Play and social skills in maltreated and non-maltreated preschoolers during peer interactions.

OBJECTIVE: The goal of the study was to investigate whether maltreated children differ from nonmaltreated children with regard to their social skills and play behaviors. METHOD: The social skills and free-play behaviors of 30 3- to 5-year-old maltreated and nonmaltreated children were compared. Fifteen children with a range of maltreatment experiences drawn from a hospital-based therapeutic nursery treatment program and 15 demographically similar children drawn from a home-based Head Start program participated in the study. All children were of low socioeconomic status. Children's free-play peer interactions were videotaped during the first 3 months of attendance in either program and analyzed along social and cognitive dimensions. Teachers and therapists rated children's social skills in peer interactions. RESULTS: Maltreated children were found to have significantly poorer skill in initiating interactions with peers and maintaining self-control, as well as a greater number of problem behaviors. Significant differences were not found between groups with regard to social participation or cognitive level of play. Significant correlations of moderate strength were found between social participation in play and social skills for the sample as a whole: total social skills score was positively related to interactive play, and negatively related to solitary play. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that the experience of maltreatment has a negative impact on children's developing interpersonal skills above and beyond the influence of factors associated with low socioeconomic status and other environmental stressors.

Effect of pronuclear DNA microinjection on the development of porcine ova in utero.

The objective of this study was to assess the effect of various aspects of pronuclear DNA microinjection on the early development of porcine ova in utero. Estrus was synchronized and superovulation was achieved in sexually mature gilts by the administration of allyl trenbolone, PMSG and hCG. Donor gilts were bred at 12 and 24 h after the onset of estrus. Ova were recovered between 60 and 62 h after the administration of hCG. One-cell ova that exhibited pronuclei after centrifugation were randomly allocated in equal numbers from each donor across one of two pairs of treatments: micro-DNA (ova were injected with two gene constructs that code for the human complement regulatory proteins decay accelerating factor and membrane cofactor protein) and control (ova were centrifuged only) or micro-buffer (ova were injected with buffer only) and pierced (a pipette was inserted into one pronucleus). Ova were transferred by treatment pairs to recipients. Treatments were segregated by oviduct. Ova were recovered after 120 h in utero, fixed and stained with 1% orcein. The proportion of ova that possessed > or = 80 nuclei, the mean number of nuclei present and proportion of ova that formed blastocysts were all significantly (P<0.05) greater for control and pierced ova than for micro-DNA and micro-buffer ova. No difference in these parameters was observed between micro-DNA and micro-buffer ova. These results demonstrate that pronuclear microinjection of a buffer alone can adversely affect the early development of porcine ova in utero.

Information systems drive health care into the 21st century.

Beyond the initial cost of upgrading and networking computer information systems, outcome measures are diminishing in cost as technological advances occur. Physicians, labs, pharmacies, teaching institutions, financial monitors, and administrative offices can be linked electronically to communicate and share information in real time. With the aid of electronic databases connected by satellite, health care systems of the future will rely on a seamless network of information sources, forming integrated delivery systems. Philosophical and control issues may always present challenges to establishing integrated delivery systems. But the advantages of an integrated delivery system, tied together by electronic management and clinical software, seem to far surpass the risks for both providers and insurers. This article explores the overwhelming benefit to physicians who wish to practice medicine with fewer of the traditional administrative burdens.

Development of critical thinking among students in kindergarten through grade 4.

A test to measure critical thinking ability in early elementary grades was designed and used to assess the development of one aspect of critical thinking, the detection of bias, in 102 students in kindergarten through fourth grade. The test was administered in a story-telling format. Analysis showed an age-related increase in critical thinking ability, with differences becoming significant at Grade 4.

Hemisphericity and problem-solving ability.

149 freshmen undergraduates were administered the Higher Information Processing Scale and an anagram problem-solving task. Single-solution anagrams were chosen from lists of age-appropriate vocabulary words high in concrete imagery or low in imagery (abstract). Small but significant correlations were obtained between number of concrete anagrams solved and right- and integrated-hemispheric preference scores, respectively. Students categorized as "integrated preference" solved more high-imagery anagrams than any other group. Results lend support to the hypothesis that brain hemisphere specializations may exist but integration of the hemispheres may yield best performance.

Cortical asymmetry--a preliminary study: neurons-glia, female-male.

Previous studies on human cortical area 39 suggested that neuron:glial ratios differed between the sexes. These findings were the inspiration for the present investigation which dealt with neuronal and glial counts in area 39 in the male and female rat cerebral cortex. Transverse, celloidin or frozen sections, were cut from male and female brains (respectively) from 90-day-old Long-Evans rats. Neurons and glia were counted on enlarged photographs of stained sections, including area 39, with 35-mm Kodak Panatomic-X film using a Zeiss photomicroscope (X400). Five-by-three-inch prints were taped together in sequence to yield a 640X enlarged "montage" of area 39. Five cell types were differentiated with reference to a standard: neurons, astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, "dark astrocytes," and unidentified glia. The data were analyzed with a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA: five cell types by two hemispheres). Student's t test and a paired t test were used when appropriate. The neuron:glial ratios in the male rats were consistently higher than those in the females in both hemispheres. The male right side had 12% (P less than 0.05) more neurons than the left; the female had 13% (P less than 0.05) more neurons on the left than the right. Similar, but not identical, asymmetrical patterns were seen with the glial cells.

Enhancing the creative problem-solving skills of educable mentally retarded students.

60 educable mentally retarded students from 3 schools in a large urban school system received 9 wk. of instruction from an adaptation of the Productive Thinking Program. Their performance on measures of creative thinking was compared with that of 60 students who received no additional instruction. The conclusions drawn were that (1) special attention to creative thinking training for educable mentally retarded students may be quite effective and results stable over time and (2) the measures of fluency, flexibility, and originality are the most useful in assessing creative thinking for this group.