Traumatic events at birth may interfere with the organization and interpretation of multiple stimuli. The residual effects of these events influence infants for the rest of their lives. Subtle cues that infants use to communicate their inability to organize information are often misinterpreted. / This study was conducted at a regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) follow-up clinic to investigate the impact of a stressful birth on infants' performance. Infants between the adjusted ages of 91 and 240 days were observed during three tasks that required integrating multiple stimuli, (a) a task of spatial perception, (b) a task intermodal representation of speech, and (c) a contingency learning task. / Seven birth status variables (gestational age, birthweight, adjusted age, length of ventilation, 5-minute Apgar scores, parent education and income levels) compiled from hospital records were compared to seven performance variables (reach, vision, smile, fuss, attention, speech, and contingency). Multiple regression analyses were applied to the data. / Findings from the study indicate that (a) mechanically ventilated infants were more irritable than non-ventilated infants, (b) infants from lower income families were fussier than infants from higher income families, (c) lower birthweight infants were more successful on the visual task than higher birthweight infants, (d) 5-minute Apgar scores were more predictive of infants success than 1-minute scores on the visual task, (e) older infants were more accurate during the reaching task than younger infants. There were marginal relationships between higher parental educational level and attention and adjusted age and smiling. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-03, Section: A, page: 0882. / Major Professor: Pearl E. Tait. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76368 |
| Contributors | Urquhart, Marilyn K., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 245 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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