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Biomedical subjects

J F Knutson

Publications and source records attributed to J F Knutson.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

The prevalence of disabilities and maltreatment among runaway children.

OBJECTIVE: This research was conducted to determine the prevalence of disabilities among abused and nonabused runaways within a hospital population (Study 1) and community school population (Study 2) and to identify any associations between disability, maltreatment, family stress factors, academic achievement, school attendance, domestic violence and runaway status. METHOD: Descriptive information was collected for maltreated and nonmaltreated runaways from hospital (N = 39,352; 255 runaways) and school (N = 40,211; 562 runaways) populations including: disability status, type of maltreatment, family stress factors, record of domestic violence in the family, academic achievement and attendance. RESULTS: The prevalence rate of disabilities among the maltreated runaways was 83.1% and 47% among the nonmaltreated runaways in the hospital sample and 34% and 17%, respectively, in the school sample. Children and youth with disabilities were at increased risk to become runaways in both populations. The presence of maltreatment significantly increased the association between running away and disability status. Children with behavior disorders, mental retardation, and some type of communication disorder were significantly more likely to run away than children with other disabilities. Among the maltreated runaways with and without disabilities, physical abuse and sexual abuse were significantly associated with running away. Records of domestic violence were more prevalent in the families of runaways with behavior disorders and no diagnosed disability. Lower academic achievement, poor school attendance, and more family stress factors were associated with maltreatment, disability and runaway status. CONCLUSIONS: Children and youth with disabilities are unidentified and unrecognized among runaways. Professionals working with runaways and their families need to be cognizant of the special needs of the population, particularly with respect to behavior disorders, communication disabilities, and mental retardation and reconsider current policy to routinely reunite runaways with their families when running away was precipitated by traumatagenic factors within the family.

Achievement↗
PubMed2000

Maltreatment and disabilities: a population-based epidemiological study.

OBJECTIVES: To assess the prevalence of abuse and neglect among a population of children identified as a function of an existing disability, relate specific types of disabilities to specific types of abuse, and to determine the effect of abuse and neglect on academic achievement and attendance rates for children with and without disabilities. METHOD: An electronic merger of school records with Central Registry, Foster Care Review Board, and police databases was followed by a detailed record review of the circumstances of maltreatment. RESULTS: Analyses of the circumstances of maltreatment and the presence of disabilities established a 9% prevalence rate of maltreatment for nondisabled children and a 31% prevalence rate for the disabled children. Thus, the study established a significant association between the presence of an educationally relevant disability and maltreatment. CONCLUSIONS: Children with disabilities are 3.4 times more likely to be maltreated than nondisabled peers. School professionals need to be cognizant of the high base rate of maltreatment among the children they serve. Disability status needs to be considered in national incidence studies of maltreatment.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2000

The veridicality of punitive childhood experiences reported by adolescents and young adults.

OBJECTIVE: The primary goal of the present research was to determine whether retrospective reports of childhood disciplinary experiences and perceptions of that discipline correspond to actual childhood events and whether the accuracy of that report was influenced by the affective state of the respondent. METHOD: Eighty-three adolescent and young adult males completed a retrospective measure of physical child maltreatment, Assessing Environments (AEIII), and the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). As children the participants had been observed naturalistically in their homes interacting with their parents an average of 10 years earlier. RESULTS: Analyses were consistent with the hypothesis that both current mood and actual observations of parent-child interactions during childhood predict self-reported recollections of childhood maltreatment by one's parents. Further the veridicality of such recollections appears to depend upon the objective specificity versus the perceptive nature of the questions used to elicit the recollections. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that assessment instruments suitable for obtaining information regarding earlier childhood victimization must utilize behaviorally specific items. Thus, items that are either global or intimate a normative comparison should be avoided.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1998

The association between child maltreatment and disabilities in a hospital-based epidemiological study.

