Use of fortuitous in vitro mutations in a synthetic Cu-Zn superoxide dismutase gene to illuminate protein structure-function relationships

BACKGROUND: Most studies of alternative/complementary medicine use in children have focused on children with chronic illness and have not addressed the more common form of complementary medicine: popular home-based interventions and therapies for common low-morbidity sickness episodes. Also, there has often been a distinction between alternative/ complementary medical practices used by the general population and those used by members of ethnic minority groups and commonly referred to as folk medicine or ethnomedicine. OBJECTIVE: To describe the home-based therapies and practices that parents from diverse ethnocultural backgrounds use to treat the common cold in their children. METHOD: Interviews with mothers of children coming for care at a number of clinics and physicians' offices. Included were mothers from European American, African American, Puerto Rican, and West Indian-Caribbean heritages. RESULTS: Mean number of home-based remedies for the common cold did not differ among ethnic groups (controlling for maternal age, maternal education, number of children, and health insurance status). There were differences among groups regarding the frequency of use of specific remedies. CONCLUSIONS: Home-based remedies for colds in childhood are commonly used. Many of the treatments are complementary to biomedical treatment (ie, antipyretics, over-the-counter cold remedies, fluids). Very few are potentially hazardous if taken in moderation. Mothers from ethnic minorities use similar amounts of homebased interventions when compared with mothers from the majority culture.     

Quality of mother–toddler interactions, maternal depressive symptoms, and behavior problems in preschoolers of adolescent mothers.

Longitudinal data for 63 inner-city African American and Puerto Rican adolescent mothers and their firstborn children were used to examine the relations among (a) level of maternal depressive symptoms reported in the first year postpartum and at 28 to 36 months postpartum, (b) mother-toddler conflict and contingent (reciprocal) responses observed in play interactions at 20 months, and (c) maternal reports of child problem behaviors at 28 to 36 months. The model that best predicted child problem behaviors was an additive one, reflecting the independent contributions of maternal depressive symptoms and maternal-child conflict. A lack of contingent responses occurred more frequently in the interactions of more symptomatic mothers with their toddlers. Although this was not associated with subsequent levels of child problem behaviors, the implications of this passive response strategy for the perpetuation of depression in families are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Measured intelligence in offspring of oral and nonoral contraceptive users

A study has been made of measures of intelligence of 210 children (5 to 8 years of age) born to mothers who used oral and nonoral contraceptives pregestationally. Ninety-six of these children were born to mothers who used oral contraceptives, and one hundred and fourteen were born to mothers who used vaginal contraceptive methods. The intelligence of the children was measured in the form of the full-scale I.Q. score by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) adapted and normalized for Puerto Rico by the Puerto Rico Department of Education. A three-factor analysis of variance was performed on the data collected for comparison of the two groups. It was observed that there was no significant difference between the average I.Q. scores of children born to mothers using oral contraceptives and those born to the mothers using nonoral contraceptives. The average I.Q. in children of the oral contraceptive group was 85.04 and that in children of the nonoral contraceptive group was 85.54. Distributions for both groups were also found to be similar. No significant differences between means were observed for sex, age, and interacitons with the exception of the age and sex interaction, where, again, no specific, meaningful trend could be established. The average I.Q. in the sample fell very close to the center of the "normal" range of the WISC, Puerto Rican adaptation. The results of the study do not offer any evidence as to the effect of the use of oral contraceptives on the intelligence measure (by the WISC) of the offspring born to mothers using them pregestationally. The children under study, on an average, are of "normal" intelligence as measured by the Puerto Rican intelligence standards.     

Mothers' knowledge about children's play and language development: Short-term stability and interrelations.

Sixty-four mothers of children ranging in age from 6 to 58 months were asked to determine, for pairings of play and language items, which item was more advanced developmentally. This procedure was repeated within 2 weeks. In general, mothers' orderings of play and language items matched those established in the developmental literature and were stable over the short term. Mothers' knowledge about language development was stronger than and unrelated to their knowledge about play, suggesting that maternal knowledge about developmental domains is differentiated and specific. Finally, mothers' judgments about the developmental milestones depended on their children's current developmental stage: Mothers were less accurate at estimating the timing of milestones that their children had mastered many months earlier, supporting the view that mothers' knowledge is informed by their children's recent rather than past achievements in specific areas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parents' attitudes about children: Associations with parental life histories and child-rearing quality.

