Purpose: This study examined the effectiveness of two differing interventions to improve the consonant cluster production in six children aged 4-5 years with concomitant speech sound disorder and expressive language difficulty. Method: Participants were selected for the study based on a high incidence of consonant clusters errors in their speech production. All participants had at least 75% of their cluster production attempts in error in their initial speech sample. The participants were randomly assigned to receive 24 hours of either a phonological awareness intervention with integrated speech targets (Gillon & Moriarty, 2005), or a morphosyntax intervention which alternated therapy sessions for language and speech targets (Haskill, Tyler, & Tolbert, 2001) Each intervention was administered in two blocks of 6 weeks separated by a 6-week therapy break. Hour-long small group intervention sessions were attended twice weekly by all participants. Consonant cluster productions were assessed using speech probes and standardised speech assessments. These were administered pre-intervention, post-intervention, and at follow-up 3 months post-intervention. These measures were compared to identify any improvement in (a) word-initial cluster accuracy as a result of /s/ clusters being targeted in the phonological awareness intervention;(b) word-final cluster accuracy as a result of word-final morphemes being targeted in the morphosyntax intervention; and (c) cluster element accuracy as a result of improved production of the phonemes as singletons. Results: The data supported the hypotheses that targeting word-initial clusters in the phonological awareness intervention would lead to improvements in accuracy for target /s/ clusters, non-target /s/ clusters and singleton fricatives. Improvements in production of /s/ clusters, singleton fricatives, and untreated consonant + liquid clusters were significant for all participants in this intervention type. The improvement for word initial /s/ clusters was greater than for the treatment group who received morphosyntax intervention. The data was less convincing for the hypothesis that word-final cluster production would improve following intervention for word-final morphemes in the morphosyntax intervention. Although there was improvement in word-final production for two of the participants in this group, there were similar or greater improvements seen for the children who received phonological awareness intervention in which word-final clusters were not targeted. The data supported the final hypothesis that improved production of singletons following speech intervention for these phonemes would result in improved accuracy for the phonemes when attempted in the context of clusters. All participants had improved accuracy of cluster elements that had been singleton targets during intervention. Conclusion: The data showed that the Phonological Awareness intervention led to significant improvement in production of the target /s/ clusters, and generalised to increased accuracy for production of singleton fricatives, non-target /s/ clusters, and untreated consonant + liquid clusters. The Morphosyntax intervention resulted in less consistent improvement in production for target word-final clusters. In this programme, word-final clusters were implicitly treated through language intervention for word-final morphemes. The data indicates that improvement in consonant cluster production is facilitated when using explicit teaching methods to introduce and practice consonant clusters during intervention with children with speech sound disorder.

No description available.

This thesis examines the protein content of nursery school lunches and "second" servings when a multi-purpose food is used as a substitute or as a supplement.

Background. Childhood overweight and obesity is a serious health issue. Childhood obesity is associated with asthma, hepatic steatosis, sleep apnea, psychosocial complications, increased presence of cardiovascular disease risk factors, and increased medical costs. A decrease in physical activity, an increase in sedentary behavior, and unhealthy eating likely contribute to childhood overweight and obesity. Over the last 3 decades, the prevalence of early childhood obesity has also risen. The level of physical activity that preschoolers engage is influenced by policies and practices of childcare centers they attend. Given the large number of children enrolled in preschool settings and the variability of physical activity among centers, these environments provide a promising opportunity to engage more children in health promoting levels of physical activity. Preschool students are highly sedentary and very little is known about how to significantly increase physical activity in childcare environments with structured, teacher-led activity. Methods. Activity levels among children aged 4-5 in four childcare centers were measured before and after a one-day preschool physical activity teacher training by accelerometry for approximately 5 hours per child over two mornings. Observers coded individual child activities by time. Accelerometer measures of activity levels in METs and related indicators were linked at one-minute intervals with child activity codes. Data were evaluated using single-group repeated measures analysis of variance. Results. After six weeks of implementation the intervention, average MET levels in preschoolers in three of the four centers increased by 11.5% from baseline to follow up. The average MET level per minute for these children at baseline was 2.69±0.40 and at follow-up was 2.98±0.52 (p value= .001). Teachers from all four centers reported spending 24.6 ±13.0 minutes per activity session with up to two sessions completed per day. Teachers reported following the curriculum closely and indicated that the children were generally enthusiastic. Conclusions. These results justify larger trials to determine the impact of physical activity teacher training on the intensity and duration of preschool students' physical activity in childcare settings

