Children's Ability to Describe Past Event Develops Over Time

In the first study to examine how children talk about the time-related features of their experiences--when, how often, in what order events occur--researchers have found intriguing changes as children grow older. The study’s findings may have implications for understanding these aspects of cognitive development as well as for questioning child witnesses and victims.
The study was conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the University of Cambridge. It appears in the July/August 2007 issue of the journal Child Development.

The researchers analyzed forensic interviews of 250 four- to 10-year-old children who were alleged victims of sexual abuse, focusing on the kinds of references to time they made when describing these real-life events.

The children made increasing numbers of references to time-related characteristics of experienced events as they grew older, the researchers found. However, witnesses under 10 seldom mentioned specific times or dates, or what happened before reported events or actions. There were dramatic increases to such references at the age of 10.

References to the sequence of events or parts of events were most common, and their increase with age may be related to children’s developing capability to elaborate. Children were more likely to mention time spontaneously when asked to recall what happened than when they were asked specific recognition questions. This is pertinent because information retrieved from memory by recall is much more likely to be accurate than information retrieved in response to questions that ask children to select among options offered by the interviewer (such as “Did he …"” or “Was it x or y"”).

The children remembered the times of past events by making references to clock times, events that occurred in the same time frame, or the calendar, the researchers found. While older children were capable of using both short- and long-scale time patterns (such as time of day and day of the month), younger children mostly referred to short-scale time patterns (such as time of day), or they anchored the events to familiar activities (such as “when I returned from school”).

These findings have important implications for forensic interviews, where the ability to provide information about the number of incidents, the time of occurrences, and the sequence of events may allow suspected victims and witnesses to define specific episodes of allegedly experienced crimes. This ability increases children’s competence as witnesses and the prospect that their cases will be pursued in the criminal justice system. In addition, awareness that children acquire some temporal skills late in their development may discourage attempts to discredit child witnesses when they fail to provide the requested time-related information.

“By helping forensic interviewers to recognize children’s capabilities and limitations, our findings may also encourage interviewers to seek essential temporal information using age-appropriate techniques,” according to Yael Orbach, staff scientist at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the study’s lead author.

Bookmark http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/ and drop back in sometime.

Nursing Home Placement Associated with Accelerated Cognitive Decline in Alzheimer’s Disease

People with Alzheimer’s disease experience an acceleration in the rate of cognitive decline after being placed in a nursing home according to a new study by the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center. The study, published in the June issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, finds that prior experience in adult day care may lessen this association.

The observational study involved 432 older persons with Alzheimer’s disease who were recruited from health care settings in the Chicago area. At baseline, they lived in the community and 196 participants were using day care services from two to six days a week for an overall mean of 1.7 days a week. At six month intervals for up to four years, they completed nine cognitive tests from which a composite measure of global cognition was derived.

On average, cognition declined at a gradually increasing rate for all participants. During the study period, 155 persons were placed in a nursing home, and placement was associated with a lower level of cognition and more rapid cognitive decline.

Study participants who had previous adult day care experience fared better. As level of day care use at study onset increased, the association of nursing home placement with accelerated cognitive decline substantially decreased. Thus, people using day care 3 to 4 days a week at the beginning of the study showed no increase in cognitive decline upon nursing home placement.

“The findings suggest that experience in day care may help individuals with Alzheimer’s disease make the transition from the community to institutional residence,” says study author Robert Wilson, a neuropsychologist at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center.

The study also found that a higher level of education was associated with accelerated cognitive decline upon nursing home placement. Yet, day care use markedly reduced the association of education with accelerated cognitive decline in the nursing home; further evidence that there is a robust association between day care experience and cognition during the transition to a nursing home.

The authors considered the possibility that nursing home placement is simply a sign of increased severity of Alzheimer’s disease. Yet, the nursing-home-related increase in cognitive decline was observed even after simultaneous control for cognitive and noncognitive indicators of dementia severity at the time of nursing home entry.

Alternatively, the increased cognitive decline upon placement may reflect difficulty adapting to an unfamiliar environment, consistent with clinical reports of increased confusion and behavior problems in those with dementia during acute hospitalization or trips away from home. Patients who had prior adult day care services may have been better able to adjust to the unfamiliar environment.

“The findings suggest that the transition from the community to a nursing home is particularly difficult for people with Alzheimer’s disease and that those planning for their care should consider the possibility that experience in adult day care programs may help prepare affected persons for institutional living,” says Wilson.

The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes on Aging, which leads the federal effort supporting and conducting research on aging and the medical, social and behavioral issues of older people, including Alzheimer’s disease and age-related cognitive decline.


Bookmark http://universeeverything.blogspot.com/ and drop back in sometime.