Pregnancy complications and neuropsychological outcomes: A review

Pregnancy complications elevate risk of associated adverse medical, socioenvironmental, and behavioral outcomes in children. These are likely to have a substantial impact on neuropsychological functioning and mental health across the child’s lifespan. Thus, an understanding of the complex relationships between pregnancy complications and neuropsychological outcomes is critical for both practitioners and researchers. This review summarizes prevalent pregnancy complications and the associated psychological and neuropsychological findings, highlighting methodological challenges that have restricted investigations of these outcomes and identifying opportune areas for future study.     

Race, Culture, and Ethnicity: Implications for a Community Intervention

We present an overview of research on African American families and emphasize in this discussion limitations of approaches used in the past to study African American families. We also discuss and identify challenges for designing and implementing community, family-based programs targeting competence-promoting behaviors in African American families. In addition, we attempt to accomplish the following objectives: (1) identify themes in studies of African American families, including bias in prior research; (2) discuss ways in which prior approaches and conceptual models guiding studies of African Americans have created challenges for the development and implementation of community-based intervention and research programs; and (3) present the Parents Matter! Program as an example of a community-based prevention effort that attempted to overcome many of the challenges created by prior research efforts.     

State of Multicultural Neuropsychological Assessment in Children: Current Research Issues

Scientific attention to cultural considerations in child neuropsychological assessment has not developed parallel to the focus these issues have received in adult and elderly neuropsychological assessment. There are limited data on the presence, magnitude, etiology, and implications of culture-related differences in cognitive test performance among children. This preliminary report reviews the available empirical literature on the current state of multicultural neuropsychological assessment in children. The review identified articles by searching PubMed and PsycINFO databases, and the tables of contents of Developmental Neuropsychology and Child Neuropsychology from 2003-2008. Of the 1,834 abstracts reviewed, ten papers met inclusion criteria for the review. Five studies were completed in America; four of these compared performance between ethnic groups while the fifth examined neighborhood level poverty indicators exclusively within African-American children. Of the five international studies, all established local normative data and/or were exploratory investigations of neuropsychological functions in specific cultural groups, including Taiwanese infants, South African youth, and bilingual British children. Taken together, the results yield important clinical and research data that begin to inform many of the complex and fascinating mechanisms by which ethnic identity and culture impact cognitive development and the neuropsychological assessment of children. A critique of the existing literature and directions for future research are provided.     

Towards a comprehensive treatment for obsessional thoughts

A systematic treatment approach for obsessional thoughts is proposed. It is based upon an analysis of the chain of convert events and incorporates the distinction between the obsessional idea or fear and the cognitive rituals which follow. Systematic Disruption of covert rituals and Cognitive Restructuring of obsessional ideas are included within the treatment programme. The application of this approach is demonstrated with three cases treated for severe obsessional thoughts and followed up after 2 years.     

Taste,odor, and tactile discrimination before and after smoking

Differential sensitivity was measured before and after smoking a cigarette by seven smokers, using six non-smokers as controls. Stimuli consisted of the tastes of sucrose, sodium chloride, citric acid, caffeine, and quinine hydrochloride; the odors of vanillin and 2-butanone; and the viscosity produced by a carrageenan gum. No significant jnds were observed between smokers and non-smokers, nor before vs after smoking. Therefore, the data supported neither longterm nor short-term influences of cigarette smoking. Practice effects were noted among the control group, as more correct responses were obtained on the second than on the first set of solutions in most of the test stimuli.     

The strategic control of multiple routes in imitation of actions

The aim of this study was to bring to the surface the strategic use of imitative processes in the context of a 2-route model: (a) direct imitation, used in reproducing new, meaningless actions, and (b) imitation based on stored semantic knowledge of familiar meaningful actions. Three experiments were carried out with healthy participants who reproduced meaningful and meaningless actions within an established time limit. The study investigated 3 factors that could potentially affect the selection of processes used for imitation: (a) the composition of the experimental list (blocked or mixed presentation), (b) the presence-absence of instructions (Experiments 1 and 2), and (c) the relative proportions of the stimuli (Experiment 3). Overall, the results suggest that each of these factors influences the selection of imitative strategies in healthy individuals with temporarily reduced capacities, as happens in the case of brain-damaged patients.     

Maternal postpartum depression is a risk factor for infant emotional variability at 4 months

Maternal postpartum depression (PPD) is a risk for disruption of mother–infant interaction. Infants of depressed mothers have been found to display less positive, more negative, and neutral affect. Other studies have found that infants of mothers with PPD inhibit both positive and negative affect. In a sample of 28 infants of mothers with PPD and 52 infants of nonclinical mothers, we examined the role of PPD diagnosis and symptoms for infants’ emotional variability, measured as facial expressions, vocal protest, and gaze using microanalysis, during a mother–infant face-to-face interaction. PPD symptoms and diagnosis were associated with (a) infants displaying fewer high negative, but more neutral/interest facial affect events, and (b) fewer gaze off events.  PPD diagnosis, but not symptoms, was associated with less infant vocal protest. Total duration of seconds of infant facial affective displays and gaze off was not related to PPD diagnosis or symptoms, suggesting that when infants of depressed mothers display high negative facial affect or gaze off, these expressions are more sustained, indicating lower infant ability to calm down and re-engage, interpreted as a disturbance in self-regulation. The findings highlight the importance of not only examining durations, but also frequencies, as the latter may inform infant emotional variability.     

Jean Reith Schroedel,Is the Fetus a Person? A Comparison of Policies Across the Fifty States

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -