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PubMed1996

The experiences of families of children with learning disabilities: parental stress, family functioning, and sibling self-concept.

Quantitative and qualitative measures of 19 parents and 19 siblings of school-age children with learning disabilities (a parent-sibling pair for each child) showed that the functioning of the families and the self-concept of the siblings were comparable to that in families of nondisabled children, but the parents in the former group experienced greater stress than did parents of nondisabled children. Furthermore, despite few problems in sibling relationships, the families experienced adaptational difficulties, especially with regard to the school. Family intervention and future research are suggested.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Strength training in adolescent learners with cerebral palsy: a randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of an eight-week strength training program targeting multiple muscle groups using basic inexpensive free weights and resistance devices, on gait and perceptions of body image and functional competence. DESIGN: A randomized control trial. SETTING: A school for children with special needs in a disadvantaged suburb in Cape Town. SUBJECTS: Thirty-one independently ambulant senior learners with spastic cerebral palsy (19 males, 12 females; aged 13-18 years; 15 diplegics and 16 hemiplegics). INTERVENTION: Eight-week strength training programme in circuit format executed during school hours, one to three times per week for 40-60 min per session. Programmes were individually designed and included 8-12 exercises selected from a 28-station circuit to target upper and lower limbs and trunk. Twenty-one subjects took part in the strength training programme and were compared with 10 control subjects. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Three-dimensional gait analysis and a questionnaire were used to evaluate the various parameters of gait and perceptions of body image and functional competence respectively. Results were analysed using repeated measures ANOVA and bootstrap analysis. RESULTS: The experimental group differed significantly from the control group for measure of crouch gait (sum of the ankle, knee and hip angles at midstance) (P= 0.05) and perceptions of body image (P= 0.01). Walking velocity, cadence and stride length as well as perceptions of functional ability did not change significantly after training. CONCLUSION: Participation in a school-based strength training programme targeting multiple muscle groups can lead to improved degree of crouch gait and improve perception of body image.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

The Boston Teacher Questionnaire. 1. Definition of syndromes.

To obtain information about the academic function of 9-year-old children from their school teachers, we created a short, forced-choice questionnaire that asked about the child's knowledge and use of arithmetic tables, reading, spelling, persistence at tasks, flexibility of approach, ability to function independently, distractibility, daydreaming, impulsivity and overexcitability, hyperactivity, and ability to follow simple and sequential directions. Questionnaires were collected from the teachers of 3451 white children whose mothers had enrolled in the National Collaborative Perinatal Project. Six syndromes in girls and five in boys were identified by both cluster and factor analyses of these data. Common to both sexes were five syndromes we labeled arithmetic, tasks (ie, impersistent/dependent/inflexible), reading, attention, and hyperactive. A syndrome characterized by difficulty following directions was seen in girls only. The prevalence of these syndromes ranged from a low for hyperactivity of 2.3 per 100 girls to a high for the attention syndrome of 27.6 per 100 boys. The congruent results obtained with clustering and factor analysis, and the agreement between the observed prevalence of syndromes and prior expectations suggests that the Boston Teacher Questionnaire, as this instrument is called, identifies learning problems in 9-year-old children.

Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity↗
PubMed2002

Dietary magnesium, potassium, sodium, and children's lung function.

To investigate the effects of dietary magnesium, potassium, and sodium on children's lung function, the authors examined cross-sectional dietary data and pulmonary function tests from 2,566 children aged 11-19 years who attended schools in 12 southern California communities during 1998-1999. During school visits, each child completed a health update questionnaire, a validated food frequency questionnaire, and spirometric lung function testing. Low magnesium and potassium intakes were associated with lower lung function. Girls with low magnesium intake had lower forced expiratory flow at 75% of the forced vital capacity (FEF(75)) (-8.3%, 95% confidence interval: -14.8, -1.4) than did girls with higher intake; reductions were larger in girls with asthma (forced expiratory flow between 25% and 75% of the forced vital capacity (FEF(25-75)) (-16.2%, 95% confidence interval: -22.7, -9.1) and FEF(75) (-24.9%, 95% confidence interval: -32.8, -16.1)) than in girls without asthma (FEF(25-75) (-2.0%, 95% confidence interval: -7.4, 3.8) and FEF(75) (-4.1%, 95% confidence interval: -11.3, 3.7)). Boys with low magnesium intake showed deficits in forced vital capacity (-2.8%, 95% confidence interval: -5.4, -0.2) compared with boys with higher intake. The effects of low magnesium intake did not vary substantially in boys with and without asthma. Among girls, low potassium intake was also associated with deficits in forced expiratory volume in 1 second (-2.7%, 95% confidence interval: -5.2, -0.1) and forced vital capacity (-2.4%, 95% confidence interval: -4.7, -0.1). In summary, low magnesium and potassium intakes were associated with lower lung volumes and flows.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Memory psychophysics for areas: distortion in natural memory of a school campus.