This study examined relations among parents' perceptions of their childhood, attitudes about life, expectations for child behavior, attitudes about their child's behavior, and the child-rearing environment parents provide. Eighty mothers of 1–5 yr olds were interviewed about perceptions of receiving harsh parenting as children, current attitudes about life, developmental expectations, and views of intentionality and severity of their child's misbehavior. The home environment was measured using the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (R. H. Bradley & B. Caldwell, 1979) scale. Mothers who reported harsh parenting as children, negative attitudes about life, and unrealistic developmental expectations had negative attitudes about their own child. These attitudes were related to provision of lower quality home environments. Results support a constructivist approach to understanding parental social cognitions and behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

NO/cGMP pathway is involved in exocrine secretion from rat pancreatic acinar cells

OBJECTIVE: To identify factors associated with the initiation of breast-feeding in a predominantly Puerto Rican population living in inner-city Hartford, Conn. DESIGN: Retrospective study of 144 Latino women (mean +/- standard deviation age = 26.3 +/- 5.7 years) with children at least 1 year old but younger than 6 years old (mean +/- standard deviation age = 3.0 +/- 1.2 years) at the time of the survey. Women were recruited from agencies sponsoring health programs for mothers and children. They were interviewed in their homes (69%) or at the Hispanic Health Council, Hartford, Conn (31%). SUBJECTS/SETTING: Low-income Latino women who had at least 1 preschooler at the time of the interview. The women lived in inner-city Hartford, and the overwhelming majority were Puerto Rican and received welfare assistance and food stamps. Seventy-eight percent of the women chose to be interviewed in Spanish; the other 22% were interviewed in English. STATISTICAL ANALYSES: Explanatory variables that related to breast-feeding initiation (P < or = .2) in bivariate chi 2 analyses were entered into a multivariate logistic regression model that was reduced using backward stepwise elimination procedures. RESULTS: Multivariate analyses indicated that breast-feeding the previous child, shorter length of maternal residence in the United States, not receiving prenatal bottle-feeding advice, more recent birth, and higher birth weight were positively associated with breast-feeding initiation. A major reason for choosing not to breast-feed was that women felt socially uncomfortable doing it. APPLICATIONS: Breast-feeding initiation was more likely in Latino women who received prenatal breast-feeding counselling and postpartum support. Mothers of low-birth-weight infants and women breast-feeding for the first time may need additional help. These findings can be used by programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children to increase breast-feeding initiation.     

Child-rearing values of low-income, urban Puerto Rican mothers of preschool children.

To enhance clinicians' understanding of the child-rearing values Puerto Rican mothers consider important in parenting preschool-age children, the authors conducted focus groups, interviewed cultural consultants, and searched the literature. Eighty low-income, urban mainland Puerto Rican mothers with young children ranked in order of importance to them 13 child-rearing values that were presented. Mothers ranked honesty, respect, and responsibility most highly, followed by loyalty to family, affection, and sharing. They ranked values associated in the literature with Anglo culture (e.g., assertiveness, independence, and creativity) as being of lesser importance. Implications for therapy and educational interventions with parents and children are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lesbian and bisexual mothers and nonmothers: Demographics and the coming-out process.

In a large, national sample of 2,431 lesbians and bisexual women, those who had children before coming out, those who had children after coming out, and those who did not have children were compared on demographic factors and milestones in the coming-out process. Differences were found in race/ethnicity, age, prior marriage, income, religion, use of mental health counseling, and reported hate crimes. Results are also presented for lesbians and bisexual women of each ethnic/racial and age group. Controlling for age and income, lesbians and bisexual women who had children before coming out had reached developmental milestones in the coming-out process about 7-12 years later than women who had children after coming out and about 6-8 years later than nonmothers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional strategies, attention, and metacognition in Puerto Rican children.

60 2nd-, 5th-, and 8th-grade Puerto Ricans participated in a strategy assessment task and an incidental learning task that provided a measure of attentional performance. Metacognition concerning attention was assessed by asking Ss to predict how much incidental material they would recall. ANOVAs revealed no developmental changes in the use of an efficient attentional strategy, the amount of central recall, the amount of incidental recall, or in metacognitive knowledge. Results differ from a previous study by the 1st author and M. G. Weiss with 60 predominantly White, middle-class Florida children in which attention and strategies became increasingly efficient as a function of age. In comparison to the Florida sample, Puerto Rican 2nd graders' strategies were more efficient and the 8th graders' strategies were less efficient. Attention on the incidental learning task was less selective for the Puerto Rican Ss than the Florida Ss. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effortful control among low-income preschoolers in three cities: Stability, change, and individual differences.

