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Biomedical subjects

F Dunham

Publications and source records attributed to F Dunham.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Directive interactions and early vocabulary development: the role of joint attentional focus.

Maternal directiveness, assessed by the mother's use of prescriptives, is correlated with slow vocabulary development. As prescriptives are most often used to redirect a child's attention to a different object or activity, it is hypothesized that attentional regulation underlies this negative relationship. In the present study, twelve mothers were videotaped interacting with their children aged 1;1, and 100 maternal utterances were coded for pragmatic intent. Prescriptives were coded as either changing (leading) or following the child's focus of attention. Only the frequency of mothers' follow-prescriptives correlated significantly with a productive vocabulary measure taken at 1;10. This correlation was high and positive, indicating that, given joint focus, directing a 13-month-old's behaviour can have beneficial effects on subsequent vocabulary development.

Attention

The nonreciprocating robot: effects on verbal discourse, social play, and social referencing at two years of age.

2-year-old children interacted with a robot in a large playroom while their mother sat quietly in the corner. Identical vocalizations from the robot had very different effects on 3 dimensions of the children's behavior when the vocalizations were embedded in reciprocating and nonreciprocating social structures. The reciprocating robot produced (1) more topic-maintaining verbal dialogue, (2) less physical and more linguistically mediated social play, and (3) gender-specific effects on the children's tendency to visually reference their mother during the play session. The data are discussed with reference to the frequently encountered assumption that reciprocal social structures have an impact on children's behavior when the quantity and other qualitative dimensions of social stimulation are held constant, and with reference to the children's attributions about the robot as a social partner.

Child, Preschool

Effects of mother-infant social interactions on infants' subsequent contingency task performance.

20 3-month-old infants participated in a nonsocial contingency task immediately following a social interaction with their mothers. A measure of the time the dyads spent in a state of vocal turn-taking predicted individual differences in the infants' subsequent performance on the contingency task. These results parallel the social transfer effects we reported earlier in which the turn-taking dimension of social structure was experimentally manipulated to assess its effect on a subsequent nonsocial contingency task.

Affect

Endoscopic ultrasonography in achalasia.

Six patients with known achalasia were examined by endoscopic ultrasonography before dilatation therapy. At the level of the lower esophageal sphincter, a typical enlargement of the echolayer corresponding to the muscularis propria was observed in 5 cases. Endoscopic ultrasonography is a complementary procedure to manometry and x-ray for diagnosing achalasia. It helps differentiate achalasia from pseudoachalasia. In pseudoachalasia there is tumor infiltration.

Adult

Social contingency effects on subsequent perceptual-cognitive tasks in young infants.

3 experiments with 3-month-old infants compared the effects of contingent and noncontingent adult-infant social interactions on subsequent infant-controlled habituation and choice tasks. Infants who experienced a prior noncontingent social interaction tended to adopt response strategies that reduced the density of stimulation during these subsequent nonsocial tasks. The results are discussed in terms of their generality and the types of mechanisms that might mediate these transfer effects from social to nonsocial procedures.

Arousal

Ultrasound-guided percutaneous and transhepatic cholecystostomy: a complementary procedure to therapeutic endoscopy.

Percutaneous cholecystostomy is an expanding technique since the use of ultrasonography permits a precise puncture of the gall bladder. Cholecystitis is a classical complication of endoscopic maneuvers in the biliary tract or can be associated with obstructive jaundice. Following their results the authors conclude on the usefulness of percutaneous cholecystostomy as a complementary procedure to non-operative management of biliary diseases.

Age Factors

Endoscopic biopsies of the papilla of Vater at the time of endoscopic sphincterotomy: difficulties in interpretation.

The hypertrophic aspect of tissue after endoscopic papillotomy may suggest the diagnosis of a small periampullary tumor. In our experience of 55 periampullary carcinomas, the diagnosis was confirmed histologically in 50% of the cases before endoscopic papillotomy and in 100% of the cases when the biopsies were performed immediately after papillotomy. With this in mind, biopsies were performed in 22 cases of benign biliary tract disease after endoscopic papillotomy. Biopsies within the first 48 hours after endoscopic papillotomy showed cellular atypism.

Aged

Nd-YAG laser, a new palliative alternative in the management of esophageal cancer.

Ten patients with unresectable esophageal malignant tumor have been managed by Nd-YAG laser palliative therapy. Esophageal obstruction, and dysphagia, the most frequent symptoms, were relieved in all cases after periods ranging from 5 to 14 days. The mean total energy required was 26.121 watts sec-1. No serious immediate or late complication was encountered, except for one small transient bleeding without clinical repercussion. Two relapses of dysphagia were successfully managed by the same procedure. This new palliative approach has to be compared with the other available methods, surgical resection and bypass procedures, radiotherapy or endoscopic prosthetic intubation. Its high degree of effectiveness in providing rapid relief of dysphagia, and its low morbidity rate will give to laser therapy an important place in the future palliative management of esophageal cancer, either alone or in combination with other treatments.

Aged

Special catheters for E.R.C.P.

The authors present the advantages of a needle and a metallic tip catheters allowing better success in conventional E.R.C.P. and in the cannulation of the accessory papilla. They consider these catheters as strictly necessary in the material available in endoscopic centers where E.R.C.P. is performed in routine.

Catheterization