Creating Supportive Environments for Children Who have had Exposure to Traumatic Events

The prevalence of trauma among young children and its impact on educational outcomes is gaining attention. It is probable that the needs of children who have experienced or been exposed to trauma have long gone unmet due to identification challenges and a lack of knowledge concerning best practices. For this study, qualitative interviews were conducted to gather perspectives of 14 community-based service providers who worked with children and families regarding trauma-related concerns. Each shared his or her perspectives on knowledge and skills early childhood education teachers need to support children who have experienced traumatic events and partner with their families. Research questions were: What should early childhood teachers know about (1) trauma experiences among young children; (2) the emotional and behavioral patterns of children who have experienced traumatic events; and (3) supporting the social and emotional well-being of children in the classroom setting, including partnering with families, who have experienced or been exposed to traumatic events? Participants indicated that teachers might not readily connect children’s behaviors and emotions to trauma. However, teachers can use approaches and strategies (e.g., being attuned and supporting positive social and emotional and communicative responses) that promote social and emotional well-being for children who experience trauma. Participants also noted that teachers can resist re-traumatization by making adaptations to social, physical, and temporal aspects of the classroom environment. Findings indicate that trauma-informed care might be viable in early childhood classroom settings. Implications for research are discussed.     

The hot hand fallacy and the gambler’s fallacy: Two faces of subjective randomness?

The representativeness heuristic has been invoked to explain two opposing expectations--that random sequences will exhibit positive recency (the hot hand fallacy) and that they will exhibit negative recency (the gambler's fallacy). We propose alternative accounts for these two expectations: (1) The hot hand fallacy arises from the experience of characteristic positive recency in serial fluctuations in human performance. (2) The gambler's fallacy results from the experience of characteristic negative recency in sequences of natural events, akin to sampling without replacement. Experiment 1 demonstrates negative recency in subjects' expectations for random binary outcomes from a roulette game, simultaneously with positive recency in expectations for another statistically identical sequence-the successes and failures of their predictions for the random outcomes. These findings fit our proposal but are problematic for the representativeness account. Experiment 2 demonstrates that sequence recency influences attributions that human performance or chance generated the sequence.     

Suicide attempts in an African schizophrenia population: an assessment of demographic risk factors

This study investigated demographic variables, including affected sibling pair status, as risk factors for suicidal behavior in schizophrenia patients of African (Xhosa) descent. Xhosa subjects with schizophrenia were interviewed with the Diagnostic Interview for Genetic Studies (DIGS) and then stratified into two groups: those with ( n = 90) and those without ( n = 364) a history of previous suicide attempts. Demographic parameters (including gender, age, and social circumstances, sib ship) were then compared across these groups. Demographic predictors of suicide included sib ship status ( p = 0.038; OR = 1.7) and age of onset of illness ( p = 0.008; OR = 2.5). On further analysis of suicide in siblings, only a minority of sib pairs was found to be concordant for a lifetime history of suicide attempts (3%). These findings raise the possibility that affected sib pair status may be protective in nature. Given the counter-intuitive nature of this finding, further work is needed to replicate it, and to explore possible underlying mechanisms.     

Right-hemispheric dominance for processing extended non-linguistic frequency transitions

The left hemisphere is specialized for most linguistic tasks and the right hemisphere is specialized for many non-linguistic tasks, but the cause of these functional asymmetries is unknown. One of the stimulus factors that appears to influence these asymmetries is the rate at which stimuli change. In the present experiment, 41 participants completed the Fused Dichotic Words Test (FDWT) and a non-linguistic Frequency Transition Task (FTT) wherein the Frequency Transitions (FTs) were either rapid (40 ms) or relatively slow (200 ms). There was a right hemisphere advantage for slow FTs when the change was at the front of the stimulus, but no corresponding left hemisphere advantage for the rapid FTs. There was no relationship between either FTT and the left hemisphere advantage exhibited on the FDWT. This finding provides support for the position that the right hemisphere dominates tasks that require temporal processing over relatively long periods of time.     

The impact of object size and rigidity on infant reaching

Although the changes in kinematics of infant reaching have been studied, few researchers have investigated the improvement of reaching regarding objects of distinct physical properties. The aim of this longitudinal study was to verify the impact of object size and rigidity on the development of reaching in 4-6-month-old infants. Four infants were observed with a motion capture system during trials with four objects of distinct sizes and rigidity. A total of 188 reaches were analyzed by using the 3D movement reconstruction. Our results showed that reaching frequency, mean velocity, and straightness index increased with age. The number of movement units decreased with age and increased for small objects. Rigidity was not shown to affect reaching trajectories. These findings suggest that infants are capable of perceiving the more relevant object properties, thus using their available motor capabilities to modify the essential variables so that they can reach the target more accurately.     

Effects of iron deficiency in infancy on patterns of motor development over time

This longitudinal study of the effects of iron deficiency in infancy assessed motor development over time in 185 healthy Costa Rican children who varied in iron status at 12-23 months. Longitudinal analyses (hierarchical linear modeling) used the Bayley Psychomotor Index before and both 1 week and 3 months after iron treatment in infancy and the Bruninks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency - long form at 5 years and short form at 11-14 years. Children with chronic severe iron deficiency in infancy had lower motor scores at the beginning of the study and a lower but parallel trajectory for motor scores through early adolescence. Thus, there was no evidence of catch-up in motor development, despite iron therapy in infancy that corrected iron deficiency anemia in all cases.     

Amnesic effect of GMP depends on its conversion to guanosine

Extracellular guanine-based purines, namely the nucleotides GTP, GDP, GMP and the nucleoside guanosine, exert important neuroprotective and neuromodulator roles in the central nervous system, which may be related to inhibition of the glutamatergic neurotransmission activity. In this study, we investigated GMP effects on mice inhibitory avoidance performance and the dependence on its conversion to guanosine for such effect, by using the ecto-5'-nucleotidase specific inhibitor AOPCP. We also investigated if this conversion occurs in the central nervous system or peripherally, and if guanosine and GMP affect nociception by the tail-flick test. I.p. GMP or guanosine (7.5 mg/kg) or i.c.v. GMP (480 nmol) pretraining administration was amnesic for the inhibitory avoidance task. I.c.v. AOPCP (1 nmol) administration completely reversed the amnesic effect of i.c.v. GMP, but not of i.p. GMP, indicating that peripheral conversion of GMP to guanosine is probably relevant to this effect. AOPCP alone did not interfere with the performance. Furthermore, tail-flick measurement was unaffected by i.p. GMP and guanosine, suggesting that the amnesic effect of both purines was not due to some antinociceptive effect against the footshock used in the task. All these data together, in accordance to those previously observed in studies involving glutamate uptake and seizures reinforce the idea that guanosine is the specific extracellular guanine-based purines effector and indicate that its conversion occurs not only in the central nervous system but also peripherally.     

The Budapest meeting 2005 intensified networking on ethics of science

This paper reports on the meeting of the Sounding Board of the EU Reprogenetics Project that was held in Budapest, Hungary, 6-9 November 2005. The Reprogenetics Project runs from 2004 until 2007 and has a brief to study the ethical aspects of human reproductive cloning and germline gene therapy. Discussions during The Budapest Meeting are reported in depth in this paper as well as the initiatives to involve the participating groups and others in ongoing collaborations with the goal of forming an integrated network of European resources in the fields of ethics of science.