ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To examine direct and mediated effects of maternal IQ, marital status, family income, and quality of the home environment on the cognitive development of low birthweight infants. METHODS: Secondary analyses on a large dataset using hierarchical regression identified factors correlated with cognitive outcomes in children at 3 years of age who were born at low birthweight. RESULTS: Maternal IQ was a critical variable, because it was highly correlated with child IQ and because maternal intelligence influenced patterns of relationships among other predictor variables including marital status, income level, and home environment on child IQ. Analyses revealed that effects of these variables on child IQ interacted with maternal IQ. CONCLUSIONS: Early childhood intervention programs should target those low birthweight infants most at risk for impaired cognitive development. Children at greatest risk are those living with unmarried, low IQ mothers.
Subject(s)
Developmental Disabilities/prevention & control , Early Intervention, Educational , Infant, Low Birth Weight/psychology , Intelligence , Mothers/psychology , Child, Preschool , Female , Humans , Infant, Newborn , Regression Analysis , Socioeconomic FactorsABSTRACT
Controversy about the amount and nature of funding for mental retardation research has persisted since the creation of NICHD. An issue that has aroused considerable debate, within the mental retardation research community as well as beyond, is distribution of funds between large group research grants, such as the program project (PO1) and the individual grant (RO1). Currently within the Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Branch, more money is allocated to the PO1 mechanism than the RO1. We compared the two types of grants, focusing on success rates, productivity, costs, impact, publication practices, and outcome and conducted a comparative analysis of biomedical and behavioral research. Other related issues were considered, including review processes and cost-effectiveness.
Subject(s)
Developmental Disabilities/economics , Intellectual Disability/economics , Research Support as Topic , Science , Child , Cost-Benefit Analysis , Eligibility Determination , Humans , Program Development/economics , Publishing/economics , Research Design , United StatesSubject(s)
Art , Visual Perception , Age Factors , Child , Child, Preschool , Humans , Psychology, Child , Psychomotor PerformanceSubject(s)
Form Perception , Memory , Mental Recall , Pattern Recognition, Visual , Semantics , Child, Preschool , HumansABSTRACT
Subjects verified verbal descriptions of the forms "This (is, is not) a (color) (shape)" and "This (is, is not) a (shape) that's (color)" against two-dimensional geometric figures. The figure was seen immediately after the description was heard or after a filled delay. Latency and error data indicated that differences in surface-structure organization affected encoding but not comparison. Some subjects appeared to transform negative conjunctions into positive disjunctions before comparison. More subjects showed this transformation under delayed than under immediate utilization. Dimensional comparison was an unlimited-capacity process under immediate utilization, but showed capacity limitations under delayed utilization.
ABSTRACT
The effects of rehearsal training and categorical list organization on recognition memory of mentally retarded individuals was examined. Retention materials were lists of pictures in four taxonomic categories. During acquisition, subjects saw lists organized according to these categories or lists in which category members were distributed randomly. One-half of the subjects were given cumulative-rehearsal training. The remaining subjects were not given rehearsal training. Subjects who were taught to rehearse made fewer errors on the recognition test than subjects who were not taught to rehearse. List organizations did not affect correct responding. We interpreted the data as support for production-deficiency hypothesis.
Subject(s)
Association , Education of Intellectually Disabled , Memory , Practice, Psychological , Achievement , Adult , Humans , Intelligence , Reaction Time , Time FactorsABSTRACT
The ordinal position hypothesis of serial learning was tested using a population of mentally retarded subjects (IQ=46 to 86). The subjects learned two serial lists by either the serial-recall of serial-anticipation procedures. One-half of the items from the first list retained their same serial positions in the second list (experimental items); the other half were switched to new positions (control items). Support for the ordinal-position hypothesis (faster learning of experimental than control items) was obtained only when the first serial list was learned by the serial-anticipation procedure. The results were consistent with earlier findings using nonretarded subjects.
