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Biomedical subjects

L A Leavitt

Publications and source records attributed to L A Leavitt.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1998

The structure of mother-child play: young children with Down syndrome and typically developing children.

This study explored developmental changes and effects of Down syndrome on mothers' structuring of their children's play. Mothers and their young children with Down syndrome (n = 28) were compared with socioeconomically matched samples of mothers and their mental age-matched (n = 28) and chronological age-matched (n = 28) typically developing children. Mothers of typically developing children exhibited more object demonstrations with their developmentally younger children, who exhibited less object play. Mothers of children with Down syndrome were more directive and supportive than were mothers of younger and older typically developing children, who did not differ in their frequencies of these behaviors. More maternal supportive object behavior was associated with more object play and vocalization by children with Down syndrome. Mothers and children in all 3 groups were contingently responsive to their partners' behavioral signals.

Child Development↗
PubMed1998

Mothers' sensitivity to infant signals.

Of all of the infant's signals, the cry is particularly influential in the developing pattern of mother-infant interaction. If a mother terminates crying successfully, she may gain confidence; if unsuccessful, she may begin to focus on her perceived ineffectiveness. Pediatricians and nurses who work with mothers of young infants need to carefully evaluate what mothers "think" about their successes and failures in managing daily child care. Helping mothers "reframe" perceptions of their infant may be a simple but powerful intervention to optimize their interactions.

Crying↗
PubMed1992

Early channels of mother-infant communication: preterm and term infants.

The impact of prematurity on the responsiveness of mothers and their 4-month-old infants was examined across three channels of communication: attentional, vocal and affective. Log-linear models were used to determine how the behavior of one partner was conditional upon the behavior of the other during home observations of 24 preterm and 24 term infants and their mothers. Visual attention was elicited by vocalization, and the onset of infant gaze was marked by a maternal smile. Mothers and infants responded to vocalizations with vocalizations, and mothers responded to smiles with smiles. Mothers of preterm infants were particularly responsive to their infants' signals within the attentional, vocal and affective channels. Preterm infants demonstrated correspondingly heightened responsiveness within the vocal and affective channels.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1990

Maternal self-efficacy: illusory control and its effect on susceptibility to learned helplessness.

66 mothers of 5-month-old infants participated in 2 simulated child-care tasks to examine differences in response to the performance demands of child care. Mothers first participated in a task in which they estimated their perception of control over stopping an audiotaped infant cry (illusion of control). 1 week later, they participated in another task to assess their ability to learn effective responses in stopping the cry (susceptibility to learned helplessness). Mothers with a high illusion of control differed from mothers with low or moderate illusory control by showing increased susceptibility to helplessness. Physiologically, mothers with low and moderate illusory control showed attenuated and "attentive" heart-rate responses to the impending cry, respectively. Mothers with high illusory control were "inattentive", with mothers of difficult infants in that group responding "defensively". Our data suggest that high illusion of control may be a maladaptive response to the performance demands of child care.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1989

Maternal self-efficacy and infant attachment: integrating physiology, perceptions, and behavior.

48 mothers of 5-month-old infants were asked to estimate their control over the termination of an infant cry in a laboratory-simulated child-care task. Mothers who greatly overestimated their control differed from low or moderate "illusion-of-control" mothers by exhibiting a depression-prone attributional style, a depressed mood state, perceiving the father as participating less in child care, and responding to impending infant cries with heart-rate acceleration characteristic of aversive conditioning. At age 16 months, 40 of the mother-infant pairs participated in the Ainsworth Strange Situation. Insecure infant attachment at 16 months was associated with maternal perception of overcontrol, depressed mood state, and aversive conditioning to the impending cry in the laboratory task at the 5-month period.

Arousal↗
PubMed1988

Early receptive and productive language skills in preterm and full-term 8-month-old infants.

Early receptive and productive language skills were examined for preterm low birthweight infants and full-term normal birthweight infants from middle-class homes. Nineteen preterm infants and 19 full-term infants were observed in a laboratory setting at the gestationally corrected age of 8 months. To avoid the frequent confound between prematurity and low socioeconomic status, mothers of the two groups of infants were matched on educational levels. Regression analyses were used to assess the relative influence of infant cognitive skills, infant sociability, infant birth status, and the mothers' language input as possible predictors of infant receptive language and vocal behavior. Receptive language skills were associated with higher cognitive performance, greater sociability, and preterm birth. Productive language skills were associated with higher cognitive performance. On the basis of this research, the prognosis for language development in preterm infants raised in middle-class homes appears to be excellent.

Child Language↗
PubMed1986

Mother's speech to their 1-year-old infants in home and laboratory settings.

The speech of mothers and their 1-year-old infants was compared in the home and in the laboratory playroom. The home and laboratory settings were similar for measuring the number of actual words that infants spoke and were similar for measuring the complexity of the mother's speech, including the number of different words, the type-token ratio, and the length of the utterances. Infants vocalized at similar rates in the two settings, but mothers spoke at a faster rate in the laboratory playroom. The usefulness of a preliminary warm-up period was supported by the finding that, for the second half of the sessions, mothers slowed their rate of speech and increased the complexity of their speech.

