Parent-child relationships

Parents and doctors have an obligation to supply children with an emotional diet leading to their eventual maturity. This is as important to the child as is his physical guidance. The proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals and vitamins of a child's emotional diet are: (1) the need for security; (2) the need to achieve social adaptability; (3) the need for success; and (4) the need for independence. In helping parents provide their children with these major guideposts along the road of character development toward maturity, physicians have a challenge and opportunity for real service to the humanities-a field of endeavor far behind science in human progress.     

The value of a dog in a classroom of children with severe emotional disorders

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to determine how a dog's presence in a self-contained classroom of six children diagnosed with severe emotional disorders affected students' emotional stability and their learning. Across an eight-week period of time, the children were observed, the children and their parents were interviewed, and behavioral data were recorded when students went into emotional crisis. Qualitative analysis of all coded data indicated that the dog's placement in this self-contained classroom: a) contributed to students' overall emotional stability evidenced by prevention and de-escalation of episodes of emotional crisis; b) improved students' attitudes toward school; and c) facilitated students' learning lessons in responsibility, respect and empathy.     

Parents' perceptions of food intolerance in primary school children.

In a study of about 7000 children, parents'' perceptions were used to examine the prevalence of food intolerance, the types of food implicated, the association of intolerance with diseases, and the social background of those identified as being food intolerant. One hundred and ninety two children (3%) were perceived as being food intolerant, with a further 105 (2%) being classed as intolerant under a less stringent definition of intolerance. For 128 (67%) of these children a doctor was consulted. The pattern of food avoided was very similar in children for whom the decision to exclude certain foods was made by health staff and in those for whom the parents themselves made decisions about their child''s diet. A strong association was seen between the mother''s level of education and the child being perceived as being food intolerant. Between 20% and 30% of children with a disease associated with food intolerance--for example, eczema--had currently or previously avoided some types of food. The results of this study emphasise the need to develop criteria to tackle the growing demand for National Health Service treatment by parents who believe their child to be food intolerant.     

“Gift Giving” by Wild Bottle nose Dolphins (Tursiops sp.) to Humans at a Wild Dolphin Provisioning Program,Tangalooma, Australia

ABSTRACT

While there is increasing interest in the impact of animal interactions upon children's wellbeing and attitudes, there has been less attention paid to the specific characteristics of the animals that attract and engage children. We used a within-subjects design to explore how differences in animal features (such as their animacy, size, and texture) impacted upon pre-school children's social and emotional responses. This study examined pre-schoolers' interactions with two animal-like robots (Teksta and Scoozie), two insect types (stick insects and hissing cockroaches) and a dog (Teasel, a West Highland Terrier). Nineteen preschool participants aged 35–57 months were videoed while interacting with the experimenter, a peer, and each stimulus (presented individually). We used both verbal and nonverbal behaviors to evaluate interactions and emotional responses to the stimuli and found that these two measures could be incongruent, highlighting the need for systematic approaches to evaluating children's interactions with animals. We categorized the content of children's dialogues in relation to psychological and biological attributes of each stimulus and their distinctions between living and non-living stimuli; the majority of comments were biological, with psychological terms largely reserved for the dog and mammal-like robot only. Comments relating to living qualities revealed ambiguity towards attributes that denote differences between living and non-living creatures. We used a range of nonverbal measures, including willingness to approach and touch stimuli, rates of self-touching, facial expressions of emotion, and touch to others. Insects (hissing cockroaches and stick insects) received the most negative verbal and nonverbal responses. The mammal-like robot (rounded, fluffy body shape, large eyes, and sympathetic sounds) was viewed much more positively than its metallic counterpart, as was the real dog. We propose that these interactions provide information on how children perceive animals and a platform for the examination of human socio-emotional and cognitive development more generally. The children engaged in social referencing to the adult experimenter rather than familiar peers when uncertain about the stimuli presented, suggesting that caregivers have a primary role in shaping children's responses to animals.     

