Hi Pat. Of course, all of these categories cannot be overlapping because if
1/6 children are stillborn, obviously those children cannot also suffer
from birth defects or FAS. My guess is that the birth defects category and
FAS category DO overlap; in fact, many children suffering from FAS have
many pronounced birth defects (i.e, widely spaced eyes, small heads,
upturned nose, thin upper lip). Another difficulty as you point out is
operationally defining "heavy drinking." A definition of heavy definition
would partially depend upon the weight of the expectant mother. Sorry I
cannot provide specific references, but do PsycINFO search on Streissguth,
A. P. and you'll turn up many relevant references.
At 08:39 PM 2/3/1999 -0800, you wrote:
> I'm taking a child development class this semester at our local
>Community College- perhaps a professor's worst nightmare, having a high
>school psychology teacher in her class. Anyway, my professor said that among
>heavy drinking (not operationally defined BTW) mothers there was a one in
>six chance the baby would be still born, a 50% chance of birth defects and a
>1 in 3 chance of fetal alcohol syndrome. I pointed out to her that unless
>these were overlapping categories (i.e. still borns and FAS included within
>the defects) that her evidence suggested that 100% of the births of heavy
>drinking mothers resulted in impaired babies- highly improbable, I believe.
>She said that she didn't think the authors were suggesting that the
>categories overlapped, but she wasn't sure. Anyone have any ideas or know of
>a good source where I can pursue this? The figures did not come from our
>text "Childhood" by Laurence Steinberg and Roberta Meyer.
>Patrick Mattimore. South San Francisco High School
>
>
>
>
>
***********************************
Mark A. Casteel, Ph.D.
Penn State York
1031 Edgecomb Ave.
York, PA 17403
Work: (717) 771-4028
Fax: (717) 771-8404
http://www.yk.psu.edu/~mac13/index.htm
***********************************
