Children's Evaluation Research Articles

Delayed Gastric Emptying as a Cause of Failure to Thrive in Children

To the Editor: “Nonorganic failure to thrive” (NOFTT) is a catchall term implying that the cause for FTT is external to the child; it includes up to 45% of all FTT cases (1). Tolia's article (2) describes seven infants and children who underwent intensive evaluation to exclude organic as well as psychosocial causes for their FTT. We have all shared this experience and often face the difficult treatment choices as discussed in the accompanying editorial (3). Over the last 4 years, we have observed four children aged 2 months to 3 years (mean, 1.4 yrs) with FTT and poor intake, vomiting, or food refusal, as aptly described by English (1) and Tolia (2). The only abnormal finding in these four children's evaluation was markedly delayed gastric emptying. They all underwent a gastric drainage procedure; two children had pyloroplasty and two had through-the-scope (TTS) pyloric balloon dilatation. All four children responded with a dramatic change in food intake and decreased vomiting. One of the children who underwent TTS balloon dilatation had good but transient improvement that responded permanantly to pyloroplasty. The mean preprocedure gastric emptying at 90 min was 27%; the mean postprocedure value was 70%. At followup of 1.2-5 years (mean, 2.5) they all had significant catch-up growth. Delayed gastric emptying may contribute to an increase in gastroesophageal reflux (GER) (4-6), but gastric drainage has been shown to improve symptoms and oral intake in carefully selected patients (5,6). Cholecystokinin (CCK) modulates gastric emptying in response to food and may also affect appetite (7-9). CCK contracts the pylorus and decreases intragastric pressure in the body of the stomach, which could lead to delayed gastric emptying. Pyloroplasty and pyloric dilatation may relieve early satiety and delayed gastric emptying by limiting the ability of the pylorus to respond to CCK. It is therefore important to realize that delayed gastric emptying can lead to poor feeding and FTT. Assessment of gastric emptying should be part of the evaluation of infants and children with vomiting or early satiety and food avoidance. Pyloroplasty and TTS pyloric balloon dilatation may be helpful in the management of these children. Further studies are required to better understand the role of gastric emptying in FTT and the best ways to treat it. David M. Israel, M.D., F.R.C.P.(C.); Gamal Mahdi, M.B.B.Ch., M.R.C.P.(I.) Division of Gastroenterology BC Children's Hospital Vancouver, British Columbia Canada

Young Children's Perceptions of Cigarette Brand Advertising Symbols: Awareness, Affect, and Target Market Identification

Abstract The author assesses young children's abilities to recognize cigarette brand advertising symbols and to identify adults as the appropriate target market for cigarettes. She used nonverbal measures in interviews with children three to eight years of age to assess how recognition of cigarette brand advertising symbols is related to age, cognitive developmental level, children's affect toward cigarettes, children's evaluation of cigarettes, and children's ability to identify adults as the appropriate target market for cigarettes. The results show that recognition of cigarette brand advertising symbols increases with age, as does overall recognition of brand advertising symbols in general. Regardless of age, cognitive developmental level, or recognition scores, children reported not liking cigarettes, believing cigarettes are “bad for you,” and finding children to be an inappropriate target market for cigarettes. Findings are discussed in terms of social science and public policy, and in terms of the implications for cognitive development.

Television and children: program evaluation, comprehension, and impact

Contents: Preface. Introduction. The Research. Children's Evaluation and Comprehension of Drama Programs. Impact of Drama Programs on Children's Knowledge, Beliefs and Attitudes. Science Programs With Single Themes: Evaluation, Comprehension, and Cognitive Impact. Multitopic Science Magazine Shows: Evaluation, Comprehension and Cognitive Impact. Children's Perceptions of and Learning From TV, Entertainment (Quiz) Programs. Interpreting the Cognitive Impact of Television.