Existing developmental models of effortful control focus more on the roles of child characteristics and parenting and focus less on the contributions of poverty-related stressors to individual differences in children's self-regulatory competence. Using a representative sample of low-income, predominantly African American and Latino children (n = 439), the author examined effortful control at ages 2-4 and again 16 months later. Delayed gratification showed moderate stability and improvement over time. Risk factors were associated with individual differences in these developmental patterns, net of child age, gender, temperament, and child-mother connectedness. Low birth weight compromised preschoolers' delayed gratification and executive control. Exposure to more sociodemographic and residential stressors jeopardized children's executive control but did not jeopardize delayed gratification. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Puerto Rican patients travel to Puerto Rico: assessing the effect on clinical care

OBJECTIVE: To examine travel habits of Puerto Rican patients and assess the potential effect of this travel on their health care. DESIGN: Interview and survey of patients. SETTING: Urban medical clinic. PATIENTS: Two hundred consecutive, self-identified Puerto Rican patients presenting for follow-up care. INTERVENTION: Immediately prior to a follow-up office visit, patients were interviewed in either Spanish or English. MEASUREMENTS: The patients' age, sex, education level, employment status, and place of birth were recorded. The patients were asked questions concerning the principle place of residence of their family members, their ability to speak English, and their preferences in television and radio programs. Patients who had visited Puerto Rico were asked about the duration and purpose of their most recent trip and about the health care they received in Puerto Rico. Chi-square testing was applied to categorical data and t tests for continuous data; P values were calculated using the SPSS statistical analysis program. RESULTS: Of the 200 subjects, 110 (55%) had traveled to Puerto Rico in the last five years and 90 (45%) had not. The patients who traveled were more likely to have been born in Puerto Rico, less likely to speak English, and less likely to listen to English-language programs. A majority of the patients who traveled to Puerto Rico visited for a month or less (80%) and did not experience a change in health care (78%). In comparison, however, a majority (59%) of the patients who visited for longer than a month did experience a major change in their health care status (P < .00001). CONCLUSIONS: Puerto Rican patients, particularly those born in Puerto Rico with stronger cultural "ties" to the island, frequently return to Puerto Rico. Patients who visit for longer than a month often experience changes in care which are likely to have significant effect on their health. Clinicians caring for Puerto Rican patients should ask about upcoming visits to Puerto Rico and take steps to assure continuous and coordinated medical care.     

Welfare policies and very young children: Experimental data on stage-environment fit.

The authors examined the effects of welfare programs that increased maternal employment and family income on the development of very young children using data from 5 random-assignment experiments. The children were 6 months to 3 years old when their mothers entered the programs; cognitive and behavioral outcomes were measured 2?5 years later. While there were no overall program impacts, positive or negative, on the development of children in this age group, there was a pair of domain- and age-specific effects: The programs decreased positive social behavior among 1-year-olds and increased school achievement among 2-year-olds. After exploring several explanations for these results, the authors suggest that the contextual changes engendered by the programs, including children's exposure to center-based child care, interacted differentially with specific developmental transitions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Puerto Rican intellectuals in New York: Some intragroup and intergroup contrasts.

A factor analysis of coded interview data on 20 Puerto Rican intellectuals in the New York City area yielded 5 item-factors (R) and 2 person-factors (Q). The R factors dealt with Spanish language dominance, ideological language maintenance, Puerto Rican cultural emphases, American awareness, and sociolinguistic sophistication. The Q groups differed meaningfully and consistently on these 5 factors and on demographic background variables, particularly with respect to ideological vs. behavioral Puerto Rican culture and language maintenance. Intellectuals as a group were found to differ greatly and systematically from ordinary Puerto Rican males in having more ideological positions with respect to Puerto Rican culture and Spanish language maintenance in New York. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward an interfacing of Hispanic cultural variables with school psychology service delivery systems.

Discusses cultural influences and urban ecological factors that are significant mediators in the emotional, sociobehavioral, and academic development of low-income urban Hispanic students. A review of the literature indicates that the school psychology profession has an underdeveloped knowledge base explicating how ethnocultural variables and socialization practices impinge on the developmental and learning experiences of the Hispanic student. A case example of a 9-yr-old Hispanic female is presented to illustrate psychocultural variables and the socioadaptational patterns of Puerto Rican families and students. An organizing assessment and ethnosensitive intervention framework are described. Recommendations for psychoeducational policy, training, and practice are also provided. It is concluded that school psychology directors, practitioners, and trainers should reexamine and reconceptualize service delivery strategies to be more culturally and phenomenologically compatible with the needs, differences, and strengths of this specific population. (79 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A seven-year investigation of marital expectations and marriage among urban, low-income, African American adolescent mothers.

