Browsing by Subject "Infants"
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Item Effects of parental divorce on children in relation to development and attachment style(2010-05) Cox, Sarah Elizabeth, 1982-; Rochlen, Aaron B.; Moore, Leslie A.Extensive research on the impact of divorce on children has been conducted. Much of this research emphasizes negative findings. Debate over the factors that exacerbate or alleviate these negative findings exists, and prompted investigation in this literature review. Two factors that may determine how children will react to parental divorce are the child's developmental acuity and attachment style at the time of the divorce event. This review explains developmental tasks from a psychosocial and cognitive perspective for developing children from birth to age 18. An understanding of these models can be used to examine how children may be vulnerable to the stresses in a divorcing family, as well as identifying how to help children of all ages become resilient. Research included in this review suggests that a secure attachment and consistent parenting are the best buffers from negative effects. This literature review is intended to be a guide to aid parents, counselors, and other professionals who seek the best outcome for children of divorce.Item Examining the role of social cues in early word learning(2007-05) Briganti, Alicia Marie, 1982-; Cohen, Leslie B.Infant word learning has become a popular field of study over the past decade. Research during this time has shown that infants can learn, in a short period of time, to attach words to objects. Two experiments on the role of social cues in early word learning are reported using tightly controlled conditions. Fourteen- and 18-month-old infants were trained by viewing a video of an adult pointing and nodding towards one of two different novel objects appearing on a screen simultaneously, while novel labels were emitted through a speaker. Infants’ looking times to each object were recorded both during training and test trials. Our analyses indicated that both 14-and 18-month-olds looked significantly longer at the object that the adult pointed to in the training trials. However, only 18-month-olds showed any evidence of looking longer at the target object during the test in the consistent condition than in the inconsistent (control) condition. These studies are important because they show, in a controlled laboratory study of infant word learning, that different types of social cues are available at different ages. Fourteen-month-olds are aware of adult pointing and head turning and can follow those cues to an object during training. However, it isn’t until 18 months of age that infants seem able to use those cues in the service of actual word learning.Item Making music in early childhood classrooms : design and implementation of an individualized teacher development program(2018-01-23) Moore, Caroline Westbrook; Duke, Robert A.; Jellison, Judith A. (Judith Anne), 1940-; Scott, Laurie P; Pence, Suzanne M; Simmons, Amy L.; Schroeder-Arce, RoxanneAt present there are no nationally agreed-upon training requirements for early childhood teachers who work in preschools and day care centers. Credentialing requirements vary widely from state to state, among institutions, and among school classifications, and required credentials range from a Master’s degree for some to the completion of a single orientation, course, or Child Development Associate (CDA) certificate for others (Cryer, Clifford, & National Center for Early Development & Learning, 2003). Additionally, typical Early Childhood Education degrees or certifications offer little or no music training, even though many graduates of these programs will eventually be responsible for teaching music as part of their professional responsibilities. A 2006 national survey regarding music in accredited early childhood centers revealed that 79% of classroom teachers were responsible for leading music in their classrooms (Nardo, Custodero, Persellin, & Fox, 2006). Non-musician teachers who engage in music-making with children require not only musical skills, but also the ability to structure and lead music experiences successfully. Previous studies suggest that a combination of hands-on practice, observation, and the development of self-efficacy are fundamental aspects of competence in any domain (Hodges & Coppola, 2015; Shea, Wright, Wulf, & Whitacre, 2000; Wulf & Lewthwaite, 2009). This combination of factors has yet to be explored with early childhood teachers and music; it is unclear whether workshops, training, or observations result in the development of teacher ability, or whether other personal characteristics play a larger role. This paper describes a semester long in-service early childhood teacher development program in music, including the program’s development and implementation and the experiences of the early childhood teachers who participated. The program included individualized goal setting, peer-learning opportunities, self-assessment, and in-class mentorship while teaching music to young children. Qualitative and quantitative data from participant questionnaires, observations, video recordings, and personal interviews provide a picture of the teachers’ learning, their music-making with children, their experiences in the program, and their plans for continuing to develop the musical environment of their classrooms. Reflections include recommendations for future in-service teacher development programs in early childhood music.Item Manipulating spatial frequency to understand global and local information processing in 7-month-old infants(2009-08) Gora, Keith Matthew; Cohen, Leslie B.It has been shown that infants build representations of their visual world by forming relations among its parts. However little is known about how they select the parts to relate. One possibility is that while constructing their visual world part by part they are also decomposing it, using finer and finer parts. One way to test this theory is to simply control the parts infants see. This easiest way to do this is to filter real life objects of their high and low spatial frequencies. High spatial frequencies provide information about the smaller parts where as low spatial frequencies provide information about the larger ones. By removing high or low spatial frequency we can control the coarseness of their representation and ultimately determine the level at which they function best. The present study examined infants’ ability to use high and low spatial frequencies to discriminate between objects. Infants were habituated and tested using a combination of high and low spatial frequency images. Only infants experiencing a consistent spatial frequency across habituation and test were able to discriminate between objects. Infants were also better at discriminating between objects containing high spatial frequencies. In a second study designed to be more true to life, infants were habituated to broadband images and tested using high or low spatial frequencies. This time infants did not discriminate between objects but they did look longer at low spatial frequency information than at the high. From these findings we can conclude that infants use both high and low spatial frequency information when discriminating objects, and that in certain cases one frequency may become more important than the other. The spatial frequency they use may be dependent on the context of the task. Numerous studies have shown that adults prioritize high