The social construction of help among Danish children: the intentional act and the actual content

AbstractThis paper is based on an ethnographic study of younger Danish school children's actions and social relations during episodes of sickness and minor accidents. The focus is on how children as social actors give help to others. The main points concern first, the need for a cultural approach to distinguish between the intention and the motive of an action in order to understand children's evaluation of and communication about help. A second point concerns the recognition of children's individual actions as they combine in a collective strategy. Finally I discuss the relationship between children's cultural practices and constitutive elements of their everyday life. I specifically focus on ‘the act of looking’ and time and tempo as it relates to understanding childhood sickness and its relevance in social negotiation between children and adults.

DEVELOPMENTAL THERAPIES IN EARLY INTERVENTION

1Professor of Pediatrics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Associate Director for Medical Services, Children's Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center, Rose F.Kennedy Center, The Bronx, New York 2Associate Director, South Carolina University Affiliated Program, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina

Verbal Reports as Measures of Comprehension Evaluation

The present study assessed several commonly used measures of children's comprehension evaluation ability. Third and sixth grade higher and lower ability readers (N= 120) read texts that either contained an inconsistency or did not. Following each passage reading, six measures of comprehension evaluation were obtained: one performance measure and five commonly used verbal report measures. The results revealed that different verbal report measures are not comparable measures of children's comprehension evaluation ability. The verbal report measures were differently affected by grade level, reading ability, and text variables. Moreover, the verbal report measures did not all relate equally to comprehension evaluation performance and relationships between verbal reports and performance were stronger for higher ability readers and young readers. The results suggest that caution is needed in interpreting studies using verbal report measures in isolation to assess children's evaluation skills, and that the use of poorly defined verbal report measures may be one factor contributing to inconsistent findings concerning the development of such skills.

Children's Perceptions of Time Out and Other Maternal Disciplinary Strategies: The Effects of Clinic Status and Exposure to Behavioural Treatment

Behaviour therapy is now beginning to assess the social validity, along with efficacy, of its treatments. Literature dealing with the social validity of parent-training programs is reviewed. The aim of this investigation was to obtain acceptability ratings of the “time out” procedure from the perspective of behaviour problem and non-problem children. The study looked at acceptability ratings of five maternal behaviours/disciplinary techniques (permissiveness, physical punishment, directed discussion, quiet time, time out) across four different situations (non-compliance with an initiating instruction, aggression toward others, non-compliance with a terminating instruction, non-compliance with known rule) by samples of clinical (problem behaviour) children and control children. Both groups were alike in rating permissiveness as less acceptable than any of the other behaviours across most situations and rating it as unacceptable in absolute terms. Time out was rated equally acceptable with physical punishment, directed discussion and quiet time. The results support previous findings that young children prefer interventionist to permissive parents, including the use of exclusionary time out. In a second study, ratings were taken from two clinical groups, treatment and waitlist, both at pre- and post-treatment. Despite large individual differences in the treatment group, no change in acceptability ratings was found at post-treatment. Thus, experiencing time out did not change the children's evaluation of this procedure. Possible reasons for these findings and their practical implications are discussed.

Young Children's Sensitivity to Logical Necessity in Their Inferential Search Behavior

Young children's ability to evaluate the logical necessity of 2 types of inferences was studied in 2 experiments involving 68 3-7-year-olds. Children searched the doors of model houses in order to determine whether a house matched a description specifying certain numbers and types of occupants. A search task used in Experiments 1 and 2 allowed children to search for additional information if initial information was insufficient to support a logically necessary inference about whether the house was correct or incorrect. A judgment condition used in Experiment 2 required a "can't tell" response to insufficient information. Even 3-year-olds showed some ability to evaluate the logical necessity of an inference that confirmed a house was correct. Developmental changes involved increased reliability of individuals' performance and increased range of application of children's inference evaluation procedures to include more difficult, disconfirmatory inferences and cases where greater certainty in reasoning seemed to be required. Results are discussed in terms of an account of the gradual development and consolidation of an ability to evaluate the necessity of inferences, perhaps first apparent in preschoolers' sensitivity to conditions of sufficient and insufficient information in information-acquisition problems.