Welfare reform has targeted marriage promotion among low-income women. This study explores patterns of marital expectations and marriage among 181 urban, low-income, African American adolescent mothers and their mothers. Using PROC TRAJ to analyze developmental trajectories of adolescent mother–grandmother relationship quality over 24 months, we categorized relationships as either high or low support. We examined the effects of intergenerational marriage models and adolescent mother–grandmother relationship quality on marital expectations and marriage over the first 7 years postpartum. At 24 months, half (52%) of adolescent mothers expected to marry, but marital expectations did not predict marriage. Marital expectations were associated with concurrent involvement in a romantic relationship, not intergenerational marriage models or a supportive adolescent mother–grandmother relationship. After 7 years, 14% of adolescent mothers were married. Married mothers lived in families characterized by the joint effects of intergenerational marriage models and supportive adolescent mother–grandmother relationships. They were older and had more children than did single mothers, suggesting that they were in a family formation phase of life. Policies that promote the education and employment opportunities necessary to support a family are needed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of maternal negativity and of early and recent recurrent depressive disorder on children's false belief understanding.

Research has shown that children of depressed mothers are at risk for problems in a variety of developmental domains; however, little is known about the effects of maternal depression on children's emerging understanding of false beliefs. In this study, 3 false belief tasks were administered to 5-year-old children whose mothers had either met criteria for major depressive disorder within the first 20 months of the child's life (n = 91) or had never been depressed (n = 50). Significant difficulties in performance were found among the children of depressed mothers, especially those whose mothers had experienced early and recent recurrent depressive disorder. Regardless of diagnostic status, children whose mothers exhibited negativity during problem-solving tasks administered at an earlier developmental period also were less likely to demonstrate false belief understanding. These effects remained even after child verbal ability was controlled. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Potthoff bias analyses of K-ABC MPC and Nonverbal Scale IQs among Anglo, Black, and Puerto Rican kindergarten children.

Bias analyses, via R. F. Potthoff's (1966) regression technique, were conducted to investigate the predictive utility of Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) Mental Processing Composite (MPC) and Nonverbal scale IQs using 65 Anglo, 24 Black, 27 English-dominant Puerto Rican, and 30 Spanish-dominant Puerto Rican kindergarten children (aged 5 yrs through 5 yrs 11 mo) on 4 achievement criteria. Nonverbal scale IQs were poor predictors for English-dominant Puerto Rican Ss. MPC slope and intercept differences underestimated low-scoring Blacks on the teacher-assigned-grades criterion. When significant differences were found during other comparisons, results consistently showed that K-ABC IQs overestimated achievement for the minority Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of child gender role and maternal feedback to child stress on the emergence of the gender difference in depressive rumination in adolescence.

Extensive research has linked a greater female tendency to ruminate about depressed feelings or mood to the gender difference in depression. However, the developmental origins of the gender difference in depressive rumination are not well understood. We hypothesized that girls and women may be more likely to ruminate because rumination represents a gender-stereotyped coping style that is associated with a more feminine gender role identity, maternal encouragement of emotion expression, and passive coping responses to stress. This study examined whether child self-reported gender role identity and observed maternal responses to child stress mediated the emergent gender difference in depressive rumination in adolescence. Maternal gender role attitudes were further hypothesized to moderate the relationship between child sex and mediating variables. Rumination and gender role identity were assessed in 316 youths and their mothers in a longitudinal study from age 11 to age 15; in addition, 153 mother–child dyads participated in an observational task at age 11 from which maternal responses to a child stressor were coded. Results indicated that greater feminine gender role identity among children and encouragement of emotion expression by mothers at age 11 significantly mediated the association between child sex and the development of depressive rumination at age 15, even after controlling for rumination at age 11. Maternal gender role attitudes significantly moderated the relationship between child sex and maternal encouragement of emotion expression, such that mothers who endorsed more traditional gender role attitudes themselves were particularly likely to encourage emotion expression in their daughters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A cross-cultural comparison of alcohol expectancies in Puerto Rico and the United States.

This study compared the alcohol expectancies of 211 (62 men, 149 women) native Puerto Rican and 167 (54 men, 113 women) U.S. college students. Respondents completed a back-translated alcohol expectancy questionnaire. Results were factor analyzed separately by ethnicity. Comparison of factor structures indicated similarities and differences in expectancy structures. Puerto Rican respondents showed a tendency to associate positive aspects of alcohol effects with an expectancy for increased sociability, whereas for U.S. respondents these dimensions appeared to be independent. Puerto Ricans also had expectations of concurrent positive and negative alcohol effects on sexual behavior. A strong relationship between alcohol expectancies and alcohol consumption patterns was observed in both samples. Positive expectancies were better predictors of drinking than negative expectancies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)