As the perceived magnitude of a stimulus is related by power function t o the physical magnitude, the remembered visual areas and length are also related by power function to the actual areas and length. The main purpose of this study is to examine whether the power law is also applicable to remembered areas in natural environment, e.g., a school campus, and to its old memory. 31 junior high students and seven university undergraduates who graduated from the same junior high school seven years before were asked to draw a layout of the school campus. The areas of the school facilities and field, and other features of drawings such as the number of recalled facilities and objects, and direction of the sketch were assessed. Analysis showed that the areas remembered by the junior high subjects followed the power law while those remembered by the undergraduates did not. The divergence of exponents observed for undergraduates was accounted for by reconstruction by schema.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Beyond psychopathology: assessing seriously disruptive students in school settings.

OBJECTIVE: To obtain a demographic profile of aggressive students in an urban setting and discern psychiatric diagnoses, functional impairment, and psychosocial stressors. STUDY DESIGN: Participants were 33 students in an urban public school district referred for comprehensive psychiatric evaluation by school staff because they were viewed as a threat to school safety. Evaluations included a review of records, interviews with school and mental health professionals, and student and parent interviews. RESULTS: Students were characterized by severe and untreated or undertreated psychopathology together with high levels of psychosocial stressors and learning disorders. Thirty-two students received at least one Axis I diagnosis, and the mean number of diagnoses for each student was 3; 33% had substance abuse problems, and 30% had nonpsychiatric medical conditions. CONCLUSIONS: The sample is a chronically impaired group of students confronting serious adversity in their daily lives, whose psychosocial and psychiatric needs are not met by current educational and mental health programming. Necessary interventions include prevention and early identification, substance abuse and family treatment, and appropriate psychopharmacological treatment. A comprehensive psychiatric assessment can help change the outcomes for this group of aggressive students.

Achievement↗
PubMed2004

Adolescent psychiatric hospitalization and mortality, distress levels, and educational attainment: follow-up after 11 and 20 years.

BACKGROUND: Adolescents with early psychiatric hospitalization are likely to be at a significant risk for long-term difficulties. OBJECTIVE: To examine early adulthood outcomes of psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents. DESIGN: Inception cohort recruited from 1978 to 1981 and observed until 2002. SETTING: Northeastern United States. PARTICIPANTS: Adolescents (aged 12-15 years) from 2 matched cohorts were recruited and assessed repeatedly across 20 years: 70 psychiatrically hospitalized youths and 76 public high school students. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Death, emotional distress, high school completion, and educational attainment. RESULTS: Psychiatrically hospitalized youths were significantly more likely to die and to report higher levels of emotional distress. Hospitalized youths were significantly less likely to graduate from high school and complete college and graduate school. CONCLUSIONS: The association between psychiatric symptoms sufficient to result in psychiatric hospitalization during adolescence and later mortality, emotional distress, high school completion, and educational attainment is striking. Further study is needed to identify and understand linkages between adolescent psychiatric impairment and decrements in adult functioning, particularly the processes that may underlie these linkages. Increasing school completion and educational attainment among hospitalized youths may minimize decrements in adult adaptation.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

The development and psychometric properties of a measure of social and adaptive functioning for children and adolescents.

Developed, piloted, and examined the psychometric properties of the Child and Adolescent Social and Adaptive Functioning Scale (CASAFS), a self-report measure designed to examine the social functioning of young people in the areas of school performance, peer relationships, family relationships, and home duties/self-care. The findings of confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis support a 4-factor solution consistent with the hypothesized domains. Fit indexes suggested that the 4-correlated factor model represented a satisfactory solution for the data, with the covariation between factors being satisfactorily explained by a single, higher order factor reflecting social and adaptive functioning in general. The internal consistency and 12-month test-retest reliability of the total scale was acceptable. A significant, negative correlation was found between the CASAFS and a measure of depressive symptoms, showing that high levels of social functioning are associated with low levels of depression. Significant differences in CASAFS total and subscale scores were found between clinically depressed adolescents and a matched sample of nonclinical controls. Adolescents who reported elevated but subclinical levels of depression also reported lower levels of social functioning in comparison to nonclinical controls.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Functional performance in children with Down syndrome.