Effects of an insect‐mediated mental healthcare program for mentally disordered children

Insects are the most diverse groups of animals on the planet, representing more than one‐half of all known living organisms, and are found in nearly every environment. Recently, the importance of insects as food sources or as pets has increased in many countries, including Korea. In addition, several insects have been shown to exert a strong influence on people's emotions. Our insect‐mediated mental healthcare program is designed to help meet the physical, behavioral and developmental needs of people with mental disorders. Children with mental disorders, the experimental group, were provided with an insect‐mediated mental healthcare program for a total of eight sessions, one session per week, at 1–2 h per session, accompanied by a pre‐test and post‐test. The overall, gender, education level, and mental disease profiles of the participants in this study were balanced. Our results indicated that children who participated in the insect‐mediated healthcare program group once showed significant improvement in their emotional health and insect awareness. Additionally, paired education level's t‐tests showed that the outcomes of the participants in treatment group were significantly improved (α < 0.05). However, participants' satisfaction with their school life (middle school) was not influenced. These results suggest that insects positively influence children's emotional health through an insect‐mediated healthcare program. Further research on the basis of this study is expected to help children with emotional therapy in other areas.     

Braving Difficult Choices Alone: Children's and Adolescents' Medical Decision Making

Objective

What role should minors play in making medical decisions? The authors examined children''s and adolescents'' desire to be involved in serious medical decisions and the emotional consequences associated with them.

Methods

Sixty-three children and 76 adolescents were presented with a cover story about a difficult medical choice. Participants were tested in one of four conditions: (1) own informed choice; (2) informed parents'' choice to amputate; (3) informed parents'' choice to continue a treatment; and (4) uninformed parents'' choice to amputate. In a questionnaire, participants were asked about their choices, preference for autonomy, confidence, and emotional reactions when faced with a difficult hypothetical medical choice.

Results

Children and adolescents made different choices and participants, especially adolescents, preferred to make the difficult choice themselves, rather than having a parent make it. Children expressed fewer negative emotions than adolescents. Providing information about the alternatives did not affect participants'' responses.

Conclusions

Minors, especially adolescents, want to be responsible for their own medical decisions, even when the choice is a difficult one. For the adolescents, results suggest that the decision to be made, instead of the agent making the decision, is the main element influencing their emotional responses and decision confidence. For children, results suggest that they might be less able than adolescents to project how they would feel. The results, overall, draw attention to the need to further investigate how we can better involve minors in the medical decision-making process.     

Children and Their Pets

Abstract

This study examines the frequency of pet possession and its covariation with family variables (family size, housing conditions, parents' employment, maternal support) among elementary school children. Additionally, children's pet caring activities and their emotional relationship to pets were investigated. Subjects were 426 fourth graders (213 boys, 213 girls). Results indicate that pets are very frequently present in families, with the dog as the most common and most preferred animal. Parents' employment and maternal support do not covariate with pet possession, but housing conditions do. The child-pet relationship depends on childrens' gender, pet type and status of ownership (child vs. family). The intensity of pet caring is mainly related to pet type and ownership, whereas the quality of emotional contact depends on pet type and childrens' gender. On the background of manifold articles reporting case studies and educational, respectively clinical counseling experiences the discussion emphasizes the need for sound empirical research on the relationship between personality characteristics and pet ownership.     

Can emotion recognition be taught to children with autism spectrum conditions?

Children with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) have major difficulties in recognizing and responding to emotional and mental states in others'' facial expressions. Such difficulties in empathy underlie their social-communication difficulties that form a core of the diagnosis. In this paper we ask whether aspects of empathy can be taught to young children with ASC. We review a study that evaluated The Transporters, an animated series designed to enhance emotion comprehension in children with ASC. Children with ASC (4–7 years old) watched The Transporters every day for four weeks. Participants were tested before and after intervention on emotional vocabulary and emotion recognition at three levels of generalization. The intervention group improved significantly more than a clinical control group on all task levels, performing comparably to typical controls at time 2. The discussion centres on how vehicles as mechanical systems may be one key reason why The Transporters caused the improved understanding and recognition of emotions in children with ASC. The implications for the design of autism-friendly interventions are also explored.     