OBJECTIVE: Circumstances of maltreatment and the presence of disabilities. METHOD: An electronic merger of the records of all pediatric patients. RESULTS: Detailed record analysis of circumstances of maltreatment and the presence of disabilities. CONCLUSIONS: Differences between the Hospital and Residential samples, maltreatment and perpetrator characteristics, disability/maltreatment relationships, and their implications for primary health care are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1998

Psychological change over 54 months of cochlear implant use.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the long-term psychological outcome of postlingually deafened adults who received multichannel cochlear implants and to relate the psychological outcome to audiological outcome. DESIGN: Thirty-seven recipients of multichannel cochlear implants who participated in a prospective clinical trial completed psychological assessments before implantation and at regularly scheduled follow-ups through 54 mo of implant use. Standardized measures of affect, social function, and personality were used, and scores on these measures were correlated with asymptotic scores on several audiological measures. RESULTS: Evidence of significant improvement on measures of loneliness, social anxiety, and distress were obtained within a year after implantation and throughout the duration of the follow-up period. For measures of assertiveness and marital satisfaction, improvement was apparent only after long-term implant use. Although favorable changes on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Depression Scale were evidenced only in the initial follow-up period, improvements on the MMPI Paranoia and Social Introversion Scales persisted throughout the 54 mo follow-up. CONCLUSION: Multichannel cochlear implant use is associated with long-term psychological benefit. Correlations between audiological outcome and psychological outcome, however, suggested that the relation between audiological benefit and psychological benefit is not simple.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Timbral recognition and appraisal by adult cochlear implant users and normal-hearing adults.

The purpose of this study was to examine the appraisal and recognition of timbre (four different musical instruments) by recipients of Clarion cochlear implants (CIS strategy, 75- or 150-microsec pulse widths) and to compare their performance with that of normal-hearing listeners. Twenty-eight Clarion cochlear implant users and 41 normal-hearing listeners were asked to give a subjective assessment of the pleasantness of each instrument using a visual analog scale with anchors of "like very much" to "dislike very much," and to match each sound with a picture of the instrument they believed had produced it. No significant differences were found between the two different pulse widths for either appreciation or recognition; thus, data from the two pulse widths following 12 months of Clarion implant use were collapsed for further analyses. Significant differences in appraisal were found between normal-hearing listeners and implant recipients for two of the four instruments sampled. Normal-hearing adults were able to recognize all of the instruments with significantly greater accuracy than implant recipients. Performance on timbre perception tasks was correlated with speech perception and cognitive tasks.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Reports of severe physical punishment and exposure to animal cruelty by inmates convicted of felonies and by university students.

A self-report questionnaire designed to assess abusive childhood environments and exposure to animal cruelty was administered to 314 inmates in a prisoner classification center. Although high rates of physical punishment characterized the entire sample, persons charged with violent, but nonhomicidal crimes reported more severely punitive childhood histories than those charged with homicidal crimes, sex offenses, and nonviolent offenses. Some exposure to animal cruelty was widespread in the sample, but there was no association between experiencing animal cruelty and the type of crime committed. Moreover, there were only modest associations between animal cruelty experiences and the aversive childhood histories of the subjects, as well as the subjects' reported use of physical and sexual coercion in dating and intimate relationships. To determine whether the high base rate of exposure to animal cruelty was unique to the incarcerated sample, a follow-up study was completed with university undergraduates. Widespread exposure to some animal cruelty was reported by undergraduates; there were modest associations between reporting animal cruelty and reporting punitive and acrimonious childhood histories. In general, the findings were consistent with the hypothesis that there is an association between punitive childhood histories and antisocial behavior but not consistent with the hypothesis that exposure to animal cruelty is importantly related to antisocial behavior or child maltreatment.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Observational assessments of the interaction of implant recipients with family and peers: preliminary findings.

Two experiments were conducted to determine the feasibility of direct observational methods in the assessment of social interactions between cochlear implant recipients and their families and peers. With laboratory analogs of parent-child interactions and peer interactions, children with implants and deaf children were videotaped. These videotapes were then coded for specific patterns of behavior. The results established the feasibility of direct observational assessments of deaf children and implant recipients and identified behavioral foci that could serve as effective indexes of implant outcome. The study also suggested that the peer entry paradigm may not be suitable for deaf children under the age of 7 years.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1997

Perception of rhythmic and sequential pitch patterns by normally hearing adults and adult cochlear implant users.