Female↗
PubMed1985

Who goes and who stays: subject loss in a multicenter, longitudinal follow-up study.

Subject loss in a cohort of 645 infants and their families, enrolled in a multicenter clinical trial, was described. Medical/biologic, socioeconomic and social support (Environmental Quality Index [EQI] composite), and developmental outcome data were obtained. Dropout was evaluated by comparing infants who withdrew at any time throughout the study to those who remained, as well as at four different time periods between 40 weeks conceptional age and 36 months. A dropout profile was also developed. Overall dropout was predicted by EQI score, clinical center, gestational age category, and 18-month developmental status. In addition to these variables, the dropout profile included race, but not 18-month developmental status. Medical/biologic variables, environmental quality, and race and center were most influential in the first, second and third, and fourth time periods, respectively. The identification of factors which are associated with increased subject loss can help researchers project needed sample sizes in future studies.

Black or African American↗
PubMed1985

Simulating conditions of learned helplessness: the effects of interventions and attributions.

We report 2 experiments that assess factors potentially responsible for a proactive interference with the sensitivity of a mother's response to infant signals. Using a version of the "learned helplessness" paradigm, mothers' performance on a solvable task was assessed following pretreatments that involved exposure to an infant cry but that differed in the mothers' ability to exert control over the termination of the cry. Each experiment explored the role of varying attributions made by a mother in the development of, or the reversal of, the helplessness phenomenon. The first experiment addressed the question of whether a specific intervention (i.e., providing the mother an attribution for failure) can reduce the debilitating effect of prior experience with failure. The results indicated that the debilitating effects associated with previous failure were reversed for the 16 mothers assigned to the intervention group. 40 mothers participated in the second experiment, which varied attributions assigned to an identical cry stimulus (i.e., the cry was produced by an "easy" vs. a "difficult" infant). This experiment assessed the effect of varying attributions on the mothers' ability to terminate the cry. We found that mothers pretreated with inescapable cries and those receiving the experimental manipulation of attributing the cry to a "difficult" infant showed debilitated performance in stopping the cry when given the opportunity. We propose that models based on learned helplessness theory have value in the study of caregiver-infant relationships, in particular, caregivers' perceived and objective effectiveness in responding to an infant's signals.

Adult↗
PubMed1984

Clinical and roentgenographic scoring systems for assessing bronchopulmonary dysplasia.

Because investigation of bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) has been hampered by imprecise methods for diagnosis and grading of severity, we evaluated new clinical and roentgenographic scoring systems in neonates with severe respiratory distress. The study population included 110 premature neonates who were admitted consecutively over a two-year period and who required mechanical ventilation. The clinical scoring system used measures of gas exchange, respiratory distress, and growth rate; roentgenographic scoring involved numerical assessment of features characteristic of BPD. A significant correlation was noted at 21 days of age between clinical and roentgenographic scores. In a linear stepwise multiple regression, we found that the best predictors of clinical score were birth weight (ie, degree of prematurity) and roentgenographic score. With further development and validation, BPD scoring should be helpful by improving our understanding of the epidemiology of this disease, providing a means for evaluation of treatment, and facilitating multicenter investigations.

Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia↗
PubMed1984

Apnea and sudden unexpected death in infants with achondroplasia.

Thirteen infants with achondroplasia and sudden unexpected death or unexplained apnea were discovered through nonsystematic retrospective case collection. Most were initially thought to have died from sudden infant death syndrome. However, historical and pathologic findings suggest that many of these infants had apnea and sudden unexpected death secondary to acute or chronic compression of the lower brainstem or cervical spinal cord. Infants with achondroplasia evidently are at considerably increased risk for such deaths between 1 month and 1 year of age. Appropriate intervention, given these previously unrecognized risks, may include cervical restraint, polysomnographic evaluation, and apnea monitoring.

Achondroplasia↗
PubMed1984

Factors affecting neurobehavioral responses of preterm infants at term conceptional age.

A revised Prechtl Neurological Examination was administered to 510 singleton infants at term conceptional age to assess the influence of gestational age, race, and sex on neurobehavioral responses in a "typical" newborn population. The infants were born at 1 of 5 centers and were subjects of the NIH Collaborative Study on Antenatal Steroid Therapy. Of these babies, 392 were born at less than 37 weeks gestational age, whereas 118 infants were born at greater than or equal to 37 weeks. Of a total of 50 items of interest, 12 differed significantly based on race, 14 items differed in terms of gestational age at birth, and 5 items were influenced by the sex of the baby. These data suggest that singleton preterm infants born at differing gestational ages should not be considered to comprise a homogeneous sample. Further, caution should be exercised when considering babies of heterogeneous race groupings, and the babies' sex has minimal impact on neurobehavioral responses at term conceptional age.

Black or African American↗
PubMed1982

A fluent backward talker.

This report documents the ability of a man to reverse the order of segments within words, so quickly that the simultaneous translation of forward speech into reversed speech was possible. Transcriptions of recorded backward speech and several processing tasks were used to clarify this man's profile of unusual linguistic skills. Analyses of the background speech showed evidence of sensitivity to both phonemic and orthographic representations of the utterances.

Adult↗