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- Creators: Crnic, Keith
- Creators: Department of Psychology
- Creators: Gunnare, Chrystina Jean
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Description
The Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) was created in 1991 with the goal to provide support and education to mothers on breastfeeding in order to increase the rate and duration of breastfeeding across the world. Despite being around for over 20 years, it has only been successfully incorporated into 245 hospitals in the United States as of 2015. Due to the many benefits this initiative brings to mothers, infants, and the hospitals themselves as well as being shown to increase the incidence, duration, and exclusivity of breastfeeding, the goal of this project was to create a mother friendly brochure sharing this. The brochure was created in order to spread the word of the BFHI to expecting mothers so that they are informed and able to use this information to not only improve their own child-birthing experience but also push for implementation in their delivering facilities. The brochure covers additional topics such as breastfeeding benefits and tips, lactation resources, and steps to incorporate into their own hospital stay if outside of a BFHI facility in order to get a few of the benefits that the Baby Friendly Initiative provides. The brochure was tested for clarity, effectiveness, and for overall reactions in a study conducted at a local women's clinic surveying expectant mothers through the use of a short survey. These results were used to make minor improvements to the brochure before moving on to plans of how to disseminate the brochure to more clinics within the Phoenix area. The dissemination of this brochure will share this important information with women of childbearing age and hopefully lead to greater knowledge and progress towards improved maternal and neonatal outcomes.
ContributorsGunnare, Chrystina Jean (Author) / Whisner, Corrie (Thesis director) / Bever, Jennie (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Nutrition and Health Promotion (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Many stressors today are psychological rather than physical and are influenced by the brain's perception of the stressor. The peripartum period is a particularly volatile time that is susceptible to new and stronger stressors. This current study investigates the relationship between self-reported perceived stress levels and physiological cortisol reactivity levels in new mothers at the 12-week postpartum time point. In addition, it examines the relationship between the mother and infants' physiological cortisol reactivity levels at 12-weeks postpartum. This current study is part of a longitudinal study and assessed these two correlations for 181 mother-infant dyads from a low income Mexican American population. The self-reported stress levels were assessed using the 4-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and the cortisol reactivity data was gathered using four salivary cortisol samples taken from both mother and infant surrounding 5 interaction tasks and analyzed using Area Under the Curve with respect to ground (AUCg). Unexpectedly, the results found no correlation between perceived and physiological stress levels in the mothers, with a Pearson correlation of 0.114 and a p-value of 0.129. However, there was a positive correlation between mother and infant cortisol reactivity, with a correlation of 0.632 and a p-value less than 0.0001. This early postpartum period plays a significant role in developing HPA axis regulation for infants and developing productive mother-infant interactions. The physiological and psychological risks of chronically elevated stress for both mothers and children were addressed in this study as well, with implications for means to address and mitigate potential cortisol dysregulation.
ContributorsRegan, Emily Nicole (Author) / Washo-Krupps, Delon (Thesis director) / Crnic, Keith (Committee member) / Hanna, Mariam (Committee member) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
According to Jean Piaget, a prominent cognitive development psychologist in 1954, infants should have an understanding of object permanence at 12 months of age. Current research has backed this idea and shown that children younger than 2 years of age understand object permanence- shown through their increased looking times to inconsistent displays in which a moving object appears to have fallen through a solid shelf. However, current research used active search tasks with 2 year olds and found that they failed to search for the object consistently. My thesis explores why 2 year olds are failing search tasks if infants are appearing the understand object permanence with their looking responses. The Theory of Mind Lab at ASU designed a simple two door/two room apparatus to test 2 year olds’ ability to search for an object once it goes out of sight. Two doors open to two rooms separated by a green wall that extends above the front wall. Results showed that 2-year-olds randomly searched for the object. Perhaps children were not able to clearly differentiate the two separate spaces and ultimately started guessing because they assumed both doors go to the same room. Therefore, my thesis involved adding a ‘hallway’ between the two rooms to help children mentally separate the two spaces by showing them the bottom of the barrier. Despite the hallway, results showed that 2-year-olds again hardly performed above chance across all 6 trials. To remove the social aspects and the need to coordinate motor movement with knowledge of the object’s location, I designed a Visual Anticipation Task with automatic doors that required 2-year olds to merely look at the correct door for the hidden object. Results showed that children looked correctly at the first location correctly but when hidden in a new location in the second trial, perseverated and looked back at the first location. These results showed that 2-year olds do not understand object permanence at this age when it comes to both searching and looking.
ContributorsVirani, Sanya Z (Co-author) / Virani, Sanya (Co-author) / Fabricius, William (Thesis director) / Kupfer, Anne (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05