Inferring Emotions from Speech Prosody: Not So Easy at Age Five

Previous research has suggested that children do not rely on prosody to infer a speaker''s emotional state because of biases toward lexical content or situational context. We hypothesized that there are actually no such biases and that young children simply have trouble in using emotional prosody. Sixty children from 5 to 13 years of age had to judge the emotional state of a happy or sad speaker and then to verbally explain their judgment. Lexical content and situational context were devoid of emotional valence. Results showed that prosody alone did not enable the children to infer emotions at age 5, and was still not fully mastered at age 13. Instead, they relied on contextual information despite the fact that this cue had no emotional valence. These results support the hypothesis that prosody is difficult to interpret for young children and that this cue plays only a subordinate role up until adolescence to infer others’ emotions.     

Survey of parents' attitudes to the recommended Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccine program.

A survey was conducted in a general pediatric practice to determine parents'' attitudes to and compliance with the recommended Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccine program. Of 133 families surveyed 127 (95%) responded to the questionnaire. About one third of the parents did not have their children vaccinated. The decision against vaccination was made despite parent education, follow-up telephone contact and the pediatrician''s expressed support of the vaccine program. Most of the respondents (86%) had no previous knowledge of the vaccine. The factor of greatest concern was the possibility of an adverse reaction. This concern was significantly more common among the parents who decided not to have their children vaccinated than among those who had their children vaccinated (chi 2 = 6.52, p less than 0.025). One third of the parents who indicated that they intended to have their children vaccinated required a telephone reminder. The findings suggest a need for public education about the vaccine, with particular emphasis directed at allaying fears about side effects.     

The pathogenesis of autism: insights from congenital blindness

There is substantial heterogeneity in the aetiology and clinical presentation of autism. So how do we account for homogeneity in the syndrome? The answer to this question will be critical for any attempt to trace the links between brain pathology and the psychological disabilities that characterize autism. One possibility is that the source of homogeneity in autism is not to be found ''in the child'', but rather in dysfunction of the system constituted by child-in-relation-to-other. We have been exploring this hypothesis through the study of congenitally blind children, among whom features of autism, and the syndrome of autism itself, are strikingly common. To justify such an approach, one needs to establish that the clinical features in blind children have qualities that are indeed ''autistic-like''. We conducted systematic observations of the social interactions of two matched groups of congenitally blind children who do not have autism, rating their social engagement, emotional tone, play and language during three sessions of free play in the school playground. The qualities of social impairment in the more disabled children were similar to those in sighted children with autism. Additional evidence came from independent ratings of the children in a different play setting: on the childhood autism rating scale (CARS), the socially impaired children had ''autistic-like'' abnormalities in both social and non-social domains. If we can determine the way in which congenital blindness predisposes to features of autism, we shall be in a better position to trace the developmental pathways that lead to the syndrome in sighted children.     

Development, problem behavior, and quality of life in a population based sample of eight-year-old children with Down syndrome

Objective

Children with Down syndrome (DS) have delayed psychomotor development. We investigated levels of development, problem behavior, and Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) in a population sample of Dutch eight-year-old children with DS. Developmental outcomes were compared with normative data of eight-year-old children from the general population.

Method

Over a three-year-period all parents with an eight-year-old child with DS were approached by the national parent organization. Developmental skills were assessed by means of the McCarthy Scales of Children''s Ability. To measure emotional and behavioral problems we used the Child Behavior Checklist. HRQoL was assessed with the TNO-AZL Children''s Quality of Life questionnaire. Analyses of variance were applied to compare groups.

