Behavioral and cognitive status in school-aged children with a history of failure to thrive during early childhood.

Twenty-seven school children (aged 8-12 years) earlier diagnosed with nonorganic failure to thrive (FTT) were compared with a normal socioeconomically matched control group (N=17) on current height and weight parameters as well as cognitive, achievement, and behavioral measures from the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). The former FTT children were, on average, smaller, less cognitively able, and more behaviorally disturbed than the control children and national normative samples. Sixty percent of former FTT children were below the 20th percentile in height and 48% were below the 20th percentile in weight; 52% had IQs below 80 and 30% had reading standard scores below 80; 48% had clinically adverse attention ratings and 30% had clinically adverse aggression ratings on the CBCL. Within the FTT sample, however, there were no significant associations between current growth measures and cognitive/achievement outcome measures. Mothers' IQs provided the strongest prediction of the FTT children's reading scores. The mothers of the FTT children had not achieved as high levels of education as the mothers of the control children, and more of them were single parents. Early growth problems put children at high risk for multiple adverse sequelae in middle childhood, especially if mothers are poorly educated. Careful ongoing follow-up of such children by pediatricians is encouraged.

Effect of a peri-parturient eprinomectin treatment of dairy cows on milk production.

AIM: To quantify and economically evaluate the effect on milk production of peri-parturient treatment of dairy cows with eprinomectin. METHODS: On 3 farms in separate geographic areas of New Zealand, 849 first-calf heifers and multiparous cows were ranked and paired within parity, date of calving and expected milk production. Within pairs, cows were randomly allocated to treatment with either a commercial formulation of eprinomectin, applied at a dose rate of 500 mug/kg liveweight, or an equivalent volume of vehicle containing no antiparasitic agent and administered at the same dose volume, generally within the first week post-calving. On each farm, trial cows shared the same pasture. Over a single lactation, records were maintained of milk quantity and content. RESULTS: Trichostrongylid eggs were identified in pre-treatment faecal samples from all farms, verifying the presence of gastrointestinal parasites. Overall 25.5% of the cows sampled were positive for nematode eggs, but only 8% had counts 50 eggs per gram of faeces (epg). Daily milk volume, milk protein and milksolids (yield of milk fat + milk protein) were higher for eprinomectin-treated multiparous cows than for controls (milk volume: 20.36 l/day vs 19.76 l/day, p=0.005; milk protein: 0.700 kg/day vs 0.685 kg/day, p=0.012; milksolids: 1.613 kg/day vs 1.583 kg/day, p=0.031, respectively). The daily value of the increased production from eprinomectin-treated multiparous cows was estimated to be NZ0.034 dollar for milk fat (p=0.095) and NZ0.078 dollar for milk protein (p=0.012), equating to NZ0.104 dollars for milksolids (p=0.031), averaged over the whole lactation. No significant difference in milk production was detected between treated and control first-calf heifers. Averaged over the whole herd, the peri-parturient treatment of multiparous cows and first-calf heifers with eprinomectin increased daily milk volume and milk protein production of treated vs control cows (19.28 l/day vs 18.86 l/day, p=0.020, and 0.661 kg/day vs 0.650 kg/day, p=0.047, respectively). CONCLUSION: These data provide evidence that the use of a peri-parturient treatment of eprinomectin on multiparous cows can increase their production of fluid milk and milksolids.

An electrophysiological study of school-aged children with a history of failure to thrive during infancy.

Sixty-five subjects, ages 8 to 12, participated in a visual electrophysiological study. Twenty-two of the subjects had received a diagnosis of nonorganic failure-to-thrive (FTT) before the age of three. The remaining 43 subjects had no history of FTT and served as Controls. IQs were obtained with the abbreviated WISC-III, and the Controls were split into two groups, LO IQ and HI IQ, to provide a LO IQ Control group with an average IQ equivalent to the FTT group. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from five scalp locations during a cued continuous performance task (CPT). Subjects had to press a button every time they saw the letter "X" following the letter "A" (50 targets out of 400 stimuli). During the CPT, the FTT subjects made marginally more errors of omission to targets than the LO IQ Control group and significantly more errors of omission than the HI IQ Control subjects. The groups did not differ significantly on errors of commission (false alarms) or reaction times to targets. ERP averages revealed a group difference in amplitude in a late slow wave for the 50 non-X stimuli (false targets) that followed the letter A. This difference was greatest over frontal sites, where the FTT group had a more negative going slow wave than each control group. Late frontal negativity to No Go stimuli has been linked with post-decisional processing, notably in young children. Thus, the FTT subjects may have less efficient inhibitory processes, reflected by additional late frontal activation.