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / This study was undertaken to find out the factors which contributed to the difference in attendance and non- attendance of preschool children at a child health conference. It was conducted in an urban-suburban community in southeastern Rhode Island which had a population in 1960, of 14, 750 of whom 10. 5 percent were under five years of age. The sample was limited to eighteen mothers whose infants had been admitted to the child health conference during a three year period. Of these eighteen mothers, nine met the criteria for regular attendance, and nine met the criteria for non- attendance. An interview schedule and a check list of child health conference services for preschool children were developed to collect the data. Mothers in each of the two attendance groups were interviewed in their own homes by the investigator. [TRUNCATED] / 2031-01-01

Thesis (Ph.D.), Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, 2009 / The purpose of this study was to assess the improvement of scissor skills after a graded scissor skills program in preschool children in South Africa (SA). A bilateral fine motor skills assessment tool was developed for use in this research. This task-based assessment included every day activities required at school as well as personal management items. This research phase included the development of the test items and test instructions, scoring as well as validity and reliability testing of the assessment. A suitable scissor skills program was then developed for Grade 0 children in South Africa. The program was validated by a pilot study and also by a focus group of occupational therapists. Some changes were made to the picture selection, the grading of the program, as well as to teacher instructions on how to present the program before it was finalised and ready for use in the implementation phase of the research study. The implementation phase of the study included the individual assessment of 149 learners (mean age of 5 years 6 months), from three different schools in South Africa. The main aim was to establish the effectiveness of the scissor skills program by measuring skill improvement, transferability of skills and skill retention. A further aim was to compare the difference of skill levels of learners from various socio-economic backgrounds in South Africa. The results showed statistically significant improvement in scissor skills in all groups from the three different schools, as well as an ability to retain the learnt skills. Participants from lower socio-economic backgrounds demonstrated the least skill initially but made the greatest gains during the program, at times decreasing the gap between themselves and other participants. It was concluded that children benefited from a graded scissor skills program, which allowed them to improve and retain their scissor skills but improvement did not transfer to other fine motor tasks.

Thesis (M.Med.(Paediatrics), Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, 2009 / Background In settings with a high burden of tuberculosis, children with unrecognised culture-confirmed pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) may be discharged from hospital before mycobacterial culture results are available; in these cases clinical improvement may have been due to successful treatment of an intercurrent viral or bacterial co-infection. Aim To estimate the burden of tuberculosis in children who were enrolled in a double-blind, placebo-controlled pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) trial, and to probe for the presence of pneumococcal co-infection in trial participants who had a hospital-based diagnosis of PTB. Methods A retrospective case-finding strategy was adopted in order to define the tuberculosis case load amongst 39 836 children that had been enrolled in a PCV efficacy trial in Soweto, Gauteng Province. The trial follow-up period was 5.3 years. Children with a hospital-based diagnosis of tuberculosis were categorised by strength of evidence for the disease, HIV status and PCV vaccination status. Incidence rates and risk ratio assessments were conducted using standard statistical methods. Results Four-hundred and ninety-two episodes of tuberculosis arose amongst 425 of the 39 836 PCV Study participants. Tuberculosis incidence was 1067 per 100 000 children (95% Confidence Interval [CI], 968 – 1173), with the greatest burden observed amongst HIV-infected children (10 633 per 100 000 children [95% CI, 9411 – 11 969]; Risk Ratio [RR] 27.5 [95% CI, 22.6 – 33.5], P<0.001). The burden of PTB in the cohort was 982 cases per 100 000 children (95% CI, 887 – 1084): 9895 per 100 000 (95% CI, 8718 – 11 187) in the HIV-infected children and 352 per 100 000 (95% CI 294 – 417) in the HIV-uninfected children (RR 28.1; 95% CI, 22.9 – 34.6), P<0.001. PCV recipients exhibited a 44 percent (95% CI, 11 – 65), P=0.010, reduction in incident culture-confirmed PTB compared to placebo recipients; this apparent reduction was demonstrated chiefly in PCV-vaccinated HIV-infected children (RR 0.53; 95% CI, 0.31 – 0.90) compared to HIV-infected placebo recipients, P=0.017. Conclusions A high burden of tuberculosis is carried by children under 5.3 years in the study setting, with HIV-infected children bearing the brunt of the morbidity. Pneumococcal co-infections are common in the context of hospitalised PTB in the study setting.

