Weight Determines The Future Cognitive Development Of Children Born Very Premature

Researchers of the Department of Neuroscience and Health Sciences of the University of Almería and Hospital Torrecárdenas are carrying out an assessment of the physical neuropsychological characteristics of children born before 32 weeks\’ gestation or whose weight is lower than 1500 grams -very premature-. The main aim of this project, coordinated by M Dolores Roldán Tapia, from the UAL, is to accurately define the origin of brain damage, so as to stimulate the affected area early thus causing the adequate cognitive and motric development of the individual.

The commonest differences between premature babies and those born after a nine-month pregnancy are mainly related to visoperceptive skills, memory and movement which eventually translate into learning and spatial orientation difficulties. That is why these difficulties that these children have in their cognitive performance and the development of perceptual and executive functions are being studied.

A population sample of 35 very premature children is being taken for this project, together with the same number of healthy children, all of them born between 2000 and 2001, with their parents\’ authorisation. Special attention has been paid to the fact that both the children and their parents have similar educational and social levels, as the stimulation they get in the early stages of their lives has a decisive influence in their later development.

The results obtained so far reveal that the decisive variable for the existence of a reversible or irreversible brain damage is the baby\’s weight at birth, rather than the time of gestation. According to experts, an early stimulation of the individual\’s central nerve system, from birth until his complete cognitive development at 16 years of age, in foetuses whose weight at birth is over 1,500 gr. or who are very premature, will eventually get ideal cognitive levels. However, this stimulation must be continued throughout the whole development of babies whose weight is lower than 1,500 gr. so that they can get a proper brain maturity.

As a complement to this project, Alemeria-based researchers are developing an epidemiological study so as to set the percentage of very premature children who have brain damage against the total number of children born under the same characteristics between 2000 and 2001. This study is funded by Fundación para la Investigación Biosanitaria de Andalucía Oriental-Alejandro Otero (FIBAO, Alejandro Otero foundation for bio-health research in eastern Andalusia). Moreover, in collaboration with the University of Granada, experts are developing another line of research whose aim is to determine the existing relationship between visoperceptive skill deficit and the level of reasoning in very premature children.

In the near future, the team of researchers of the University of Almeria will be expanding their research and including new variables that may make a determining brain difference in very premature babies, like for example, the brain difference between babies born in natural multiple births and those with artificial techniques, or the interaction between pre-maturity and bad nutrition.
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Sexist Jokes Favor The Mental Mechanisms That Justify Violence Against Women

Sexist jokes (and all the variants of this kind of humour) favour the mental mechanisms which urge to violence and battering against women in individuals with macho attitudes. Those are the conclusions of a study carried out at the University of Granada, released in the framework of the world most renowned international symposium about humour and its scientific applications (\’International Summer School and Symposium on Humour and Laughter: Theory, Research and Applications\’) that will be held in Granada.

In order to carry out this research work, the scientists applied several questionnaires to a group of 109 university male students aged between 18 and 26 years old. They showed them two series of jokes, one of them with sexist jokes where women were denigrated and another one with common jokes, without any kind of sexist content. Next, the researchers proposed them several scenes with different cases of battering against women, from minor to serious attacks, to ask them how they would react in this kind of situation.

They are more tolerant with violence.

The work proved that those who had listened to sexist jokes were much more tolerant with male battering than those who had not, this is, that this kind of humour favours the mental mechanisms tolerant with violent behaviour towards women. However, the researchers warn those individuals affected by sexist humour showed a previous tendency to tolerate violence against women, as we can gather from a survey which weighed up sexist attitudes against women.

Some of the items of the scale used by the scientist to measure men\’s sexist attitudes were: «Deep down, feminist women intend women to be more powerful than men», «Most of the women do not fully appreciate what men do for them» or «There are many women who make sexual insinuations to men and later they reject their advances just to make fun of them».

Notes:
This work has been carried out by professors Mónica Romero-Sánchez, Mercedes Durán, Hugo Carretero Dios, Jesús L. Megías and Miguel Moya, of the departments of Social and Experimental Psychology of the University of Granada.
The results of this research work have been accepted to be published in the renowned US Journal of Interpersonal Violence.
Reference: Mónica Romero Sánchez. Department of Social Psychology of the University of Granada.
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