Results

A total of 337 children participated. Mean developmental age was substantially lower than mean calendar age (3.9 years, SD 0.87 and 8.1 years, SD 0.15 respectively). Mean developmental age was significantly lower among boys than girls (3.6 (SD 0.85) and 4.2 years (SD 0.82) respectively; p<0.001). Compared with the general population, children with DS had more emotional and behavioral problems (p<0.001). However on the anxious/depressed scale, they scored significantly more favorably (p<0.001). Significantly lower HRQoL scores for the scales gross motor skills, autonomy, social functioning and cognitive functioning were found (p-values<0.001). Hardly any differences were observed for the scales physical complaints, positive and negative emotions.

Conclusion

Eight-year-old children with DS have an average developmental delay of four years, more often have emotional and behavioral problems, and have a less favorable HRQoL compared with children from the general population.     

Maternal effects are long‐lasting and influence female offspring's reproductive strategy in the swordtail fish Xiphophorus multilineatus

The adaptive benefits of maternal investment into individual offspring (inherited environmental effects) will be shaped by selection on mothers as well as their offspring, often across variable environments. We examined how a mother's nutritional environment interacted with her offspring's nutritional and social environment in Xiphophorus multilineatus, a live‐bearing fish. Fry from mothers reared on two different nutritional diets (HQ = high quality and LQ = low quality) were all reared on a LQ diet in addition to being split between two social treatments: exposed to a large adult male during development and not exposed. Mothers raised on a HQ diet produce offspring that were not only initially larger (at 14 days of age), but grew faster, and were larger at sexual maturity. Male offspring from mothers raised on both diets responded to the exposure to courter males by growing faster; however, the response of their sisters varied with mother's diet; females from HQ diet mothers reduced growth if exposed to a courter male, whereas females from LQ diet mothers increased growth. Therefore, we detected variation in maternal investment depending on female size and diet, and the effects of this variation on offspring were long‐lasting and sex specific. Our results support the maternal stress hypothesis, with selection on mothers to reduce investment in low‐quality environments. In addition, the interaction we detected between the mother's nutritional environment and the female offspring's social environment suggests that female offspring adopted different reproductive strategies depending on maternal investment.     

Maturity onset diabetes mellitus: response to intensive dietary management.

Analysis of the first six months of intensive dietary management of 57 maturity onset diabetics showed that a large proportion of such patients could be satisfactorily controlled without the need of either oral hypoglycaemic agents or insulin. A dietitian''s assessment of the patient''s adherence to the prescribed diet allowed groups of good and poor dieters to be selected. Among the poor dieters the plasma insulin and triglyceride levels were significantly increased though plasma glucose levels were not significantly higher. Dietary adherence may thus be an prognostic risk factor in this group of diabetic patients.     

Fathers' and Mothers' Home Literacy Involvement and Children's Cognitive and Social Emotional Development: Implications for Family Literacy Programs

The relations between fathers' and mothers' home literacy involvement at 24 months and children's cognitive and social emotional development in preschool were examined using a large sample of African American and Caucasian families (N = 5190) from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that both fathers' and mothers' home literacy involvement positively contributed to children's cognitive and social emotional development. Specifically, fathers and mothers who participated in more frequent home literacy involvement (e.g., shared book reading) had children with better reading, math, and social emotional outcomes (i.e., sustained attention and fewer negative behaviors) in preschool. Findings suggest that increasing family literacy involvement can have positive benefits for children's cognitive and social emotional skills during the developmentally important early childhood years.     

Community care service for diabetics in the Poole area.

Because of an increasing work load at the hospital diabetic clinic in Poole general practitioners were asked to help in a community care service for diabetics. In this, general practitioners typically care for non-ketotic patients with maturity onset diabetes who are well controlled on diet or diet and oral hypoglycaemic agents, while the clinic concentrates on more difficult cases and screens patients for long-term complications. The hospital laboratory''s work load has been eased because patients may attend for two-hour interval blood sugar estimations when they like; most patients appreciate this flexibility and prefer being looked after by their own doctor. The service has not increased the general practitioners'' work load unduly, but it has heightened their awareness of diabetes in the community, thus allowing the diabetic consultant to deal with the problems for which he has been trained. The service has thus provided improved care for all diabetics in the Poole area.     

