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Biomedical subjects

D Cicchetti

Publications and source records attributed to D Cicchetti.

81 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

Borderline syndromes in childhood: criteria for diagnosis.

There is currently a great deal of confusion regarding the diagnostic status of children with borderline disorders and a tendency to apply criteria for borderline adults to the diagnosis of these children without allowing for developmental differences. On the basis of their experience with 24 latency-age children, the authors propose diagnostic criteria in an effort to establish a uniformity in the diagnosis of these children. Major areas of psychopathology include fluctuation of functioning, nature and extent of anxiety, thought content and processes, relationships to others, and lack of control. The authors also found a high frequency of organic impairment, physical abuse, and familial disturbance.

Anxiety Disorders↗

Reliability of a schedule for rating personality disorders.

The inter-situational, inter-rater and temporal reliability of a schedule for rating personality disorders is described. In an initial study with a simplified form of the schedule in patients from different wards of a psychiatric hospital inter-situational reliability between raters was higher for patients with personality disorders than with no personality disorder. Using the full schedule, inter-rater reliability, using audiotaped and separate interviews, and temporal reliability at interviews conducted a mean of 12.5 months apart all reached a satisfactory level, suggesting that the schedule may be a useful instrument for measuring deviant personality traits. The interview may be used with a subject or an informant but agreement between ratings made with informants and psychiatric patients during illness was low, and the schedule is not recommended for use with patients alone during acute episodes of illness.

Humans↗

Visual calibration of posture in normal and motor retarded Down's syndrome infants.

Infants with Down's syndrome are delayed in achieving motor milestones. When they first sit unsupported a discrepancy between visual and mechanical-vestibular indices of postural stability is less disruptive of their balance than in normal infants. Yet when they first stand unsupported, the same discrepancy disrupts balance more in these infants than in the normal infants. The effect of discrepant visual feedback also differs systematically as a function of the infants' experience of the posture. Monitoring posture in relation to a stable visual surround appears to be fundamental to the normal development of motor control.

Child Development↗

Mirrow reactions of Down's syndrome infants and toddlers: cognitive underpinnings of self-recognition.

To examine the developmental significance of mirrow self-recognition in early childhood, a cross-sectional study with 55 Down's syndrome children was conducted. When their image is altered by rouge on the nose, normal infants by 22 months indicate self-recognition by touching their noses while looking in the mirror. Only a small percentage of Down's syndrome children touched their noses by this age, confirming the expected lag in this development. However, those young Down's syndrome infants with near-normal development quotient did manifest the reaction. In general, when developmental age was equated, the Down's syndrome children showed parallel development to normal children.

Body Image↗

The relationship between affective and cognitive development in Down's Syndrome infants.

A close association between affective expression and cognitive development was demonstrated in a longitudinal study of 14 Down's syndrome infants. It was found that the Down's syndrome infants laughed to groups of stimulus items in the same order as did previous samples of normal infants. Although the process was delayed by several months, the retarded babies too laughed first at physically intrusive items and only later to items calling for greater cognitive sophistication. In addition, cognitive developmental status, assessed by the Bayley and Uzgiris-Hunt scales, paralleled and was predicted by the level of affective development. Predictive and concurrent correlations between Bayley mental scores and various indices of affectivity ranged from .68 to .92. There was striking individual consistency across affective, mental, and motor measures, suggesting the organized nature of retarded development. Finally, since Down's syndrome infants frequently smiled under conditions when normal babies would laugh, a role for tension production, in addition to cognitive factors, was suggested in accounting for the behavior of these infants.

Affect↗

The construct of resilience: a critical evaluation and guidelines for future work.

This paper presents a critical appraisal of resilience, a construct connoting the maintenance of positive adaptation by individuals despite experiences of significant adversity. As empirical research on resilience has burgeoned in recent years, criticisms have been levied at work in this area. These critiques have generally focused on ambiguities in definitions and central terminology; heterogeneity in risks experienced and competence achieved by individuals viewed as resilient; instability of the phenomenon of resilience; and concerns regarding the usefulness of resilience as a theoretical construct. We address each identified criticism in turn, proposing solutions for those we view as legitimate and clarifying misunderstandings surrounding those we believe to be less valid. We conclude that work on resilience possesses substantial potential for augmenting the understanding of processes affecting at-risk individuals. Realization of the potential embodied by this construct, however, will remain constrained without continued scientific attention to some of the serious conceptual and methodological pitfalls that have been noted by skeptics and proponents alike.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

Child compliance/noncompliance and maternal contributors to internalization in maltreating and nonmaltreating dyads.

Moral development in maltreated and nonmaltreated children was examined by coding child compliance and noncompliance behaviors in a mother-child interaction during a cleanup situation that followed a semistructured free play. Features of child compliance/noncompliance involve a shift from reliance on external controls to internal mechanisms, thereby reflecting child internalization of the maternal agenda. Differences in maltreating versus comparison mothers' use of control strategies (power-assertive and inductive techniques) and their relations to child internalization were examined. Eighty-nine mother-child dyads participated; approximately half of the children (n = 46) had documented histories of maltreatment and the remaining children (n = 43) were nonmaltreated, demographically similar comparison children. Maltreated children were divided into two subgroups: physically abused and neglected. Compared with nonmaltreated children, abused children were found to exhibit less internalization, whereas neglected children displayed significantly more negative affect. No differences were found between groups for the maternal control strategies. However, maltreated and nonmaltreated groups differed in the maternal variables that predicted child internalization. A lower level of maternal negative affect was linked to child internalization in maltreated children, whereas a lower level of maternal joy predicted internalization for the comparison children. The findings suggest that maltreated children exhibit both behavioral and affective differences in their moral development, with differential effects based on the type of maltreatment. The clinical implications for maltreated children's self and moral development are discussed.

Adult↗

Interictal spikes and hippocampal somatostatin levels in temporal lobe epilepsy.

We investigated the relationship between somatostatin-like immunoreactivity (SSLI) and interictal spikes (IIS) in human temporal lobe epileptic tissue. IIS counted manually from depth electrode recordings obtained preoperatively were expressed as spike frequency in anterior, middle, and posterior portions of hippocampus. SSLI was determined by radioimmunoassay (RIA). An inverse relationship between SSLI in the entorhinal cortex (EC) and IIS frequency in hippocampus was present (r = -0.55, p = 0.06). No correlation between IIS and SSLI in CA4, CA3, CA1, or the dentate was evident. This finding suggests a role of the EC in generation, regulation, or expression of interictal paroxysmal electrical activity in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), for which somatostatin may be a marker.

Electroencephalography↗