and low spatial frequency information depending on how fast they want to process the object, the amount of detail they require, and whether they used high or low spatial frequency information during previous experiences. Infants may be similar. At times they may emphasize low spatial frequency information and the big picture. At other times they may emphasize high spatial frequency information and the detail. More studies examining how infants select information for processing are necessary and spatial frequency will likely to be an important tool in the investigation.Item Nurse-midwife provided postnatal newborn care recommendations in Eldoret, Kenya : a rapid focused ethnographic assessment(2019-06-28) Reid, Davika Deon; García, Alexandra Anne, 1964-; Chelagat, Dinah; Gulbas, Lauren E; Mercer, Timothy I; Walker, Lorraine O; Zuniga, Julie AThe purpose of this study was to describe the newborn care recommendations that nurse-midwives provide to mothers and other caretakers before discharge in Western Kenya, and explore the factors that may influence the content and provision of the care recommendations. This rapid, focused, ethnographic assessment was guided by Leininger's culture care theory as an orienting framework. The study was conducted on the postnatal ward at a publicly-funded, tertiary-level referral hospital and university-level nursing school from November to December 2018. Data were collected via participant observation; 24 semi-structured interviews in English, with purposive sampling of nursing and medical staff, hospital administrators, and maternal-child nursing faculty directly involved in newborn care; collection of relevant documents; and researcher-generated fieldnotes. Data were analyzed using qualitative thematic analysis to identify key themes. The study found that nurse-midwives counseled on exclusive breastfeeding for six months, umbilical cord care, follow-up examinations and immunizations, and select danger signs and care-seeking. Most recommendations were provided orally, however some were written in English with some use of medical terminology by the nurse-midwife or medical personnel before being reviewed with the caretakers by the nurse-midwives. The content and provision of recommendations were influenced by six themes: prioritization of maternal health, the baby is not sick, ward congestion, staff shortage, heavy workload, and other approved providers. The findings support evidence that broad national- and ward-level policies influenced the staff of the postnatal ward to focus on maternal and sick newborn health while also managing ward congestion, staff shortages, and heavy workloads. To address neonatal mortality in the community via comprehensive provision of evidence-based guidelines, the content and consistency regarding the recommendations that are provided prior to discharge should be improved. Study findings can be used to inform policy changes to address clinical, administrative, educational, and regulatory interventions such as appropriate postnatal staffing ratios and newborn practice competency to improve the quality of nursing care for well-newborns. This study reveals issues to be explored in larger studies of nurse-midwives’ roles and the sociocultural and economic influences that affect provision of well-newborn care recommendations.Item Parental reactions to infants' and toddlers' negative emotions : parenting antecedents and child outcomes(2011-05) Frankel, Leslie Ann, 1984-; Hazen, Nancy Lynn; Jacobvitz, Deborah; Langlois, Judith; Anderson, Edward; Boyd-Soisson, ErinThe present study provides information about the relationships between parental reactions to their children‘s expression of negative emotions at 8 months, parent-infant attachment at 12 and 15 months and parental reactions to children‘s negative emotional expressions at 24 months, and as well as the extent to which all of these variables predict children‘s emotional expressivity as toddlers at 24 months, after controlling for infant emotional reactivity. Analyses showed that parental responses to infant negative emotions, insecure attachment and parental responses to toddlers‘ negative emotions as well as infant emotional reactivity all made independent contributions to predicting toddler negative (vs. positive) affect. Only insecure infant-parent attachment, not parental socialization or infant emotional reactivity, predicted toddler flat (vs. expressive) affect. The inclusion of fathers in this study is important not only to clarify how mothers and fathers differ in socializing their children‘s negative emotions, but also to have a more complete study of how emotional expressivity develops. Analyses conducted separately by parent gender revealed differences in the relationship between parental socialization, attachment and emotional expressivity across mothers and fathers, indicating that researchers should continue to include fathers in studies of socialization of emotional expressivity.Item Parents’ joint attachment representations and caregiving : the moderating role of marital quality(2017-06-23) Poulsen, Helen Bech; Jacobvitz, DeborahThis study examined how mothers’ and fathers’ joint attachment representations, assessed prenatally, predict parent’s caregiving behavior with their 8-month olds. Adults’ representations of their relationships with their parents during childhood have been shown to influence the quality of care they provide their infants. Also, the attachment statuses of both partners in a couple, considered jointly, have been associated with the couple’s marital quality. Less is known about the effect of couples’ joint attachment representations on their individual caregiving quality. The influence of the spouse’s attachment security on a parent’s caregiving might be direct via modeling. It is also possible that sensitive care provided by the spouse will motivate an insecure parent to reflect on negative experiences during his or her own childhood, thus enabling that parent to provide more sensitive care with his or her own child. The spouses’ joint attachment status might also affect marital quality, which in turn could influence caregiving. Direct associations between couples’ joint attachment status and each parent’s caregiving quality as well as the extent to which marital quality moderates relations between parents’ joint attachment security and their caregiving behaviors were examined. Participants were followed over the transition to first-time parenthood and included 116 families. Prenatally, each parent was administered the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). To assess their marital quality, couples were videotaped for 30 minutes discussing sources of disagreement. When infants were 8 months old, mothers and fathers were videotaped separately for 30 minutes each playing, feeding and changing their infant’s clothes, to assess caregiving quality. Based in their AAI scores, couples were placed into an attachment pairing group: Secure-Secure, mother Secure-father Insecure, mother Insecure-father Secure, and Insecure-Insecure. Results indicated mothers’ caregiving was not affected by pairing, but father’s was. Marital quality also differed by pairing. No moderation was found through the interaction of marital quality and attachment pairings predicting parents’ caregiving. Findings underscore the value of looking at joint rather than individual attachment representations when examining the relation of parents’ attachment representations to fathers’ caregiving during infancy and marital quality.