Speech, language, and reading in 10-year-olds with cleft: Associations with teasing, satisfaction with speech, and psychological adjustment

© 2017 American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association. Background: Despite the use of multidisciplinary services, little research has addressed issues involved in the care of those with cleft lip and/or palate across disciplines. The aim was to investigate associations between speech, language, reading, and reports of teasing, subjective satisfaction with speech, and psychological adjustment. Design: Cross-sectional data collected during routine, multidisciplinary assessments in a centralized treatment setting, including speech and language therapists and clinical psychologists. Participants: Children with cleft with palatal involvement aged 10 years from three birth cohorts (N = 170) and their parents. Outcome Measures: Speech: SVANTE-N. Language: Language 6-16 (sentence recall, serial recall, vocabulary, and phonological awareness). Reading: Word Chain Test and Reading Comprehension Test. Psychological measures: Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and extracts from the Satisfaction With Appearance Scale and Child Experience Questionnaire. Results: Reading skills were associated with self- and parent-reported psychological adjustment in the child. Subjective satisfaction with speech was associated with psychological adjustment, while not being consistently associated with speech therapists' assessments. Parent-reported teasing was found to be associated with lower levels of reading skills. Having a medical and/or psychological condition in addition to the cleft was found to affect speech, language, and reading significantly. Conclusions: Cleft teams need to be aware of speech, language, and/or reading problems as potential indicators of psychological risk in children with cleft. This study highlights the importance of multiple reports (self, parent, and specialist) and a multidisciplinary approach to cleft care and research

Magnetization reversal of ferromagnetic nanowires studied by magnetic force microscopy

The magnetization reversal of two-dimensional arrays of parallel ferromagnetic Fe nanowires embedded in nanoporous alumina templates has been studied. By combining bulk magnetization measurements (superconducting quantum interference device magnetometry) with field-dependent magnetic force microscopy (MFM), we have been able to decompose the macroscopic hysteresis loop in terms of the irreversible magnetic responses of individual nanowires. The latter are found to behave as monodomain ferromagnetic needles, with hysteresis loops displaced (asymmetric) as a consequence of the strong dipolar interactions between them. The application of field-dependent MFM provides a microscopic method to obtain the hysteresis curve of the array, by simply registering the fraction of up and down magnetized wires as a function of applied field. The observed deviations from the rectangular shape of the macroscopic hysteresis loop of the array can be ascribed to the spatial variation of the dipolar field through the inhomogeneously filled membrane. The system studied proves to be an excellent example of the two-dimensional classical Preisach model, well known from the field of hysteresis modeling and micromagnetism.This work was part of the research program of the Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie (FOM), which is supported by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NOW). C.U. and F.L. acknowledge grants funded by the European Union in the framework of its TMR Marie Curie Program. M.K. acknowledges a grant funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)