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to describe home and community functional performance in 5-year-old children with Down syndrome. METHOD: In a cross-sectional study of 5-year-old children with Down syndrome in Norway (N=43), functional performance was measured with the Norwegian translation of the Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI). Additional descriptive information related to health, disabilities, and function was also gathered. RESULTS: The children showed a wide range of functional performance. Performance of self-care activities appeared most delayed on activities that required fine motor skills. Children appeared less affected in basic functional mobility skills. Parents' identified their main concerns as language functioning and, for the children not yet toilet trained, the management of bladder and bowel control in relation to starting school. CONCLUSION: The results provide baseline information regarding typical levels of functional performance in children with Down syndrome at 5 years of age. However, the broad range of functional performance across children indicates a need for caution in generalizing the results to an individual child.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed2004

The effect of air pollution on lung development from 10 to 18 years of age.

BACKGROUND: Whether exposure to air pollution adversely affects the growth of lung function during the period of rapid lung development that occurs between the ages of 10 and 18 years is unknown. METHODS: In this prospective study, we recruited 1759 children (average age, 10 years) from schools in 12 southern California communities and measured lung function annually for eight years. The rate of attrition was approximately 10 percent per year. The communities represented a wide range of ambient exposures to ozone, acid vapor, nitrogen dioxide, and particulate matter. Linear regression was used to examine the relationship of air pollution to the forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV(1)) and other spirometric measures. RESULTS: Over the eight-year period, deficits in the growth of FEV(1) were associated with exposure to nitrogen dioxide (P=0.005), acid vapor (P=0.004), particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of less than 2.5 microm (PM(2.5)) (P=0.04), and elemental carbon (P=0.007), even after adjustment for several potential confounders and effect modifiers. Associations were also observed for other spirometric measures. Exposure to pollutants was associated with clinically and statistically significant deficits in the FEV(1) attained at the age of 18 years. For example, the estimated proportion of 18-year-old subjects with a low FEV(1) (defined as a ratio of observed to expected FEV(1) of less than 80 percent) was 4.9 times as great at the highest level of exposure to PM(2.5) as at the lowest level of exposure (7.9 percent vs. 1.6 percent, P=0.002). CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study indicate that current levels of air pollution have chronic, adverse effects on lung development in children from the age of 10 to 18 years, leading to clinically significant deficits in attained FEV(1) as children reach adulthood.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2007

Executive inhibitory control and cooperative behavior during early school years: a follow-up study.

Several links between aspects of executive functioning and the development of social competence have been established. The present study investigates the relation between executive inhibitory control and cooperative/non-cooperative behavior, in an ecological setting, and from a longitudinal perspective. Elementary school children (n=195) of three age groups (7, 9, 11 years, initially) were measured at two consecutive time points, at a one-year interval, with tasks tapping executive inhibitory control (the Stroop test), and social competence (a collaborative puzzle solving task). Executive inhibition was identified as the most influential stable predictor only in the case of non-cooperative behavior and presented strong concurrent relations with both cooperative and non-cooperative behavior at follow-up, even when controlling for previous level of the same behavior. The findings imply the need to consider the important role of executive inhibitory processes in multifactorial models of social competence development and in the refinement of present interventions.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2005

Erectile dysfunction following nerve-sparing radical retropubic prostatectomy and its treatment with sildenafil.

BACKGROUND: We retrospectively evaluated the erectile function after nerve-sparing radical retropubic prostatectomy (RRP) and the efficacy of sildenafil for erectile dysfunction (ED) following RRP according to the preoperative erectile function. METHODS: We evaluated 48 Japanese patients who underwent nerve-sparing RRP at the Sapporo Medical University School of Medicine, Sapporo, Japan, between January 1996 and December 2001. Erectile function following nerve-sparing RRP was assessed by a simple mailed questionnaire that was constructed for the study. RESULTS: Of the 48 patients, 36 had normal erectile function preoperatively, but for 12, function was not sufficient to penetrate. The overall estimated recovery rates of any degree of erection were 50.6% at 36 months and 94.3% at 60 months. However, that of erection sufficient to penetrate was only 17.7% at 36 months and was only seen in bilateral nerve-sparing patients. Sildenafil was effective in 9 of 13 ED patients (69.2%) in both nerve-sparing groups. When patients were divided according to preoperative erectile function, no difference was found in the efficacy rate between patients with normal function and those with ED. CONCLUSIONS: Even bilateral nerve-sparing RRP can not always guarantee a sufficient erection. However, sildenafil is effective for ED following nerve-sparing RRP regardless of the nerve-sparing procedure or preoperative erectile function. Thus, preoperative function alone, although depending on its severity, may not necessarily be a reason for exclusion from receiving nerve-sparing RRP if patients want to have the operation.

