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Biomedical subjects

L Feagans

Publications and source records attributed to L Feagans.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1988

Mothers' attributions of communication to prelinguistic behavior of developmentally delayed and mentally retarded infants.

Some investigators have suggested that mothers of severely handicapped infants do not attribute communication to their infants' behavior as frequently as do other mothers because such infants exhibit developmentally younger and more ambiguous behavior. This premise was tested, and several factors that may influence the frequency with which mothers attribute communication to their babies' behavior were examined. Sixteen mother-handicapped infant pairs participated. Results did not support the simple notion that mothers of severely handicapped babies attribute less communication than do mothers of mildly handicapped infants. Results suggest that the mothers' attributions of communication may be influenced by a number of factors besides the actual behavior emitted by the infants, factors that may allow the mothers to interact effectively with an even severely handicapped baby.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Piracetam and dyslexia: effects on reading tests.

Previous research has suggested that dyslexics treated with piracetam have shown improvements in reading skills, verbal memory and verbal conceptualizing ability, feature analysis, and processing of letter-like stimuli. Two hundred twenty-five dyslexic children between the ages of 7 years 6 months and 12 years 11 months whose reading skills were significantly below their intellectual capacity were enrolled in a multicenter, 36-week, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Children of below average intelligence, with abnormal findings on audiologic, ophthalmologic, neurologic, psychiatric, and physical examinations, who were emotionally disturbed or educationally deprived and who had recently been treated with psychoactive medication were excluded from the trial. Piracetam was well tolerated, with no serious adverse clinical or laboratory effects reported. Piracetam-treated children showed significant improvements in reading ability (Gray Oral Reading Test) and reading comprehension (Gilmore Oral Reading Test). Treatment effects were evident after 12 weeks and were sustained for the total period (36 weeks).

Child↗
PubMed1984

Developmental differences in the comprehension and production of narratives by reading-disabled and normally achieving children.

Reading-disabled children's language skills have long been implicated in their poor school performance. This study is a cross-sectional and longitudinal examination of the narrative language skills of both reading-disabled and normally achieving children in an attempt to understand more clearly the language processes involved in these skills and how these processes relate to reading achievement over time. Children were read scriptlike narratives and asked to demonstrate their knowledge of the story by a nonverbal enactment of the narrative. After perfect enactment of the story was assured, the children were asked to paraphrase the narratives. Results from both the cross-sectional and longitudinal study indicated that reading-disabled children comprehended the narratives in a comparable fashion to normal peers, but they performed more poorly on a variety of content and complexity measures derived from their paraphrases. The study indicates that reading-disabled children's language problems are persistent over time in the area of verbally expressing information, even when they have demonstrated nonverbal comprehension.

Achievement↗
PubMed1980

Children's understanding of some temporal terms denoting order, duration, and simultaneity.

This study examined the comprehension by children of the concepts of order, duration, and simultaneity as reflected in certain linguistic structures. The children in the study were 3, 5, and 7 years old. Temporal order was examined through children's comprehension of two-clause sentences containing the conjunctions "after," "before," "since," and "until." Temporal duration was examined through children's understanding of one-clause sentences containing the progressive aspect and two-clause sentences containing the conjunctions "since" and "until." These two conjunctions signal duration in the main clause when they conjoin two clauses. Simultaneity was studied through children's comprehension of two-clause sentences containing "while." The results revealed that the order sentence structures ("before" and "after") were generally comprehended by the children before the duration or simultaneous sentence structures, although at 7 years of age children were still not performing above chance on the order relation in "since" and "until" sentences. The duration sentence structures were comprehended by the children before the simultaneous sentence structures. The results support the literature in cognitive psychology and in philosophy which argues that order is simpler than duration is simpler than simultaneity.

Child↗