Gender differences in response to auditory-verbal intervention in children who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Recent research has questioned the role of gender in language development and in special education outcomes, yet neither issue has been addressed in literature on students who are deaf or hard of hearing. To determine if language and placement outcomes differ by gender, the present study considered the behavior of children who attended a clinical program subscribing to an auditory-verbal philosophy. Parents of 28 boys and 42 girls with hearing losses evaluated their children using the Parent Rating Scale of the Leiter International Performance Scale--Revised (Roid & Miller, 1997) and the Parental View of Therapy Scale (developed for the present study). Also, clinical file data were surveyed. The boys were found to be more likely than the girls to be rated by their parents as having basic features of temperament nonconducive to traditional clinical language intervention. The girls' language and placement outcomes surpassed the boys', although both groups' outcomes were positive. A possible limitation of the study was that the population was atypical of students with hearing losses in general.

Child and family factors associated with deaf children's success in auditory-verbal therapy.

OBJECTIVES: To identify the general demographics of children who had Auditory-Verbal therapy and to identify child and family factors associated with differences between those children for whom Auditory-Verbal therapy led to success and those for whom it did not. SETTING: Private tertiary care facility. POPULATION: Children who had hearing losses ranging from mild to profound. INTERVENTION: Auditory-Verbal therapy, a therapeutic intervention designed to teach parents to educate their young deaf and hearing-impaired children to use residual hearing and to speak, was used. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Clinic files, parent questionnaires, and parent report of current success were used to determine efficacy of treatment. RESULTS: Fifty-seven percent of the clients who remained in this program for over 1 year were fully integrated into regular education, with no services from a teacher of the deaf. The population was affluent, with more females than expected. Those who left dissatisfied tended to be males with greater degrees of hearing loss who left the program soon after 1 year. CONCLUSIONS: Auditory-Verbal therapy provides successful intervention to students with a particular set of demographic characteristics.

Spontaneous hyperthyroidism in an aged male and female Macaca mulatta.

A 31-year-old male and a 31-year-old female rhesus monkey developed clinical signs consistent with hyperthryoidism. These included a ravenous appetite, hyperactivity, and accentuated ratchet movement and hand tremors while performing fine motor tasks. Bilaterally enlarged thyroid glands were palpated in both monkeys. A unique clinical finding of the female as the hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The T3 and T4 levels in the male rhesus were 3.79 ng/ml and 28.20 microg/dl, respectively. T3 and T4 levels in the female were 4.33 ng/ml and 22.2 microg/dl, respectively. A biopsy of the enlarged thyroids demonstrated a typical multinodular goiter with cystic hyperplasia. The female rhesus was successfully treated with methimazole, but the hypertrophic cardiomyopathy did not resolve. The relationship between erythrocytosis and T4 levels common to humans and cats is also evident in the rhesus monkey.

A mere exposure effect for transformed three-dimensional objects: effects of reflection, size, or color changes on affect and recognition.

If the mere exposure effect is based on implicit memory, recognition and affect judgments should be dissociated by experimental variables in the same manner as other explicit and implicit measures. Consistent with results from recognition and picture naming or object decision priming tasks (e.g., Biederman & E.E. Cooper, 1991, 1992; L.A. Cooper, Schacter, Ballesteros, & Moore, 1992), the present research showed that recognition memory but not affective preference was impaired by reflection or size transformations of three-dimensional objects between study and test. Stimulus color transformations had no effect on either measure. These results indicate that representations that support recognition memory code spatial information about an object's left-right orientation and size, whereas representations that underlie affective preference do not. Insensitivity to surface feature changes that do not alter object form appears to be a general characteristic of implicit memory measures, including the affective preference task.

Metabolic effects of troglitazone in the Goto-Kakizaki rat, a non-obese and normolipidemic rodent model of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.

Troglitazone (TRG) is an orally active antidiabetic agent that increases insulin sensitivity in models of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM), subsequently reducing hyperinsulinemia and hyperglycemia. We examined the effects of TRG on the development and severity of diabetes in the Goto-Kakizaki (GK) rat, a spontaneous, non-obese model of NIDDM. TRG was administered at a dose of 30 mg/kg/d beginning at 4 weeks of age. TRG-treated GK rats were evaluated against Wistar and untreated GK rats at 8, 12, and 16 weeks of age. Untreated GK rats were nonketotic, normolipidemic, hyperglycemic, and had normal fasting insulin levels compared with Wistar rats. TRG treatment decreased glycosylated hemoglobin levels in the GK rat independently of its effects on plasma insulin. In untreated GK rats, intravenous glucose tolerance tests (IVGTTs) showed a hyperglycemic response to glucose loading with severely impaired glucose disposal relative to Wistar controls. TRG treatment was successful in decreasing the glucose area under the curve (AUC) (P < .03) but did not improve glucose disposal, suggesting a direct hepatic effect. Ex vivo evaluation of hepatic glucose output (HGO) further supported a direct hepatic action, with 50% reduction in HGO in TRG-treated GK rats (P < .004). A euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamp performed at 16 weeks of age showed severe insulin resistance in the untreated GK rat, with a glucose infusion rate (GIR) 33% lower than in Wistar rats (P < .004). TRG treatment had no effect on this insulin resistance. These results indicate that TRG selectively decreases hepatic glucose production in this unique model of NIDDM independently of its action on peripheral insulin sensitivity or hyperlipidemia.

Mycobacterium kansasii infection in squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus sciureus).

This report documents asymptomatic infections of Mycobacterium kansasii in four of five tuberculin positive squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus sciureus). The mycobacterial DNA amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) from a bronchial lymph node had no affinity for the species specific probes of M. tuberculosis, M. avium, and M. intracellulare, thus allowing the presumptive diagnosis of an atypical mycobacterial infection. Infection by Mycobacterium kansasii was confirmed by culture of bronchial lymph nodes from three monkeys. The source of the infection was never identified.