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Biomedical subjects

A H Parmelee

Publications and source records attributed to A H Parmelee.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Receptive language development in preterm children as related to caregiver-child interaction.

Fifty preterm children who had experienced a range of biological hazards were divided into two competence groups on the basis of their receptive language development at 24 months. The groups were then compared in terms of the kinds of caregiver-child interactions the children and their primary caregivers engaged in three months earlier in a laboratory assessment. The two language skill groups did not differ on perinatal factors such as birth weight and gestational age, or on length of hospitalization, but did differ in social transactions. The more competent group as compared to the less competent group had caregivers who were more stimulating, the children themselves emitted more vocalization, and the caregivers and children engaged in more reciprocal social transactions.

Child, Preschool↗

Vocal output in preterm infants.

Data on vocal output of 51 preterm infants and 16 term infants were obtained during naturalistic home observations at 1, 3, and 8 months; during the administration of a preference-for-novelty paradigm in the laboratory at 8 months; and by the administration of the Gesell Developmental Schedules at 9 months. Preterm and term infant groups were found to show both similarities and differences: both groups vocalized a similar amount in the preference-for-novelty situation; both groups earned similar scores on the language subtest of the Gesell; both groups increased the percentage of awake time they spent in nondistress vocalization from 1 to 8 months. Term infants showed an earlier increase than did preterm infants: term infants significantly increased during the 1-3 month period, whereas preterm infants only increased significantly during the 3-8 month period. The developmental differences suggest a link between vocal output and perinatal conditions in that caregiver behavior was not found to be different among groups. Within the preterm groups, some relationships were found between vocal output and later test performance: infants who vocalized more during mutual gazing with the mother earned significantly higher scores on the language subtest of the Gesell.

Female↗

A neurologic comparison of pre-term and full-term infants at term conceptional age.

There are currently no neurologic examinations designed for pre-term infants with sufficient data to determine neurologic deviance at various gestational or conceptional ages (gestational age plus age from birth). In this study a neurologic examination standardized for full-term newborn infants was administered to 97 full-term newborn infants was administered to 97 full-term newborn infants and 97 pre-term infants at their expected date of birth, 40 weeks' conceptional age. The pre-term infants had more weak responses than did the full-term infants despite being at a higher level of activity state throughout the examination. The pre-term infants also had more asymmetric responses. There was no correlation between gestational age and the incidence of weak responses in the pre-term infants, but the pre-term infants of lowest birth weight at all gestational ages had the greatest number of weak responses. The latter may be because pregnancy and neonatal problems contribute more to the neurologic findings than does the length of gestation.

Age Factors↗

Neurological organization and visual fixation in infants at 40 weeks conceptional age.

Neurological organization and visual fixation were found to be unrelated in a group of premature infants tested at their term date. These results are discrepant with those obtained with a sample of full term infants. Separate comparisons made of the neurological and fixation data revealed one significant group difference from the fixation data; all other analyses were nonsignificant. The discrepant findings may have occurred because prematures are subject to developmental disparities in the regulation of arousal, neuromuscular, and visual systems due to differential impact of preterm extrauterine life.

Arousal↗

Neurophysiological and behavioral organization of premature infants in the first months of life.

Many explanations for the current findings of limited group differences between premature and term infants at comparable conceptional ages can be imagined that remain buried in the data as currently presented. For example, some prematures may indeed be advanced in many areas of behavioral and neurophysiological development, but this is counterbalanced by prematures who are significantly delayed in these parameters for medical reasons such as hypoxia or metabolic disturbance, while a third portion of the infants has uneven and disorganizing mixtures of delayed and advanced development in selective modalities. Hopefully future research which takes these various possibilities into consideration will give us a better understanding of this complex problem.

Arousal↗