An electrophysiological investigation of semantic priming with pictures of real objects.

Event-related potentials were recorded using color pictures of real objects. Participants made relatedness judgments for pictures that were highly, moderately, or unrelated to a picture of a preceding prime object (Experiment 1) or object identification decisions for related/easily identified, unrelated/easily identified, and unrelated/unidentifiable objects preceded by prime objects (Experiment 2). Unrelated pictures elicited larger event-related potential negativities between 225 and 500 ms than did related pictures, although the first portion of this epoch had a more frontal distribution than did the later portion. The later epoch differentiated the unrelated from the moderately related and the moderately related from the highly related pictures (Experiment 1), but the early epoch produced differences only between the unrelated and related pictures (Experiments 1 and 2). This pattern supports the existence of two separate components, an anterior, image-specific N300 and a later, central/parietal amodal N400.

Prevalence of post traumatic stress disorder and other psychiatric diagnoses in three groups of abused children (sexual, physical, and both).

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to compare the prevalence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other diagnoses in three groups of abused children, sexual only (N = 127), physical only (N = 43), and BOTH (N = 34). METHOD: The children, aged 7 to 13 years, were referred to the project from several sources at Arkansas Children's Hospital and from associated local agencies. The victims and caregivers were separately administered the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents, Revised Version (DICA). Additionally, caregivers and classroom teachers completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Characteristics of the abuse were obtained from an investigative questionnaire. RESULTS: Both victims and caregivers endorsed high rates of disorders, with caregivers generally giving higher rates than children and boys having more externalizing diagnoses than girls. Children in the BOTH group had more diagnoses overall. Concordance between victims and caregivers was modest. PTSD was significantly comorbid with most affective disorders. On the CBCL, caregivers rated girls less disturbed than boys and the sexually abused only group less disturbed than the other groups. Teachers rated the boys more adversely than girls but did not see differences by abuse group. A younger age of onset of sexual abuse and coercion to maintain secrecy predicted a higher number of total diagnoses. Also, children who were physically abused by males had more diagnoses than those physically abused by females. CONCLUSIONS: Children who have been both physically/sexually abused appear to be at highest risk of psychiatric disturbance. PTSD, though common (circa one-third of victims), is generally comorbid with other affective disorders.

Event-related brain potentials elicited during phonological processing differentiate subgroups of reading disabled adolescents.

Visual and auditory rhyme judgment tasks were administered to adolescent dyslexics and normal readers while event-related brain potentials were recorded. Reading disabled subjects were split into two groups based on a median split of scores on a visual non-word decoding test. The better decoders were called Phonetics and the poorer decoders were referred to as Dysphonetics. Single syllable, real word stimuli were used, and both rhyming and non-rhyming targets had a 50% chance for matching orthography. In the visual paradigm the normal readers exhibited a left frontal CNV before targets, a large reduction in frontal N400 for matching orthography (orthographic priming), and a large reduction in parietal N400 for rhyming targets (phonological priming). Dysphonetics had an intact CNV and orthographic priming, but the group's phonological priming was very reduced. Phonetics showed both orthographic and phonological priming but had a marked reduction in their CNV. In the auditory task, controls showed a left parietal N400 priming effect for rhyming targets. Dysphonetics showed a similar bilateral effect. The Phonetics did not show a normal priming effect, but produced evidence for priming at a longer latency. Additionally, the Phonetic group responded more slowly than either of the other two groups, who responded with similar latencies. These results support the separation of the reading disabled into a group that has difficulty translating orthography into phonology, and a group that is slower functioning and has reduced capacity in preparing for a response.

