Montreal Children's Hospital

About: Montreal Children's Hospital is a healthcare organization based out in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 3842 authors who have published 4816 publications receiving 200198 citations.

Developmental changes in pain expression in premature, full-term, two- and four-month-old infants.

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine the behavioural responses of infants to pain stimuli across different developmental ages. Eighty infants were included in this cross-sectional design. Four subsamples of 20 infants each included: 1. (1) premature infants between 32 and 34 weeks gestational age undergoing heel-stick procedure; 2. (2) full-term infants receiving intramuscular vitamin K injection; 3. (3) 2-month-old infants receiving subcutaneous injection for immunisation against DPT; 4. (4) 4-month-old infants receiving subcutaneous injection for immunisation against DPT. Audio and video recordings were made for 15 sec from stimulus. Cry analysis was conducted on the first full expiratory cry by FFT with time and frequency measures. Facial action was coded using the Neonatal Facial Action Coding System (NFCS). Results from multivariate analysis showed that premature infants were different from older infants, that full-term newborns were different from others, but that 2- and 4-month-olds were similar. The specific variables contributing to the significance were higher pitched cries and more horizontal mouth stretch in the premature group and more taut tongue in the full-term newborns. The results imply that the premature infant has the basis for communicating pain via facial actions but that these are not well developed. The full-term newborn is better equipped to interact with his caretakers and express his distress through specific facial actions. The cries of the premature infant, however, have more of the characteristics that are arousing to the listener which serve to alert the caregiver of the state of distress from pain.

Social Skills Training for Adolescents with Asperger Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism

Abstract: The effectiveness of a social skills training group for adolescents with Asperger syndrome and high-functioning autism (AS/HFA) was evaluated Parents of six groups of adolescents (n = 46, 61% male, mean age 146) completed questionnaires immediately before and after the 12-week group Parents and adolescents were surveyed regarding their experience with the group Significant pre- to post-treatment gains were found on measures of both social competence and problem behaviors associated with AS/HFA Effect sizes ranged from 34 to 72 Adolescents reported more perceived skill improvements than did parents Parent-reported improvement suggests that social skills learned in group sessions generalize to settings outside the treatment group Larger, controlled studies of social skills training groups would be valuable

Reaction Time Distribution Analysis of Neuropsychological Performance in an ADHD Sample

Abstract: Differences in reaction time (RT) variability have been documented between children with and without Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Most previous research has utilized estimates of normal distributions to examine variability. Using a nontraditional approach, the present study evaluated RT distributions on the Conners’ Continuous Performance Test in children and adolescents from the Multimodal Treatment Study of ADHD sample compared to a matched sample of normal controls (n = 65 pairs). The ex-Gaussian curve was used to model RT and RT variability. Children with ADHD demonstrated faster RT associated with the normal portion of the curve and a greater proportion of abnormally slow responses associated with the exponential portion of the curve. These results contradict previous interpretation that children with ADHD have slower than normal responding and demonstrate why slower RT is found when estimates of variability assume normal Gaussian distributions. Further, results of this study sugg...