Psychological disturbance in children with haemophilia.

OBJECTIVE--To assess the need for formal psychotherapeutic intervention in children attending a children''s haemophilia clinic after some of them had been diagnosed as positive for HIV. DESIGN--Comparison of haemophiliac children with matched control groups of diabetic and healthy children. SETTING--The West of Scotland Children''s Haemophilia Centre, Glasgow. PATIENTS--43 Children aged 3 to 16 years with mild, moderate, and severe clotting disorders were matched with control groups of 46 diabetic children and 42 physically healthy children. INTERVENTIONS--Parents of children aged 3-5 years were interviewed with the behaviour screening questionnaire. Children aged 6 to 16 were assessed by parental and teacher report using standardised questionnaires and self report using a computerised depression inventory. All were scored numerically according to the presence of symptoms of emotional and behavioural problems. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES--The groups were compared for mean scores on each rating device and for number of children achieving scores within the pathological range. RESULTS--In the 6-16 age group five haemophiliac children, five diabetic children, and three healthy children scored in the pathological range on the parent questionnaire, as did two, three, and five respectively on the teacher questionnaire and four, four, and eight on the depression inventory. There was no significant difference across the three groups. Analysis of mean scores similarly showed no significant difference across groups. In contrast, the single measure used for younger children showed an increase in behavioural difficulties among the diabetic children. CONCLUSION--Haemophiliac children attending the West of Scotland Centre were no more disturbed than their diabetic or healthy peers despite the identification of HIV infection within the clinic and the widespread adverse publicity associated with AIDS and HIV infection.     

孤独症谱系障碍儿童情绪表达能力干预系统研制

大量研究表明,通过干预孤独症谱系障碍(Autism Spectrum Disorder,ASD)儿童情绪能力,可以提高其移情能力从而改善核心症状--社交交往障碍。随着ASD儿童人数逐年上升,对干预的需求日益增大。目前国内外对于ASD儿童情绪能力的系统干预研究较少,主要研究均集中在表情识别这一层面。本文结合视频分析,自动表情识别算法,Flash技术,设计交互式虚拟场景游戏,研发一个面向ASD儿童的情绪能力干预的系统。该系统可以训练儿童的表情识别能力,还可以训练儿童对表情的模仿和表达,具有实用性,方便推广。     

Dietary intake,lung function and airway inflammation in Mexico City school children exposed to air pollutants

Introduction

Air pollutant exposure has been associated with an increase in inflammatory markers and a decline in lung function in asthmatic children. Several studies suggest that dietary intake of fruits and vegetables might modify the adverse effect of air pollutants.

Methods

A total of 158 asthmatic children recruited at the Children''s Hospital of Mexico and 50 non-asthmatic children were followed for 22 weeks. Pulmonary function was measured and nasal lavage collected and analyzed every 2 weeks. Dietary intake was evaluated using a 108-item food frequency questionnaire and a fruit and vegetable index (FVI) and a Mediterranean diet index (MDI) were constructed. The impact of these indices on lung function and interleukin-8 (IL-8) and their interaction with air pollutants were determined using mixed regression models with random intercept and random slope.

Results

FVI was inversely related to IL-8 levels in nasal lavage (p < 0.02) with a significant inverse trend (test for trend p < 0.001), MDI was positively related to lung function (p < 0.05), and children in the highest category of MDI had a higher FEV₁ (test for trend p < 0.12) and FVC (test for trend p < 0.06) than children in the lowest category. A significant interaction was observed between FVI and ozone for FEV₁ and FVC as was with MDI and ozone for FVC. No effect of diet was observed among healthy children.

Conclusion

Our results suggest that fruit and vegetable intake and close adherence to the Mediterranean diet have a beneficial effect on inflammatory response and lung function in asthmatic children living in Mexico City.