EEG power spectra of adolescent poor readers.

EEG power spectra were studied in two poor-reading adolescent groups (dysphonetic and phonetic) as the students viewed strings of letters and easy words (seven categories). The students ranged in age from 12 to 16 years; 29 were male, 9 were female. Bilateral results are reported from frontal, parietal, and occipital regions. Significant Group x Hemisphere effects were found in the alpha and beta bands, with the phonetic group showing right greater than left asymmetry. This finding was interpreted to reflect more circumscribed and mature processing in the phonetically abler poor readers, given that normally reading adults typically show right greater than left asymmetry in word tasks. Overall, the dysphonetic group had higher beta power than the phonetic group, which may reflect greater effort.

An event-related brain potential investigation of PTSD and PTSD symptoms in abused children.

We tested 186 children ranging in age from 6 years, 10 months to 13 years, 7 months; 174 suffered either physical and/or sexual abuse, and 12 were nonabused children. Abused subjects were grouped in four different ways. The primary grouping was based on whether subjects satisfied the DSM III-R criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Secondary groupings were based upon the three symptom clusters used to make the PTSD diagnosis (arousal, avoidance, and reexperiencing). In each of these groupings three separate subgroups were formed with approximately 25 percent in the high and low symptom count subgroups and the remaining 50 percent in the middle symptom count subgroup. Subjects listened to four different intensity levels (65, 80, 95, and 102 dB) of a 1 KHz tone, pseudo-randomly ordered, while event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Two separate blocks were used, one with short intervals (4 +/- 1 sec) between tones and the other with longer intervals (17 +/- 2 sec). PTSD subjects presented a greater P2-N2 ERP intensity gradient (i.e., a larger increase in the P2-N2 ERP component as tone intensity increased) than did abused subjects without PTSD. Abused subjects with the highest number of reexperiencing symptoms showed a similar P2-N2 augmenting effect when compared to those with the lowest number of reexperiencing symptoms. Subjects with the highest number of arousal symptoms showed a shallower intensity gradient for the N1-P2 ERP component than did those with fewer arousal symptoms. The results are discussed in relation to previous results reported on adults with PTSD and in terms of CNS processing of stimulus intensity information.

Event-related brain potentials elicited by rhyming and non-rhyming pictures differentiate subgroups of reading disabled adolescents.

Event-related brain potentials were recorded while disabled adolescent subjects read and judged whether two sequentially presented pictures had names that rhymed. Subjects with relatively good phonetic skills displayed an N400 priming effect, i.e., a significant reduction in the amplitude of the negative peak, occurring approximately 400 msec post-stimulus, for pictures with names that rhymed with preceding pictures as compared with pictures that had names that did not rhyme with the prime. No such effect was evident for subjects with relatively poor phonetic skills. This lack of an N400 priming effect provides evidence for a reduction in neural capacity and/or activation during phonological processing in the subjects with poor phonological skills. Demonstrating the N400 priming effect to be stronger in one group of reading disabled subjects, compared to another, supports the position that specific subtypes of reading disability exist. In addition to the stronger N400 priming effect, the phonetically stronger group also exhibited an enhanced negativity, from 700 to 1,000 msec after target stimulus onset, compared to phonetically inferior subjects. This finding replicates earlier work and possibly reflects a higher level of confidence in the group with better phonetic skills.

Event-related brain potentials reflect semantic priming in an object decision task.

Subjects made speeded object decisions about target line drawings which were preceded by semantically related or unrelated prime line drawings. One hundred of the targets depicted real objects and 50 others were unrecognizable non-objects. Similar to a recent picture-matching study, the ERPs from this study generated a larger negativity for unrelated than for related target pictures, between 325 and 550 msec (N400). Although these differences had a similar time course to those seen for the N400 component in semantic priming lexical decision tasks, they were more frontally distributed and were larger over the left rather than the right hemisphere. Non-objects, which were the picture equivalent of pseudowords, produced an even larger negativity with a somewhat different distribution. The results are discussed with regards to recent claims about amodal conceptual memory processes.