In a demonstration study, Experiment I compared the naming cusp and capability for auditory, tactile, and olfactory stimuli with 6 preschool-aged children who demonstrated the naming capability for visual stimuli. Probes for listener and speaker responses were conducted following separate stimulus-stimulus pairings during which the experimenter presented a stimulus from one of the four modalities (i.e., visual, auditory, tactile, or olfactory) for the participant to observe, and named the stimulus. The names of the stimuli were counterbalanced, such that the names of each of the stimuli within each modality (e.g., visual modality) had different assigned names than the stimuli in the other modalities (e.g., auditory, tactile, and olfactory modalities). Four of the participants in Experiment I were typically developing and two participants were diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Five of the participants demonstrated full naming (i.e. the emission of untaught listener and speaker responses) for visual stimuli and at least 1other stimulus modality after 2 sessions of stimulus-stimulus pairings of stimuli and their names (i.e., naming experiences). One participant only demonstrated the listener half of naming for visual stimuli and did not demonstrate naming for any of the other stimulus modalities tested. Naming accrued for one or more stimulus modalities for five of the six participants after the second naming experience. Previous research investigating naming for a stimulus modality other than visual have demonstrated the acquisition of naming for auditory stimuli following stimulus-stimulus parings of visual stimuli with auditory stimuli presented with the same name. In Experiment II, I used a delayed repeated probe design across three dyads (five participants from Experiment I) to test the effects of repeated stimulus-stimulus pairings across visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory stimuli, presented simultaneously, with 1 name assigned for each modality set, on demonstrations of naming. In Experiment II the naming experiences consisted of the simultaneous presentation of four stimuli (i.e., visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory) while the experimenter labeled each stimulus while the participant observed. Five of the participants demonstrated overall increases in correct untaught speaker responses following the repeated stimulus-stimulus pairings. Some participants demonstrated decreases in correct responses across sessions, indicating certain stimuli elicited avoidance responses after repeated exposures. Five participants also demonstrated transfer of stimulus control from visual stimuli to one or more of the other stimulus modalities, indicating higher-order conditioning occurred. The findings provide further evidence for the differential development of naming across stimulus modalities for children with visual naming through stimulus-stimulus pairings.

There has a great deal of research regarding the positive social (prosocial) behaviors of young children. Children have been observed performing a number of different prosocial behaviors, including helping, showing, sharing, and responding to the distress of another. However, most of the previous research was conducted in laboratory settings. In order to describe the first manifestations of prosocial behaviors more accurately, research needs to be conducted in a natural setting. The purpose of the current study was to observe the origins of the prosocial behaviors of young children in a child development center. To accomplish this goal, a research team was assembled and pilot observations were made. Group meetings served as a forum for developing a coding system. The study included four observation periods over a six month span during which children's naturally occurring social interactions were videotaped. Thirty-seven children between the ages of 9 months and 3.5 years who attended a corporate affiliated child development center participated in the study. The first observation period included 37 children who were videotaped for an average of eighty-four minutes each. The three remaining observation periods included 21 children who were videotaped an average of ninety minutes each. Approximately 150 total hours of videotape were collected. In addition to developing a coding system, a reliability study was conducted. This study included 42 three-minute segments which were representative of the videotape that was collected. Also, all the behaviors under observation were included among these segments. The three newest members of the research team then coded the segments. Inter-observer agreement was assessed by computing percentage agreement and also by calculating Cohen's kappas. Repeated measures analysis of variance were performed to determine if there were differences between observers, across the age range of the children, or across the group activity that the children were involved in while being observed. Although there were no significant differences between kappa values, there were differences between the percentage agreements. The implications of these differences to the coding system is discussed and predictions pertaining to the frequency of pro social behavior are elaborated.

This research asked whether a contextual stimulus in a visual conditional discrimination task controlled membership in classes of stimuli related hierarchically. Six experiments with nonreading preschool children posed the following question: Does a stimulus juxtaposed with a conditional discrimination task control relations among the stimuli involved in the task? In Experiments I and II, printed instance or concept words were juxtaposed with conditional discrimination tasks involving symbols. Results for eight of nine children demonstrated neither conditional nor equivalence relations between words and symbols. Would conditional discrimination training establish classes of visual stimuli composed of selectively nonequivalent subsets? In Experiment III, subjects from the first two experiments were taught conditional relations, then tested for stimulus class development. Printed words that could have been related transitively were not, apparently due to interference by identical letters in certain words, so no stimulus classes developed. Would the equivalence relations sought in Experiment III develop without a history where printed words were unnecessary to conditional discrimination tasks? For Experiment IV-A, one experimentally naive child was taught the same conditional relations as Experiment III subjects. Two stimulus classes emerged, each containing two subsets that were selectively nonequivalent depending upon trial context. Are direct or transitive stimulus relations more likely to control responding? In experiment IV-B, the subject from Experiment IV-A expressed more direct than transitive relations on modified matching trials. Would interference by identical elements in words be precluded by training conditional relations among words directly? One child in Experiment V was taught conditional relations between concept words and instance words, and instance words and symbols. Results suggested that stimulus class development, which would have answered the question affirmatively, had begun but was incomplete. Would providing auditory labels for some printed words preclude interference by identical elements, allowing nonidentical words to be related transitively? In Experiment VI, one child was taught auditory labels for selected printed words, followed by the same visual conditional discrimination training provided in Experiment III. Two stimulus classes developed, requiring transitive and symmetric relations among printed words.