Children's Perception of Visual and Auditory Speech

Preschool children's evaluation and integration of visual and auditory information in speech perception was compared with that of adults. Subjects identified speech events, which consisted of synthetic speech syllables ranging from /ba/ to /da/ combined with a videotaped /ba/, /da/, or no articulation. Both variables influenced the identification judgments for both groups of subjects. The results were used to test current views of the development of perceptual categorization and speech perception. Tests of quantitative models indicated that both preschool children and adults had available continuous and independent sources of information. The results were well described by a fuzzy logical model of perception, which assumes that the perceiver integrates continuous and independent sources of information and determines the relative goodness of match to prototype definitions in memory. The only developmental difference was less of an influence of the visual source of information for children relative to adults. 1 explanation is that the children simply attended less to the visual source. A second experiment eliminated the attentional explanation by showing identical results when the children were also required to indicate whether or not the speaker's mouth was moving.

Spontaneous versus instructed use of multiple standards for evaluating comprehension: Effects of age, reading proficiency, and type of standard

Nine- and eleven-year-old children differing in reading proficiency read and commented on brief expository passages containing three different types of embedded problems (nonsense words, prior knowledge violations, and internal inconsistencies). Half of the children were specifically instructed as to the types of standards they should apply in order to detect the problems (lexical, external consistency, and internal consistency); the remaining children were simply instructed to look for problems. Both quantitative and qualitative differences in standard use were revealed by the children's comments about all parts of the passages. Older and better readers used more different standards and they used them more frequently than younger and poorer readers. The lexical standard was more likely to be adopted spontaneously than the other two standards and it was the only standard used by a substantial proportion of both younger and poorer readers. Finally, the consistent effects of instruction type indicate that children's evaluation activities were strongly influenced by the amount of guidance received.

Speaker bias in children's evaluation of the external consistency of statements

The hypothesis of this study is that an assumption of speaker credibility affects children's judgments of the external consistency of statements. In two experiments, first and third grade children (6 and 8 years of age, respectively) and college adults were read short paragraphs containing contradictory information from a contextual source and a speaker. The contextual source was described as either authoritative or nonauthoritative and discredited. The speaker was either an adult or child. Thus the contextual source was either more or less reliable than the speaker. Subjects were asked to affirm or contradict the speaker's statement, and to choose either the source or the speaker as most believable. The results showed that adult responses varied with the contextual source alone, while the responses of the first graders varied primarily with the speaker's age. The responses of the third graders varied with both factors. The results suggest young children can assess the external consistency of statements but frequently do not because of their assumptions about speakers and other performance factors.

Information and Maturation in Children's Evaluation of Government Leadership During Watergate

^N v 'EARLY a decade has passed since Watergate first emerged in the headlines. For most Americans, Watergate is indeed behind them. Still, it is instructive to return to Watergate, for it provides a good laboratory for examining the contribution of mass mediated political information to the political socialization process. Few events so pervaded the news media for so long. Now, with data emerging on the long-term implications of Watergate for the political system (Sigel and Hoskin, 1980), political scientists should investigate the roots of these implications as children, whose political values were largely shaped during the Watergate period, enter the voting population. In this paper, I shall examine which children were most affected by Watergate at the time-and who may have been scarred politically-by exploring the relative contributions of mass media information and personal maturation to the evaluation of the President during the crisis. In the past decade, researchers in both political science and communications (summarized by Kraus and Davis, 1976) have found the mass media to be important agents in the political socialization of children. Beyond providing express images of law enforcers, political figures, or even general power relationships through fictional programming, for example, television provides data on the real world in the form of news. Even where the news itself is used little by the politically maturing child, it often provides a stimulus for dinner-time discussion of political issues, concepts, or personalities. Beyond whatever role the news media play in setting the adult political agenda (Shaw and McCombs, 1977), they play a role as a source of political information in the news flow from parents to children. With respect to Watergate, studies by Hawkins, Pingree and Roberts (1975) and Chaffee and Becker (1975) demonstrated that children's exposure to news media had identifiable effects on young people's evaluations of the President. At the same time that researchers were demonstrating an interest in the role of mass media in the political socialization process, others were searching for theoretical explanations of the dynamics of political socialization. In particular, scholars from both political science (Bennet, 1975; Best, 1973; Friedman, 1977; Merelman, 1969; Patterson, 1979; Riccards, 1973) and communication (Becker, McCombs and McLeod, 1975) considered several psychological development theories as explanatory of the processes through which children come of age politically. These researchers argued that increments in the quantity and quality of political understanding are linked to progress along one or several psychological developmental continua; i.e., to advances made by the child in terms of cognitive skills, moral reasoning, or personality development and ego strength. Unfortunately, the recent interest in both mass media effects and the use of psychological concepts grew as separate strands of thought. Fresh insights into the political socialization process can be found by weaving these two

