally distressing situations. One such activity, I argue, is drawing. In this article, I consider 2 ways in which drawing elevates mood in children: Drawing allows them to be distracted from their negative thoughts and feelings; or it allows them to express (and thus vent) their negative thoughts and feelings. Using drawing as a means of distraction proves more effective, perhaps because drawing to distract is more enjoyable and more absorbing than using drawing as a means of expression. Engaging in arts activities over many months not only increases positive emotions but also lowers stress as measured by cortisol levels. Taken together, this work demonstrates the important role that the arts play in children's emotional lives.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on our lives with individuals experiencing a wide range of emotions. While much attention has been placed on promoting physical health to control the coronavirus, far less attention has been placed on promoting mental health and well-being. There are well-known reports of individuals gravitating toward the arts during times of extreme stress: art is made in prisons; novels are written secretly in police states. In this study we examined whether individuals turned to the arts to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, how everyday artistic activities helped them regulate their emotions, and whether certain personality traits predicted the use of these strategies. We administered a survey to 486 participants (Mage = 35.7; SDage = 12.3; Rangeage = 18 to 79), asking them about the frequency of artistic activities they engaged in, the artistic activity they felt was the most helpful for coping with the pandemic, and how they used that activity to regulate their emotions. Four findings emerged: (a) participants reported engaging in artistic activities more often during than before the pandemic; (b) listening to music was the most helpful activity, followed by reading, and then the visual arts; (c) artistic activities regulated emotions most commonly by providing a means of escape; and (d) the personality trait of openness to experience predicted use of the approach and self-development emotion regulation strategies. These findings demonstrate that we gravitated toward the arts during the COVID-19 pandemic and that we did so because these activities provided a form of escape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attentional demands of drawing require both local processing of an object's details and global processing of its overall structure. In this study, we examined the extent to which artists have superior local and global processing skills, how these skills relate to artists' ability to draw realistically and to autistic-related traits, and whether artists initially take a local or global approach to drawing. Forty first-year college art students and 41 nonart students completed two tasks assessing local processing and two tasks assessing global processing. Participants completed two drawing tasks that assessed their ability to draw realistically, two copying tasks that assessed whether they showed a preference for initially copying the local or global aspects of an object, and the Autism-Spectrum Quotient that assessed autistic-related traits. We found that art students outperformed nonart students on both the local and global processing tasks and that drawing ability was related to performance on these tasks. We also found that art students were more likely than nonart students to initially copy the global features in their drawings. Finally, we found that art students did not exhibit more autistic-related traits than nonart students and that the number of autistic-related traits was unrelated to performance on the local and global processing, drawing, or copying tasks. These results suggest that art students have an attentional flexibility that allows them to process information at a local and global level but that they have a preference for initially drawing globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study utilized qualitative means to gain a better understanding of the experiences of faculty members from a school of education, college of arts and sciences, and K-12 urban educators as they worked across academic disciplines to create and implement a collaborative secondary urban teacher fellowship program. This study is meant to inform the larger field of urban education on pathways to successful collaboration between universities and K-12 urban schools, as well as between education and content area faculties at the university level engaged in teacher preparation reform efforts.

Precocious realists are children who are able to create realistic drawings that resemble those of adult artists. Is this talent a splinter skill, or is it associated with other kinds of high ability? We administered IQ and visual-spatial tasks to 12 precocious realists and compared their performance to a control group of children matched on age, gender, and socioeconomic status (SES) and asked their parents to complete questionnaires assessing their children's personality traits. Precocious realism proved unrelated to either superior verbal or nonverbal IQs and proved related only to two of the five visual-spatial tasks we administered. Precocious realists scored higher on the trait of openness to experience and their parents described them as having extreme rage to master. Contrary to some previous claims, they did not show any elevated autistic-like traits. We conclude by making education recommendations for artistically gifted children.

