Factor structure of childhood fears.

Asked the parents of 179 6-16 yr. old children, 68 of whom had been diagnosed as phobic, to rate their children on the Louisville Fear Survey. Factor analysis revealed 3 primary dimensions: fear of physical injury, natural events, and psychic stress. 60 items from the 81-item inventory met a 5% frequency criterion. A principal-component factor analysis was run, and 3 factors rotated by varimax solution. A comparison of the 3 factors extracted in this study with studies using children's subjective ratings suggest similarity in structures. Further, a comparison with factor studies of adult fears suggests that fear of physical injury and psychic stress carry through much of the life span, while fear of natural events mitigates with maturation. (21 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lung development and early origins of childhood respiratory illness

In the last two decades, 5 cohort studies have been initiated to examine the association of infant respiratory function with genetic and environmental risk factors, as well as with subsequent lower respiratory illness in early childhood. While the current complexity of respiratory function tests in this age group precludes study samples with sufficient power to examine more complex issues, information from these studies has provided an exciting adjunct to that available from the longer cohort studies. Premorbid alterations in airway function or lung development increase the risk of wheezing lower respiratory illnesses during the preschool years and the risk of impaired airway function at 5-6 years of age. In addition, gender differences in airway function and the response to maternal smoking have been observed. Larger collaborative population-based studies are needed to explore the environmental, genetic and immunological mechanisms responsible, but will depend on the development of less invasive tests of airway function appropriate for use in healthy infants.     

Common foot deformities in infancy and childhood

An enzymatic-fluorimetric method using a highly purified 3alpha-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (Sterognost-3alpha, Nyco) was used to determine fasting serum bile acid concentrations on 49 occasions in 43 patients with various liver diseases. A two-hour postprandial bile acid determination was carried out on 29 occasions in 27 of the patients. Fasting bile acid concentration correlated significantly both in cholestatic hepatobiliary and in parenchymatous liver disease to serum bilirubin and aspartate aminotransferase (ASAT) but not to alanine aminotransferase (ALAT), alkaline phosphatase, or albumin. The two-hour postprandial bile acid concentration was above normal in all patients with biochemical and/or histological signs of hepatobiliary disease, also when fasting concentration was within normal limits. In parenchymatous liver disease correlations existed between the two-hour postprandial bile acid concentration and bilirubin, ASAT, and ALAT. The sensitivity of serum bile acid estimation was compared to other liver function tests. Both the fasting and the postprandial serum bile acid concentrations tended to be more sensitive tests of hepatobiliary disease than bilirubin, ASAT and ALAT.     

Common and specific features of childhood psychopathology.

This article describes a conceptual and data-analytic model for characterizing different levels of common and specific features of child psychopathology: common features, which differentiate psychopathology from normality; broadband-specific features, which differentiate internalizing problems (e.g., anxiety, somatization) from externalizing problems (e.g., aggression, hyperactivity); and narrowband-specific features, which differentiate different narrowband syndromes (e.g., anxiety from somatization, hyperactivity from aggression) within each of the broadband syndromes. As an illustration of the model, data for 6 cognitive variables (e.g., global self-worth, causal attributions) are related to 6 psychopathology domains (e.g., aggression, depression) in a sample of 204 children. It is suggested that common features may be related to severity of psychopathology, whereas specific features may be more related to differentiation of psychopathology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Common presentations and management of leukaemia in childhood

The curability of childhood leukaemia (acute lymphoblastic, acute non lymphoblastic and chronic myeloid) has improved dramatically over the past 25 years. The author reviews the clinical presentations and current therapeutic approaches in broad principle. The importance of supportive care (both at the time of diagnosis and during therapy) and the potential for long-term side effects relevant to adult life are discussed.     

Vocational interests of college freshmen and their social origins.

The relationship between interests as measured on the SVIB and socioeconomic status of college students was explored. 9 groups of entering college freshmen were selected on the basis of father's occupation and educational level of both parents. Differences among distributions of the 9 groups on each of 48 SVIB scales were tested for significance using the analysis of variance test. Conclusions are: measured vocational interests of college students were not independent of social origin, college students of lesser cultural background tended to identify with occupations requiring quantitative and technical training, extent of overlap between social groups on SVIB scales was high. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measuring client fears.