Information and Maturation in Children's Evaluation of Government Leadership during Watergate

Information and Maturation in Children's Evaluation of Government Leadership during Watergate

The application of a residential treatment evaluation model

This study reviews the application of a children's residential treatment evaluation model. Twenty-two children who were admitted to the Adler Mental Health Center in January of 1975 were reviewed in the context of that model. The model requires data collection at four points: preadmission, admission, discharge, and follow-up. The importance of the collection of data at these particular points is reviewed. Difficulties involved in the utilization of the results are also discussed. It is pointed out that accountability is a contemporary fact with which mental health people must deal. The idea, however, is to employ it in a way that aids in delivering high quality services.

An Evaluation of a Simulation-Based Business School Curriculum Integration Effort

Educators have often expressed the ideal of integrative teaching which addresses itself to the student in a wholistic fashion. Despite this philosophic point of view, teaching practice has most often shown narrowly defined curricula, strong departmental loyalties, and highly delimited research orientations. A school of education typically breaks its curriculum into the history and philosophy of education, curriculum, child development, children's literature, education evaluation, and teaching methods; a business college has departments and a faculty that teaches the accounting, finance, management, marketing, and economics parts of the students. In both of these cases it is implicitly or explicitly assumed that the learner's mental processes can or should be compartmentalized in such a fashion. The fallacy of these compartmentalizing and departmentalizing practices has been recognized and partially corrected in our business schools under the influence of Gordon and Howell' and the AACSB,2 both of which call for an integrative, senior-level business policy course which ties together the disparate pieces of knowledge parceled out over a student's college career. Some schools have gone even further; they have begun to tie entire academic years together before the senior year.3 The vehicle for this has often been a complex, machine-scored business game where it has been theorized that earlier integration would provide both shortand long-term benefits. These benefits would supposedly generate improved academic performance in the integrated courses and all following business courses, and a higher esprit and enthusiasm for the subsequent university and business experience. This paper presents an evaluation of an experimental junior-level fourcourse curriculum integration effort which attempted to reap these assorted benefits.

Effects of prior commitment on children's evaluation and imitation of a peer model's perceptual judgments.

Second and third grade children (16 boys, 16 girls) were given the opportunity to evaluate and imitate a peer's answers on a simple perceptual task. Those in the commitment condition first performed the task themselves, while those in the no commitment condition did not. As predicted, (1) committed Ss evaluated the peer's responses less favorably and imitated less often than did uncommitted Ss, and (2) evaluation and imitation were positively related.

Measurement of pre-adolescents views of family control of behavior.

Phenomenological personality theory is based upon the importance of determining how an individual views his world and how he reacts to these perceptions. Hawkes (2) has indicated the importance of applying this frame of reference to the study of interpersonal behavior in the family setting and has described a conceptual framework for research into family influences upon the personal and social development of children. One of the variables he cited was control of behavior. By control of behavior, reference is made to the physical and psychological guides and restrictions which the child perceives as being placed upon him by his parents and other family members. Measurement of this variable was begun by Hawkes. He conducted extensive interviews with io-year-old children and found that certain items were productive in obtaining responses about children's views of methods of control used by their parents and the children's evaluation of those