In two studies, we compared whether making and viewing art improved affect and whether the affective benefits were due to participants' experience of enjoyment and flow. In Study 1, participants engaged in an art-making and art-viewing activity separated by one week. In Study 2, participants were randomly assigned to an art-making or art-viewing activity. In both studies, we induced a negative mood in participants by having them watch a sad film clip. We measured positive and negative affects before and after the mood induction and after the activity. In Study 2, participants rated levels of enjoyment and flow experienced during the activity. Both making and viewing art reduced negative affect equally. However, making art improved positive affect more than viewing art, and making art was associated with greater enjoyment than viewing art. Actively making art is a potentially more powerful way to improve affect than passively viewing art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fluoxetine is a safe antidepressant with remarkable anti‐inflammatory actions; therefore, we aimed to investigate its effects on immortalized (HaCaT) as well as primary human epidermal keratinocytes in a polyinosinic‐polycytidylic acid (p(I:C))‐induced inflammatory model. We found that a non‐cytotoxic concentration (MTT‐assay, CyQUANT‐assay) of fluoxetine significantly suppressed p(I:C)‐induced expression and release of several pro‐inflammatory cytokines (Q‐PCR, cytokine array, ELISA), and it decreased the release of the itch mediator endothelins (ELISA). These effects were not mediated by the inhibition of the NF‐κB or p38 MAPK pathways (western blot), or by the suppression of the p(I:C)‐induced elevation of mitochondrial ROS production (MitoSOX Red labeling). Instead, unbiased activity profiling revealed that they were most likely mediated via the inhibition of the phosphoinositide 3‐kinase (PI3K) pathway. Importantly, the PI3K‐inhibitor GDC0941 fully mimicked the effects of fluoxetine (Q‐PCR, ELISA). Although fluoxetine was able to occupy the binding site of GDC0941 (in silico molecular docking), and exerted direct inhibitory effect on PI3K (cell‐free PI3K activity assay), it exhibited much lower potency and efficacy as compared to GDC0941. Finally, RNA‐Seq analysis revealed that fluoxetine deeply influenced the transcriptional alterations induced by p(I:C)‐treatment, and exerted an overall anti‐inflammatory activity. Collectively, our findings demonstrate that fluoxetine exerts potent anti‐inflammatory effects, and suppresses the release of the endogenous itch mediator endothelins in human keratinocytes, most likely via interfering with the PI3K pathway. Thus, clinical studies are encouraged to explore whether the currently reported beneficial effects translate in vivo following its topical administration in inflammatory and pruritic dermatoses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined whether using drawing to distract, by either coloring a design or drawing a design, improves mood more than drawing to express feelings. We manipulated levels of cognitive demand in the first 2 conditions by asking participants to color a design (low cognitive demand) or draw a design (high cognitive demand). After a sad mood induction, we randomly assigned 70 participants to coloring, drawing, or drawing to express thoughts and feelings. Affect was measured before and after the mood induction and after drawing. Participants also reported on their level of enjoyment and flow when drawing. Both distraction conditions, regardless of level of cognitive demand, improved affect. Whereas those in both the coloring and drawing conditions enjoyed the activity more than the drawing to express condition, only the coloring condition resulted in greater states of flow.

Research often ranges from incremental innovations of existing approaches to the development of novel methodologies. The current study seeks to combine both paradigms through consideration of a legacy hydro system. Stretched along the border between Canada and the US and regulated by a 1950 treaty, the Niagara River currently provides almost 5000 MW of renewable power. This paper develops a HEC-ResSim representation of the existing reservoir (power) system and uses this model to explore a variety of possible future scenarios. These possibilities will ultimately include considering the sensitivity of the system to climate change, reducing tourist flows, and exploring using additional storage to augment operational flows, although the current paper particularly details the scenario involving increased power diversion by somewhat relaxing treaty restrictions. Such an arrangement is shown to potentially increase monthly hydro discharges by 16% relative to the current baseline, and thus to permit an additional 1050 GWh of annual generation on the Canadian side alone. This preliminary exploratory study simply evaluates the potential hydro benefits by assessing the interplay between various system constraints if treaty provisions were ever to be reconsidered, and thus sets the stage for considering a variety of other scenarios. Key words: reservoir operation, simulation, HEC-ResSim, Niagara River, power systems, treaty. La recherche va souvent d'innovations progressives des approches existantes jusqu'a l'elaboration de nouvelles methodologies. La presente etude cherche a allier les deux paradigmes en examinant un systeme hydroelectrique existant. La riviere Niagara, s'etendant le long de la frontiere entre le Canada et les E.-U. et etant regie par un traite de 1950, fournit actuellement presque 5000 MW d'energie renouvelable. Dans le cadre de cette etude, on developpe une representation du reseau d'electricite du reservoir existant a l'aide du logiciel de simulation HEC-ResSim et on utilise ce modele afin d'explorer une variete de scenarios futurs possibles. Ces possibilites incluront en definitive l'examen de la sensibilite du reseau au changement climatique, la reduction des flux touristiques et l'exploration du stockage supplementaire afin d'augmenter les flux operationnels, bien que la presente etude en particulier examine en detail le scenario impliquant la deviation accrue de l'electricite en assouplissant les restrictions du traite quelque peu. Il est montre qu'un tel arrangement augmente potentiellement les debits hydrauliques mensuels de 16% par rapport a la ligne de base actuelle et ainsi permet la generation de 1050 GWh supplementaires annuellement sur le cote canadien seul. Cette etude exploratoire preliminaire evalue simplement les avantages potentiels au niveau de l'hydroelectricite en evaluant l'interaction entre les diverses contraintes du systeme si les dispositions du traite devaient un jour etre reconsiderees et prepare ainsi le terrain pour considerer une variete d'autres scenarios. [Traduit par la Redaction] Mots-cles: exploitation de reservoir, simulation, HEC-ResSim, Riviere Niagara, reseaux d'electricite, traite., Introduction Development and operation of reservoirs often require complex water management since reservoir operations must simultaneously meet varied objectives including flood control, power generation, recreational uses, downstream environmental quality and [...]