Describes the development of a 15-item instrument to measure client fears. 91 clients (mean age 22.6 yrs) and 104 nonclients (mean age 21.2 yrs) in a university setting were asked to rate possible fears about psychotherapy with regard to how much they had been (or would be) concerned about those issues. Analyses revealed 2 factors: Therapist Responsiveness and Image Concerns. Validity of the factors was supported by a multiple analysis of variance (MANOVA) that showed significant differences between clients and nonclients. Clients reported significantly less fear for each factor. (7 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Genetic code origins: tRNAs older than their synthetases?

We present a phylogenetic analysis to determine whether a given tRNA molecule was established in evolution before its cognate aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase. The earlier appearance of tRNA versus their metabolically related enzymes is a prediction of the RNA world theory, but the available synthetase and tRNA sequences previously had not allowed a formal comparison of their relative time of appearance. Using data recently obtained from the emerging genome projects, our analysis points to the extant forms of lysyl-tRNA synthetase being preceded in evolution by the establishment of the identity of lysine tRNA.     

Young children's awareness of the origins of their mental representations.

A series of studies addressed preschool-age children's ability to identify and remember the epistemic and imaginal origins of their mental representations. Study 1 revealed that children as young as 3 were able to differentiate imaginal from perceptual origins. Study 2 explored children's ability to differentiate representations formed through inference from those formed through imagination and seeing. Results revealed that 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds differed significantly in their ability to identify and remember the sources of their mental representations. Identifying and remembering inference was the most difficult for all age groups. Results from Study 3 rule out the possibility that incorrect performance in Studies 1 and 2 resulted from an inability to remember the objects used in the tasks. Results from these studies indicate that children as young as 3 are able to differentiate mental representations based on fiction from those based on fact, but that this ability continues to develop throughout the preschool years. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stress-induced recovery of fears and phobias.

Asserts that the characteristics of human phobias resemble the kind of learning found during the amnesic period of infancy. As certain neural systems mature, conditioning begins to exhibit adult characteristics such as context dependency, sharp generalization, and rapid extinction. The adult learning system seems to be structured at least partially through the lasting influence of infantile experience. Under (hormonal) stress, residues of early experience are reinstated and incorporated into adult memory where they directly control behavior, and this control exhibits infantile characteristics. Evidence suggests that once acquired, such conditional fears might never be eliminated using traditional extinction or counterconditioning procedures. This view leads to a renewed emphasis on the role of experience in human development. (5 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-efficacy determinants of anticipated fears and calamities.

Analyzed the issues raised by I. Kirsch (see record 1982-23701-001) regarding the role of self-percepts of coping efficacy in avoidance behavior. Evidence is reviewed that shows that people who perceive themselves as inefficacious in wielding control over potentially aversive events view such events anxiously, conjure up possible injurious consequences, and display phobic avoidance of them. Self-efficacy theory postulates an interactive, though asymmetric, relation between perceived self-efficacy and fear arousal, with self-judged efficacy exerting the greater effect. This enables people to perform activities at lower strengths of self-judged efficacy despite fear arousal and to take self-protective action without having to wait for fear arousal to prompt them to action. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Early childhood intellectual differences between schizophrenic adults and their siblings.

Inferior premorbid intellectual performance of schizophrenics in comparison with normals has been found in a few studies. Because schizophrenia is more prevalent in the lower socioeconomic groups which are at the greatest disadvantage on tests anyway, the meaning of this difference has been obscure. IQs obtained in the 2nd grade for 36 children who later became adult schizophrenics were significantly lower than the means of their respective siblings who were tested with the same tests in the same grade. Control children matched for IQ and neighborhood did not differ significantly from the average of their siblings. These results suggest a genuine deficit in intellectual performance in early childhood, long before incipient schizophrenia was apparent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A cross-cultural study of animal fears

The present study represents a cross-cultural study of animal fears in which subjects from seven Western and Asian countries were asked to rate their fear of a range of familiar animals. Factor analyses of these ratings in all samples revealed a coherent three factor solution in which animals fell into a fear-irrelevant, fear-relevant (fierce) or disgust-relevant category. The core group of animals making up the disgust-relevant category were similar across cultures. Some views on how a universal disgust-relevant category of feared animals may have developed are discussed.