OBJECTIVE: This study compares the musical perception of 17 adult recipients of the Nucleus cochlear implant using two different formant extraction processing strategies (F0F1F2 and MPEAK). DESIGN: Over a 12 mo period, participants were alternately switched between two strategies every 3 mo. Performance was evaluated using three measures of rhythmic and sequential pitch perception. RESULTS: Three individuals performed significantly better with the MPEAK strategy on one particular rhythm task, 11 participants performed better with the MPEAK strategy on another rhythm task, and no significant differences were found between the two strategies on a sequential pitch pattern task. CONCLUSIONS: Neither strategy seems clearly superior for perception of either sequential pitch or rhythmic patterns.

Adult↗
PubMed1997

Psychological characteristics of child cochlear implant candidates and children with hearing impairments.

OBJECTIVE: To describe the psychological status of deaf children with hearing parents who were seeking a cochlear implant and to compare them with deaf children with hearing parents who were not seeking a cochlear implant. DESIGN: A sample of children consecutively referred for a cochlear implant at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics was contrasted on a number of standardized psychological measures with a cohort of children from Boys Town National Research Hospital, who had hearing impairments and whose families had not sought a cochlear implant. RESULTS: Although the comparison group evidenced more externalizing and social problems than the implant group, the means of both groups fell well within the normal range. Similarly, although mothers of the implant group rated their child's home as characterized by more positive and supportive interactions than did mothers of the children in the comparison group, both group means were well within the average range. On measures of intelligence, the two groups also did not differ. CONCLUSION: Overall, the study indicated that children with hearing impairments and their families who were seeking cochlear implants are not significantly different from children with hearing impairments whose parents were not seeking a cochlear implant. The results provided no support for the notion that children with hearing impairments from families seeking a cochlear implants for their child evidence more behavioral deviance than children with hearing impairments whose parents have not sought an implant.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1996

Attitudes toward physical discipline as a function of disciplinary history and self-labeling as physically abused.

To examine the relation between childhood experience with punitive discipline, perceptions of a punitive childhood history, and adult attitudes regarding appropriate discipline, a total of 1359 university undergraduates completed a screening questionnaire to assess their childhood disciplinary histories and their perceptions of that history. A sample of 207 of the screened participants who reported a diverse range of childhood disciplinary histories participated in a second test session to assess attitudes regarding appropriate discipline. Among persons with severely punitive histories, those who did not label themselves as abused were less likely to classify events as physically abusive than those who labeled themselves abused. Persons with less severe punishment histories were comparable to those with severely punitive histories who also labeled themselves abused. Additionally, persons who had experienced a specific form of physical discipline as a child were less likely to label that form of discipline abusive. However, this effect of experience did not obtain among subjects who described a history of discipline-produced injury. Implications of these patterns for the intergenerational transmission of abuse are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Psychological characteristics of maltreated children: putative risk factors and consequences.

Although there is considerable evidence that the maltreatment of children is widespread and that it can have significant adverse effects on the victims, specific abuse-outcome patterns are not obvious beyond the link between physical abuse and aggression, and the link between sexual abuse and poor sexual adjustment. Although concepts of invulnerability or child resilience are somewhat controversial (see Rutter 1983), some children from severely maltreating backgrounds do not evidence apparent adverse outcomes (e.g. Farber & Egeland 1987, Herrenkohl et al 1991). It is unknown whether the more favorable outcomes are the result of child resilience or the influence of environmental buffers. More research clearly is needed to fully understand the behavioral risks and consequences of maltreatment.

Aggression↗
PubMed1994

Punitive childhood experiences reported by young adults over a 10-year period.

Using a standardized questionnaire, descriptions of disciplinary childhood experiences were obtained from 11,660 university undergraduates over a 10-year period. Results indicated that there were no systematic changes in reports of physical discipline experienced by young adults over the decade sampled, suggesting the prevalence of physical abuse among predominately middle-income families is not evidencing any significant change. Additionally, regardless of whether their early childhood antedated or succeeded the growth in public attention to physical abuse, most young adults who reported severely punitive or injurious disciplinary events failed to categorize those experiences as abusive. The implications of the results are discussed in the context of efforts to raise public awareness of abuse and efforts to reduce possible transgenerational patterns of maltreatment.

Adolescent↗