No description available.

Fourteen-month-old infants raised in a monolingual English environment confuse phonetically similar words in a word-object association task (Stager & Werker, 1997); however, older infants, who are more proficient at word learning, do not (Werker, Corcoran, Fennell, & Stager, 2000). This temporary confusion of phonetic detail occurs despite the fact that 14- month-old infants still have the ability to discriminate native language phonemes in speech perception tasks not involving word learning. Therefore, it has been hypothesized that 14- month-olds fail because linking words to objects is difficult at the beginning stages of word learning, leaving infants with insufficient attentional resources to listen closely to the words. Extending this hypothesis to infants raised in a bilingual environment generates two possibilities. (1) Bilingual infants will not show the temporary deficit at 14 months. As a function of growing up with two languages, they will have already developed a greater awareness of the sounds of words because more detail is needed to discriminate words in two languages. (2) Bilingual infants will perform at least as poorly as infants being raised with only English because of the cognitive load of learning two languages. Bilingual infants of 14 months were tested in the word-object association task using the phonetically similar labels 'bih' and 'dih' paired with two distinct and colourful moving objects. Following habituation, infants were tested on their ability to detect a 'switch' in the word-object pairing. Bilingual language exposure was assessed with a structured parental interview. The 16 infants included in the sample had been exposed to two languages from birth and had at least 30% exposure to one language and no more than 70% to the other. The results showed that, like the monolingual-learning infants of the same age, the 14-month-old bilingual-learning infants confused similar sounding words. These data are consistent with the cognitive load hypothesis, and argue against the proposition that early bilingual exposure facilitates metalinguistic awareness. Future research with slightly older bilingual word learners who have reached the age at which monolingual infants can successfully learn phonetically similar words will help to clarify if these bilingual infants maintain, or diverge from, a monolingual pattern of development.

Previous research has revealed that very young infants discriminate most speech contrasts with which they are presented whether the contrasts are native or non-native while adults have difficulty discriminating non-native speech contrasts but easily discriminate those contrasts holding meaningful (phonemic) status in their native language. Several studies have shown that this reorganization in phonetic perception from language-general perception to language-specific perception occurs at about 10 to 12 months: infants this age attend only to native phonemic contrasts. It is of interest to determine if exposure to a phonetic variant plays an important role in influencing perception. We know from previous research that absence of exposure does not always lead to a lack of discrimination. This thesis was designed to determine if exposure per se maintains discriminability. To this end English-speaking adults and infants were tested using a phonetic distinction that does not hold phonemic status in English but does occur in English. This distinction involves the phonetic variants [da] and the stop produced following /s/ transcribed as [ta]. When tested in an identification procedure, English-speaking adults identify both [da] and (s)[ta] as members of one English phonemic category (i.e. [da]). When tested in a discrimination procedure and a category change procedure, adults discriminate (s) [ta] from [da] (albeit not as well as would be expected for a native phonemic contrast). With respect to infants, 6- to 8-month-olds discriminate this distinction revealing further support for broad-based phonetic perception at this age. However, 10- to 12-month-old infants do not discriminate, suggesting that the native phonemic status of the contrast (but not exposure) is the important factor in the reorganization. Discussion centers around how these results add to the existing literature and why infants of 10- to 12-months would fail to discriminate a native phonetic distinction.

Background: The amount of parenteral protein to produce nitrogen balance in infants diagnosed with severe heart defects undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass surgery was investigated. Methods: Infants born at ≥36 weeks and ≤ 12 months of age were randomized to one of three parenteral protein intakes, the control group received 1.5 g/kg/d and intervention groups received either, 2.2 or 3.0 g/kg/d of protein, respectively. Timed 24 hour urine collections were obtained for three consecutive days following surgery. Total urinary nitrogen was measured through Kjeldahl analysis. Results: A significant difference was demonstrated between the lowest protein intake level of 1.5 g/kg/d and both 2.2 g/kg/d (p ≤ 0.03) and 3.0 g/kg/d (p ≤ 0.001), on study day 1. Nitrogen balance results were 4.0 ± 52.9 (1.5 g/kg/d), 97.0 ± 96.2 (2.2 g/kg/d) and 149.7 ± 90.9 (3.0 g/kg/d). Conclusion: Protein delivery of 1.5 g/kg/d was insufficient to produce nitrogen balance on post-operative day 1.

