Priming effect in children with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus.

Previous studies have evidenced cognitive difficulties across various domains in Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) children, but the implicit memory system has not yet been systematically explored.Taking into account that the interplay between memory and perception may be modulated by the semantic category of the stimuli and their salience, we explored explicit and implicit memory using both object and food stimuli to verify whether for T1DM children there is a feebleness in performing the function of memory as a function of the stimuli used.Eighteen T1DM children and 47 healthy children performed an explicit recognition task in which they were requested to judge whether the presented image had already been shown ("old") or not ("new") and an identification priming task in which they were asked to name new and old pictures presented at nine ascending levels of spatial filtering.Results did not reveal any differences between controls and T1DM children in the explicit memory recognition task, whereas some differences between the two groups were found in the identification priming task. In T1DM children, the priming effect was observed only for food images.The dissociation between implicit and explicit memory observed in children with diabetes seems to be modulated by the category of the stimuli, and these results underscore the relevance of taking into account this variable when exploring cognitive functions.

[Preoperatory anxiety in children: psychological evaluation of premedication and parental presence efficacy]. / Ansia preoperatoria del bambino: valutazione psicologica dell'efficacia della premedicazione e della presenza dei genitori.

OBJECTIVES: The induction of anaesthesia for surgery is a stressful event for child. To treat pre-operative anxiety in children pharmalogical methods (premedication) and behavioural methods (the presence of parents during the induction of anesthesia) are used in combination with each other. The purpose of this investigation was to study the effect of two interventions to alleviate preoperative anxiety of 39 children who are undergoing minor surgery. We studied the influence of some psichological and social characteristics of child and parents on operative period. METHODS: We studied 39 italian speaking children aged 2-14 years ASA 1. We used STAI, a semi structured interview, with questions in the social-demographical area, a valuation scale of the behaviour of the child completed by the anesthesist, a questionaire after surgery for the parent. The descriptive analysis has been performed taking into account the nature of variables (frequency distributions for nominal and ordinal variables; means and standard deviations for cardinal variables). RESULTS: The results show that the age of the child is strongly conditional to the level of stress: negative reactions are more usual in children of pre-school age. The sedative premedication is not an important factor in relieving anxiety, and this result contrasts with published studies, stating the premedication is more effective than presence of a parent. We obtained interesting results by relating the level of stress in the child with other variables: which parent, the level of stress according to the STAI, level of education, type of residence of parents. CONCLUSIONS: Mother's presence during induction resulted of paramount importance. This study shows that the premedication alone is not effective. Some social-demographical factors of the parents have influence.