Aged↗
PubMed2005

Randomized, controlled trial of dexamethasone in neonatal chronic lung disease: 13- to 17-year follow-up study: II. Respiratory status, growth, and blood pressure.

OBJECTIVES: To study the growth, health status, and respiratory outcomes at 13 to 17 years of infants enrolled in a double-blind, randomized, controlled trial of dexamethasone for the treatment of neonatal chronic lung disease. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 287 infants who were chronically dependent on supplementary oxygen between 2 and 12 weeks of age were recruited from 31 centers in 6 countries to a double-blind, randomized, controlled trial of dexamethasone base (0.5 mg/kg per day for 1 week) or placebo, and survivors were evaluated at 3 years. Children from the 25 British and Irish centers were traced for reassessment at 13 to 17 years of age. OUTCOME MEASURES: Respiratory symptoms, lung-function testing, height, weight, head circumference, blood pressure, health resource usage, and school absences. RESULTS: There was no significant difference in respiratory outcomes between the dexamethasone and placebo groups. Lung function was impaired but with no difference between the 2 groups. Growth was also impaired in both groups, with height z score of -0.7, weight z score of -0.4, and head circumference z score of -1.1. Systolic blood pressure was >95th percentile for age and height for 15% of children, but with no difference between the 2 groups. There was no difference in the numbers of hospital admissions for respiratory causes or other causes. CONCLUSIONS: Despite a shorter duration of neonatal assisted ventilation, there is no evidence that dexamethasone use is associated with long-term improvement in lung function. Impaired growth and poor health status are long-term consequences of neonatal chronic lung disease, irrespective of exposure to neonatal dexamethasone.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2002

The "beggar's" hand and the "unshakable" hand in children with total obstetric brachial plexus palsy.

A total 12 consecutive children with secondary deformities following total obstetric brachial plexus palsy were included in this retrospective study. In all patients, the main complaints were two socially disabling hand postures: the "beggar's" hand and/or the "unshakable" hand. All children had a supinated forearm with no active pronation and were teased by their friends, who called them "beggars." When the impairment was severe and involved the right hand and wrist, children also complained that they were not able to shake hands. The management approach to these children was described, with the main aim of surgery being the correction of the abnormal posture. Other simultaneous tendon transfers were also performed to improve hand function if there were suitable musculotendinous units. Successful reconstruction was accomplished in all patients. Preoperatively, some children refused to go to school because of teasing, and most did not want to interact socially. After surgery, all children attended school regularly, and parents reported much better social interaction. However, the functional gain was never enough to dramatically improve the daily use of the limb. The contralateral normal limb remained the dominant one for all daily activities, including writing and eating.

Elbow↗
PubMed1991

[The effect of family factors on school retardation in the Cartuja quarter of Granada].

The possible influence of the family on school retardation was evaluated in the Cartuja quarter in Granada for the academic term 1988-89. The study was performed on 258 schoolchildren of the 7th and 8th primary courses in the four public schools from the quarter. Data were collected with a questionnaire including the following variables: school retardation, sex, number of siblings, ordinal number among siblings, educational level of the parents, and work of the mother outside the household. To evaluate family function the APGAR questionnaire was used. A remarkably high (45.7%) school retardation was found, higher than that in the rest of Spain. School retardation cannot be related with the family dysfunction detected by the familial APGAR. It was related, rather, with the child's sex, the educational level of the mother, the number of siblings and the ordinal place of the child among them.

Achievement↗
PubMed2004

Psychosocial functioning of young children with learning problems.

BACKGROUND: In this study, psychosocial functioning of different groups of young children with learning problems was investigated using a diverse set of psychosocial variables (including behaviour problems, academic motivation, social preference, and self-concept). METHODS: For this purpose, children with low academic achievement, with a specific learning disability based on an IQ-achievement discrepancy, and with a specific learning disability based on an achievement discrepancy, were selected out of 276 children of the first grade of regular primary schools. By means of multivariate analyses, their psychosocial functioning was compared to the functioning of children without learning problems. RESULTS: The total set of psychosocial variables was able to discriminate between children with and without learning problems, with medium effect size. Attention problems as reported by the teachers turned out to be the most important single psychosocial predictor for group discrimination. However, results varied according to the type of learning problem and the type of psychosocial problem. Children with a specific reading/spelling disability and children with low general academic achievement differed most from their peers without learning problems with regard to their psychosocial functioning. Poor cognitive self-concept was related primarily to low academic achievement, poor learning motivation might be specific for math problems, and a low social preference score seemed most characteristic of children with a specific learning disability. CONCLUSIONS: Studying several psychosocial variables simultaneously in different groups of children with learning problems leads to a further refinement of the current knowledge.

Child↗