"Infant Mortality Rate" (IMR), is an important socio-economic indicator which measures an important dimension of the well-being of any society. For the developing and less developed countries of the world, Infant Mortality Rates are much higher than those in the developed countries. This research aims to study IMR in India, a country which achieved considerable growth in industrial and agricultural sectors during the post-independence era, but which still has a relatively high level of IMR. Different formulations for measuring IMR are given and work done by different searchers in this area are reviewed in this study. Indicators of the variables affecting IMR are chosen, a time series regression model is estimated by ordinary least squares, and the results discussed. A cross-section analysis of the states in India is also attempted. The results of these analyses, concur quite well with other studies done for countries in similar stages of economic development.

Background: The amount of parenteral protein to produce nitrogen balance in infants diagnosed with severe heart defects undergoing cardiopulmonary bypass surgery was investigated. Methods: Infants born at ≥36 weeks and ≤ 12 months of age were randomized to one of three parenteral protein intakes, the control group received 1.5 g/kg/d and intervention groups received either, 2.2 or 3.0 g/kg/d of protein, respectively. Timed 24 hour urine collections were obtained for three consecutive days following surgery. Total urinary nitrogen was measured through Kjeldahl analysis. Results: A significant difference was demonstrated between the lowest protein intake level of 1.5 g/kg/d and both 2.2 g/kg/d (p ≤ 0.03) and 3.0 g/kg/d (p ≤ 0.001), on study day 1. Nitrogen balance results were 4.0 ± 52.9 (1.5 g/kg/d), 97.0 ± 96.2 (2.2 g/kg/d) and 149.7 ± 90.9 (3.0 g/kg/d). Conclusion: Protein delivery of 1.5 g/kg/d was insufficient to produce nitrogen balance on post-operative day 1.

No description available.

It is generally acknowledged that infants born very preterm are at a high risk of developmental delay. It has been suggested that the first few months of life ex-utero might constitute a "sensitive period" during which growth rate could influence later outcome measures including cognitive development. This study investigated the early growth of a sample of 90 infants born very preterm and the developmental status (at 18 months of age) of 81 of those infants (mean gestational age 29.4 weeks; mean birth weight 1283g). Two main issues were addressed. One concerned the relative contribution of various early infant, maternal and medical factors to rate of growth up to 3-months corrected age. The other issue was the extent to which these early factors, as well as early growth rate, were predictive of developmental status at 18 months of age (again corrected for gestation), using the Mental Development Index of the Bayley Scales. Analyses revealed that there were few significant predictors of early growth among the variables that were examined. Infants who had required more intensive medical care during the neonatal period showed a slower growth rate than the more robust infants. Breast-fed infants grew slower from birth to term, but thereafter grew significantly better, resulting in no discernable difference over the whole 5-7 month period. None of the infant behavioural, maternal or social variables examined appeared to be related to early growth. Infants who were born lighter-for-gestation grew faster than the infants who were heavier for gestational age. At the 18-month follow-up assessment this very preterm sample performed poorly overall in comparison to published norms for full term infants. When regression analyses were performed, weight at 3-months of age was found to be predictive of developmental status at 18-months (even when concurrent weight was taken into account), whereas actually being born growth retarded was not found to be a risk factor for poorer developmental outcome. This supports the concept of a "sensitive period" during the first few months of life, when growth rate may influence developmental outcome. Other significant predictors of developmental outcome were gender, early brain scan and mean parental height.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether young infants would differentiate sedative vocal music in their mother tongue versus sedative vocal music in a foreign language. It was hypothesized that if infants did discriminate between the two languages, they would demonstrate a preference for their mother tongue. The responses of ten one- to four-day-old full-term infants were recorded by measuring their sucking rate while presenting lullabies. The infants were randomly and evenly divided into two groups. The first group heard four presentations of the mother tongue version followed by four presentations of the foreign language version. The second group heard the foreign language version of a lullaby followed by the same lullaby sung in the infant's mother tongue. A 5-second interval of silence was spaced between lullabies. The lullaby chose was Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It was performed by a classically trained soprano, in English, French, and Italian, and Russian. Russian was chosen as the foreign language and English, French, and Italian covered the mother tongues for all infants in the study. / Results revealed that infants were not able to detect a difference between the mother tongue version of the lullaby as opposed to the foreign language version. However, the results of the present study may be attributed to an insufficient sample size and to the ineffectiveness of the methodology employed.