The perception of passive joint-movements by cerebral-palsied children

Luce's choice theory provided the psychophysical basis for investigating the ability of cerebral-palsied children to detect passive movement of the elbow joint. The method included testing "yes" responses when the forearm was moved, and "false-alarm" responses of "yes" when no arm movement had occurred. The children were tested with their eyes closed. The results showed that, in general, the children with spastic cerebral palsy had no deficits, or only very minor ones, in passive movement sensation. In contrast, the athetoid children had considerable deficits. It is suggested that the athetoid child is affected by a continuous barrage of irrelevant proprioceptive information and so finds difficulty in discriminating any particular proprioceptive cue.

Stimulus persistence in retarded and nonretarded children: a signal detection analysis

Nine institutionalized EMR and 9 equal-CA nonretarded children were tested on a visual backward masking task. Signal detection analysis was used to separate the sensory and nonsensory aspects of behavior, and the presentation of stimuli was randomized to minimize the formation of effective strategies. Two sets of instructions, strict and lenient, and two stimulus durations, 10 and 30 msec, were used in a repeated measure design. No differences were found between the intelligence groups on interstimulus interval threshold or measures of stimulus sensitivity, criterion placement, and false positive rate. Retarded subjects showed significantly greater intersubject variability in criterion placement but failed to raise their criterion in response to strict instructions. The results suggest that (a) stimulus-trace concepts of retardation have been confounded by retarded subjects' inability to compete effectively with nonretarded subjects in the experimental situation, and (b) signal detection procedures are a useful alternative to traditional psychophysical techniques in such comparative research.

Spatial perception in the blind

It is often that the spatial senses (vision, hearing and the tactual senses) operate as distinct and independent modalities and, moreover, that vision is crucial to the development of spatial abilities. However, well controlled studies of blind persons with adequate experience show that they can function usefully in space. In other words, vision is not a necessary condition for spatial awareness. On the other hand, thought the blind may be equal or even superior to the sighted when performing spatial tasks within the body space, they may be deficient, either developmentally or absolutely, in tasks which involve events at a distance from the body, principally in auditory localization. One possible explanation of the differences between blind and sighted (McKinney, 1964; Attneave & Benson, 1969, Warren, 1970) is that vision is the primary spatial reference, and inputs from other modalities are fitted to a visual map. Several criticisms of this theory are adduced and an alternative theory derived from Sherrington (1947), in which all sensory inputs map on to efferent patterns, is sketched.

What Do Notterman and Page (1962) show? A Reply to Notterman

Notterman (1975) argued, contrary to my 1974 article, that the data obtained by Notterman and Page (1962) confirm the important role of proprioception in skilled performance. I argue that these data are in fact ambiguous when it comes to distinguishing the effects of proprioception from those of outflow control.

Recurrent urinary infections in girls: relation to enuresis

Maximum bladder capacities (MBC) have been studied in 89 girls receiving treatment for urinary infections at a time when the infection had been controlled. Fifty-six of the girls had been enuretic when first seen, 40 remained enuretic even when the infection had been cured. The MBC's of the enuretic children were significantly smaller than those who were not or had not been enuretic. The enuresis and small bladder capacities were therefore not usually due to the urinary infection. It is concluded that in girls either enuresis predisposes towards the development of urinary infections, or that a common underlying pathology predisposes to both entities.

A bookshelf in public health, medical care, and allied fields

This bibliography of nonserial publications consists of 610 annotations. It is intended as a guide to the development of a collection for librarians and for health professionals in research and education. References are mostly to publications from 1960. Titles are in English. Both primary and secondary sources are cited.

Halstead's Category Test and lateralized brain damage

Left-hemisphere-damaged (with Verbal IQ deficits) and right-hemisphere-damaged (with Performance IQ deficits) male, adult patients were compared on Halstead Category Test Performance. Deficits of approximately the same magnitude were found. These results and other evidence question the importance of language mediation on nonverbal, visual-spatial abstracting tests.

Treatment of terminal renal failure in children by home dialysis and transplantation

Eleven children, aged 6 to 17 years, suffering from irreversible renal failure, were treated by regular haemodialysis. This was preparatory to renal transplantation in 6 children. During periods of 8 to 26 months none of these patients have died. Both regular haemodialysis and transplantation present unsolved problems. With dialysis, the relation between the diet, amount of dialysis, growth, and sexual development have still to be worked out. With transplantation, better ways of achieving good and controlled immunosuppression must be found. In both types of treatment, the psychological and social trauma to both the patients and their families must be evaluated and treated.