Thesis (M.A.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2005. / Vita. "May 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves [[49]-52).

Thesis (M.A.T.S.)--Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 56-61).

Thesis (J.C.L.)--Catholic University of America, 1986. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-92).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2006. / Title from title screen. Cecelia Grindel, committee chair; Carol Howell, Patsy Ruchala, committee members. Electronic text (159 p. : ill. (some col.)) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed June 13, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 90-98).

BACKGROUND: Poor self-regulation during preschool and early school age years is associated with rapid weight gain. However, the association between self-regulatory capacities in infancy and weight status in early childhood has not been well studied. Objective: Examine prospective associations between infant self-regulation and body mass index (BMI) in early childhood. We hypothesized that infants exhibiting less optimal self-regulation would be at greater risk of obesity at 3–5 years of life. METHODS: We used data from 5750 children in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), excluding premature infants and infants small or large for gestational age. Our primary predictor was infant self-regulation measured at age 9 months by parent completion of the Infant Toddler Symptom Checklist (ITSC). We defined child obesity at preschool and kindergarten age (approximately 4 years and 5–6 years respectively) as a body mass index (BMI) ≥ 95th percentile for age and sex by US Centers for Disease Control growth charts. We created logistic regression models comparing risk of obesity at preschool and kindergarten age in infants with ITSC scores ≥ 6 to infants with scores < 6, controlling for covariates. RESULTS: Twenty-one percent of children with ITSC scores ≥ 6 at 9 months were obese at preschool age compared to 16% of children with lower ITSC scores. At kindergarten age this difference decreased to 18% vs. 16% respectively. After adjusting for covariates, infants with ITSC scores ≥ 6 had 32% increased odds of being obese at preschool age (aOR 1.32; 95% CI: 1.03, 1.70) though this association decreased at kindergarten age (aOR 1.07; 95% CI: 0.79, 1.45). CONCLUSIONS: Poor infant self-regulation at 9 months is associated with an increased risk of obesity at preschool entry but not at kindergarten entry. Helping parents manage and respond to children’s self-regulation difficulties prior to preschool age may serve as a focal point for future interventions. / 2016-12-01T00:00:00Z

M.Tech.

Phonetic perception becomes native-like by 10 months of age. A potential mechanism of change, distributional learning, affects the perception of 6-8-month-old infants (Maye et al., 2002). However, it was anticipated that perception may be more difficult to change by 10 months of age, after native categories have developed. In fact, some evidence suggests that by this age, the presence of social interaction may be an important element in infants’ phonetic change (Kuhl et al., 2003). The current work advances the hypothesis that infants’ level of attention, which tends to be higher with social interaction, may be a salient factor facilitating phonetic change. Three experiments were designed to test infants’ phonetic plasticity at 10 months, after phonetic categories have formed. A non-social distributional learning paradigm was chosen, and infants’ attention was monitored to probe whether a facilitating role would be revealed. In Experiment 1, 10-month-old English-learning infants heard tokens from along a continuum that is no longer discriminated at this age that formed a distribution suggestive of a category boundary (useful distinction). The results failed to reveal evidence of discrimination, suggesting that the distributional information did not have any effect. A second experiment used slightly different sound tokens, ones that are farther from the typical English pronunciation and are heard less frequently in the language environment. Infants still failed to discriminate the sounds following the learning period. However, a median split revealed that the high attending infants evinced learning. Experiment 3 increased the length of the learning phase to allow all infants to become sufficiently high attending, and revealed phonetic change. Thus, after phonetic categories have formed, attention appears to be important in learning. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

The continent of Africa is inhabited by about 270 million persons of whom about 60 million are Bantu. They dwell mainly south of the Equator. South African Bantu number about 11 million persons, of whom under a third are urbanised, and over a third each work on farms of Whites or live in the Native Reserves. These local Bantu are comprised of several ethnic groups, the largest of which are Zulu and Xhosa. While some communities of rural Bantu still live in a primitive manner. others, mainly in urban areas, tend progressively to adopt a westernised type of diet and manner of life. The Bantu may therefore be observed in all stages of transition, in relation to patterns of diet, metabolism, and pathology. The studies undertaken and to be described concern primarily the nutrition of infants and children, the prevalence of certain deficiency diseases, and the handicap imposed by parasitism on nutritional state and other parameters.

Icebergs - Why start a thesis thinking about icebergs? Death from medical conditions represents the tip of an iceberg. What causes death in some, will maim, injure or leave damaged in others. Death remains a parameter with which to measure part of the effect of a disorder on the mother or fetus. What will prevent mortality will prevent morbidity and it is largely towards the prevention of the latter that modern medicine is aimed.

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