David Lasko

Brief Report: Autistic Children's Attentiveness and Responsivity Improve After Touch Therapy

Autism affects 2 to 5 of 10,000 children. Although once considered primarily psychiatric in nature, autism is now generally thought to be an organic defect in brain development. Characterized by a failure to develop language or other forms of social communication, symptoms of autism include (a) withdrawal from or failure to develop normal relationships with people; (b) abnormal responses to one or more types of sensory stimuli (usually sound); (c) atypical movement, including immobility and hyperkinesis; (d) limited attention span and excessive off-task behavior; and (e) touch aversion. A variety of therapies have been tried with autistic children including structured activities, behavior modification, sensorimotor, and sensory integrative approaches. Touch therapy may also be beneficial for autistic children. Previous studies, for example, have shown that touch therapy alleviated anxiety and decreased cortisol levels and depression in child psychiatric patients (Field et al., 1992). In another study, vagal activity increased during touch therapy (Field, 1990). Since increased vagal activity has been associated with increased attention span (Porges, 1991), touch therapy may reduce the off-task behavior noted in children with autism. This study investigated the effects of touch therapy on three problems commonly associated with autism including inattentiveness (off-task behavior), touch aversion, and withdrawal.

Touching in Infant, Toddler, and Preschool Nurseries

Observations were made in infant, toddler and preschool nurseries to establish baseline touching between children and their peers and teachers. Teachers were then asked to try to touch the children more frequently, and follow‐up observations were then conducted. Positive touch (including holding, hugging, kissing, hand‐holding, and caregiving) increased following this request to the teachers. Boys were touched in a positive way more frequently than girls, and progressively less positive touch was noted across ages from the infant to toddler to preschool nurseries. Carrying and caregiving in the nurseries were correlated with time spent holding by parents during end‐of‐day reunions. Teacher ratings of touch behavior were related to actual behavior, i.e. how often the teacher thought she touched the child was correlated with how often the child was actually touched, and how much the child liked being touched correlated with how much the child was touched during reunion with the parents.

Aging and transplant arteriosclerosis in absence of alloreactivity and immunosuppressive drugs in a rat aortic model: recipient age's contribution.

Background. Almost half of all transplanted vascularized organ grafts will be lost to transplant arteriosclerosis sometime posttransplantation. Organ shortage for primary transplants and retransplants has led to donor-pool expansion to include elderly donors, knowing that aging per se promotes arteriosclerosis. The current understanding that donor age negatively affects organ and/or patient survival outcome is undermined by variables such as the use of immunosuppressive drugs, their toxicity to the graft, degree of donor-recipient histocompatibility, and the resulting chronic rejection. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the donor’s age or recipient’s age matters the most in transplant arteriosclerosis in the absence of such variables. Methods. A syngeneic combination was used where young (2-month-old) and old (22-month-old) donor aortas were injured to initiate neointimal thickening, then transplanted into age-mismatched recipients for 14, 60, and 90 days and then assessed for neointimal thickening. Base level injury response due ischemia and surgery was evaluated in age-matched and noninjured aortic grafts, respectively. Results. Young aortas invariably developed thicker neointima when transplanted into old recipients than when transplanted into young ones. Correspondingly, old aortas transplanted in young recipients consistently developed less neointimal thickening than when transplanted into old recipients. Conclusions. Our findings strongly suggest that the severity of age-related neointima formation is primarily determined by the recipient’s age rather than the donor’s age. Therefore, in addition to focusing on donor-specific tolerance induction, strategies aiming at increasing the lifespan of vascularized organ grafts also have to take into consideration the recipient’s aging milieu.

Social anxiety and aggression in behaviorally disordered children

Thirty‐nine boys (M = 10 years) attending classes for the behaviorally disturbed were given questionnaires on trait anxiety, social anxiety, empathy, depression and self esteem, and teachers rated them on aggression to test the hypothesis that anxiety and empathy attenuate aggression. Contrary to the hypothesis, anxiety and empathy scores were not correlated with aggression. However, scores on all of these measures were higher than those for normative samples suggesting that this sample had a limited range. A second important finding was that social anxiety was positively correlated with trait anxiety and depression, lending discriminant and concurrent validity, respectively, for the use of a relatively new Social Anxiety Scale with behaviorally disturbed children.