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Biomedical subjects

A Swenson

Publications and source records attributed to A Swenson.

4 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1993

Accelerating language acquisition.

How much can the development of language and other skills be accelerated in the general population? High correlations between early verbal and mental competencies and parent and teacher language socialization practices suggest enormous potential for widespread improvement. Here we report follow-up research in progress in studies of late adolescent children from diverse ethnic and educational backgrounds who participated in a language enrichment programme during infancy in the home or day-care. In 39 of 44 home-stimulated children located to date (nearly all from college-educated families) 62-93% were: in gifted or advanced programmes, obtaining high grades, avid readers and skilled in writing (over half read before school and wrote creative material independently) and generally highly skilled in verbal, mathematical and other academic domains. They also excelled socially and in sports, and showed intellectual independence. Additional subjects and data (on competence, later experiences and Scholastic Aptitude Test [SAT] scores) are currently being collected. Preliminary data analyses suggest that although early language enrichment can in the short term easily increase competence in all groups well beyond norms generated by current socialization practices, long-term outcomes are a complex function of developmental dynamics between the early, complex, foundation of high skills and motivation for learning, and the interaction with facilitative parental resources.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Rooming-in at night in the postpartum ward.

Since the early 1970s it has been common practice for 'rooming-in' to take place during the day in Swedish maternity wards. At night newborn babies are usually looked after by nursing staff in special nurseries. One reason for this is to avoid disturbing the mothers' sleep at night. To promote mother-infant adaptation, we undertook a programme intended to encourage night-time rooming-in. Evaluation of the programme was carried out as a quasi-experiment, divided into a pretest period (I), a 6-month implementation period, and a post-test period (II). Breast feeding and maternal sleep were studied during the first 3 postpartum days by means of self-report by 104 mothers in Period I and 111 mothers in Period II. The number of hours that the babies spent in the nursery decreased from Period I to Period II, a difference that was most obvious during the second and third postpartum nights. No difference was found in the number of breast feeds in Periods I and II, except during the third night, when Period II mothers breast fed more often. In spite of increased rooming-in in Period II, these mothers slept the same number of hours and felt equally alert as Period I mothers.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Symptoms and lung function in low-exposure to TDI by polyurethane foam manufacturing.

A cross-sectional investigation was performed in seven polyurethane foam manufacturing factories. Lung function tests were performed at the factories by spirometric and nitrogen wash-out methods. Sixty-seven persons were investigated before and after the work shift, and exposure to toluene diisocyanate (TDI) was evaluated by subject-carried sampling equipment on the same day. The day mean exposure to TDI was 0.008 mg/m3 (0.001 ppm). In the non-smokers there was an increased frequency of symptoms from the airways reported in the exposed subjects as compared to the unexposed controls. There were, however, no signs of acute or chronic effects on the lung function measured by spirometric and nitrogen wash-out methods, which could not be explained by smoking.

Adult↗