Social and cardiac responses of young children with autism.

The behavioral and heart rate responses of 22 children with autism and 22 children with other developmental disabilities were compared whilst they were watching videotapes of a baby either playing or crying. We expected both groups to show arousal as increased heart rate when watching the video of the crying baby, and the children with autism to attend less than the other children to both videos. However, the children with autism were as attentive to the videos as the other children, and both groups showed heart rate slowing compared with a baseline condition. There was no change in heart rate during interactions with a stranger or separation from mothers. The findings suggest that the lack of social attention often demonstrated by children with autism does not stem from increased arousal in social situations. An alternative explanation is considered.

IQ on the rise: the Flynn effect in rural Kenyan children.

Multiple studies have documented significant IQ gains over time, a phenomenon labeled the Flynn effect. Data from 20 industrialized nations show massive IQ gains over time, most notably in culturally reduced tests like the Raven's Progressive Matrices. To our knowledge, however, this is the first study to document the Flynn effect in a rural area of a developing country. Data for this project were collected during two large studies in Embu, Kenya, in 1984 and 1998. Results strongly support a Flynn effect over this 14-year period, with the most significant gains found in Raven's matrices. Previously hypothesized explanations (e.g., improved nutrition; increased environmental complexity; and family, parental, school, and methodological factors) for the Flynn effect are evaluated for their relevance in this community, and other potential factors are reviewed. The hypotheses that resonate best with our findings are those related to parents' literacy, family structure, and children's nutrition and health.

Using knowledge to cope with stress in the NICU: how parents integrate learning to read the physiologic and behavioral cues of the infant.

Parental stress in the NICU has at least a short-term impact on the establishment of the parent-child relationship and potential repercussions on long-term child development outcomes. One way to help parents mitigate stress is to help them learn what they need to know about their infant's condition and care. In this article, we examine how learning to read the infant's physiologic and behavioral cues helps parents cope with stress. We view parental learning as a process in which parents target specific domains of information for learning according to the temporal relevance of the domain to their concerns. It is important that we recognize the fluidity of the process and anticipate what parents need to learn at different times during hospitalization. The NICU staff assumes a crucial role in reducing parental stress by delivering information that is relevant to the parents' needs and by helping parents understand this information.