Browsing by Author "White, Lauretta Vierus"
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Item Effects of elective induction of labor on the intellectual development of three- through five-year-old children(1967) White, Lauretta VierusElective induction refers to the voluntary initiation of labor when no medical or obstetrical reasons necessitate it. It was the purpose of this study to investigate the effects of elective induction on the intellectual development of young children and to determine if there was any difference between children whose birth was electively induced and children whose birth was spontaneous. The children, who were matched on the basis of age, sex, socioeconomic background, obstetrical history of the mother, maternal age, and parity, were tested on the Merrill-Palmer Scale of Mental tests. It was also of interest to search for differences in birth weight, length of labor, Apgar scores, and motor and verbal abilities between these two groups of children. The subjects in this study were 16 electively induced children and 16 matched control children who were born at either John Sealy Hospital or St. Mary's Hospital in Galveston, Texas during the period from September, 1960 through May, 1963. All subjects were normal, full term (i.e., over 2,500 grams) Caucasian babies. At the time of testing the children ranged from three through five years in age. Chi square tests of significance were calculated on the data. There was no significant difference in I.Q. scores on the Merrill-Palmer Scale of Mental tests between children who had been electively induced and children whose birth was spontaneous. Neither was there any significant difference in birth weight, length of labor, Apgar scores, and motor and verbal abilities among these children. There was a definite tendency for the child delivered after short induced labor to be brighter than the child delivered after short spontaneous labor; the difference, however, was not statistically significant in the present study which was handicapped by the small sample size. The results of this study suggest that elective induction of labor does not increase the risk of developmental, and intellectual deficits when the infant is mature and full term and under these conditions, elective induction is a safe and useful obstetrical procedure.Item Relationship between ordinal position and mental disorders(1968) White, Lauretta Vierus; Goolishian, Harold A.; Johnson, Dale L.This study was concerned with the relationship of ordinal position to mental illness. It was limited to subjects from two-child families. A group of subjects who were only children was used for comparative purposes. The sample consisted of 614 subjects from two-child families and 245 only-child subjects. The sample was limited to white, Anglo-Americans who had been reared in an intact family, who themselves were older than 10 and had no sibling younger than 10, and who had functional mental disorders. Information on age, sex, sibling position, sex of sibling, age-spacing, psychiatric diagnosis, marital status, I. Q., educational attainment, maternal age at subject's birth, and socioeconomic class of the subject and his family of origin was obtained from psychological records. Simple and three-way chi squares were computed on the data in this study. The major findings of this study were: 1. Birth order was significantly related to the incidence of mental disorders in the case of the two-child family, and there were significantly more firstborn than secondborn subjects. 2. When factors such as sex, social class, and age were controlled, the effect of birth order on the incidence of mental disorders was no longer significant. 3. In several instances, birth order interacted with such factors. Firstborn males in social class I significantly outnumbered secondborn males; firstborn females significantly differed from secondborn females in the age range of 31-40; firstborn females in the less than two year agespacing between sibs significantly outnumbered secondborn females. 4. With respect to differential diagnosis, the effect of birth order was significant only among females when age-spacing was greater than four years. Firstborns were overrepresented in the schizophrenic category while secondborns were most numerous in the transient situational personality disorders. 5. Firstborns had significantly higher I. Q.'s than secondborns. 6. There was no significant difference in educational attainment on the basis of birth order. 7. Firstborn women were overrepresented in the multimarried/divorced category. 8. Comparison of only, firstborn, and secondborn subjects revealed the only significant diagnostic difference was between secondborn and only-child males. Analysis showed only-child subjects predominated in the schizophrenic category while secondborns were more often transient situational personality disorders. 9. Supplementary findings of this study were that psychiatric diagnosis was significantly related to sex of the subjects in all groups and remained significant when age and social class were controlled. Females predominated in the psychoneuroses while males tended to be diagnosed as personality disorders. Subjects 35 and younger tended to be diagnosed as personality disorders and schizophrenics while those over 35 were more often psyconeurotics. 10. I. Q. was significantly correlated with educational attainment and social class. Educational attainment was found to be significantly related to social class and maternal age at subject's birth while marital status correlated with psychiatric diagnosis and marital age.