Use of Gardening Programs as an Intervention to Increase Children’s Ability to Delay Gratification

The purpose of this study was to examine the ability of preschool gardening programs to help children develop their ability to delay gratification. Children today face many opportunities for instant gratification, although the ability to delay gratification in early childhood has been linked to numerous benefits later in life. Opportunities to train children in the ability to delay gratification present educational challenges, in that it competes with other academic training needs, and it can be difficult to find programs that are interesting to young children. The population for this study was preschool children ranging in age from 2 to 6 years, with treatment and control groups drawn from different schools. Participants were tested individually and timed to determine their ability to delay gratification, with promises of larger rewards if the child could wait for 15 minutes. The results of this study did not identify a significant change in all children’s ability to delay gratification after a gardening program. However, analyses showed that females appear to have responded more positively to the gardening treatment in their ability to delay gratification, whereas males in the control group benefited more from traditional school lessons

Cerebral vasculitis--recognition, diagnosis and management

Cerebral vasculitis is a serious but uncommon condition which presents considerable difficulties in recognition, diagnosis and treatment. We studied eight consecutive patients in whom this diagnosis was made. Despite the great diversity of symptoms and signs, we noted three clinical patterns: (i) acute or sub-acute encephalopathy, (ii) a picture with some similarities to multiple sclerosis ('MS-plus'), and (iii) features of a rapidly progressive space-occupying lesion. The identification of these patterns may help recognition of cerebral vasculitis. The diagnostic value of four investigative procedures not previously studied in cerebral vasculitis was assessed: ophthalmological examination using low-dose fluorescein angiography with slit-lamp video microscopy of the anterior segment (abnormal in 4/5 patients); spinal fluid oligoclonal band analysis (abnormal in 3/6 patients); anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody assay (abnormal in 3/8 patients); and indium-labelled white-cell cerebral imaging (positive in only one patient). Treatment was with steroid alone (n = 2) or steroid with cyclophosphamide (n = 6). Seven patients responded clinically.</p