Malnutrition and mental deficiency

Behavior, Malnutrition, and Mental Development

Of 56 children 6 to 36 months of age tested in a mountain village in the Philippines, 16 were too sick to respond to the testing situation. An additional 15 with histories of severe malnutrition obtained very low scores on the Bayley Scale. The poor performance of malnourished children appears to be part of a larger pattern in which vigorous efforts are made to keep children from crying by giving them heavily sugared food, carrying them most of the time, and providing very little verbal stimulation. Furthermore, because the toddlers can get all they want by whimpering, they have little opportunity or need to acquire self-supporting verbal or manipulative skills. Finally, generally poor sanitation predisposes to a high prevalence of the diarrhea-malabsorption-malnutrition sequence, which exacerbates already existing dietary deficiencies.

Nutritional deficits and behavioural development

Despite a high incidence level the study of relations between nutritional deficits and children’s behavioural development is a topic that has been relatively neglected by developmental researchers. Such neglect has implications for the generalisability of developmental theories, especially to less developed countries where the majority of the world’s children live and where nutritional deficits are more likely to occur. This paper reviews evidence on the role played by nutritional deficits in children’s development and the mechanisms underlying nutrition → development links. Future directions for collaborative research between clinical, developmental, and nutritional scientists are proposed.

Nutritional Intervention

A secondary analysis of a nutrition experi ment in Cali, Colombia was conducted. The theme of the reanalysis was the notion of competing methods of analysts. Specifically, the effect of nutritional supplementa tion on the physical development of malnourished children was analyzed by means of univariate and multivariate methods for the analysis of repeated measures. It was concluded that the nutritional treatment was successful, but to assess the precise nature of the effect, it was necessary to resort to the multivariate approach.

The effects of protein energy malnutrition in early childhood on intellectual and motor abilities in later childhood and adolescence

Three groups of Ugandan children (20 in each group) and one comparison group of 20 children were examined between 11 and 17 years of age. The first three groups had been admitted to hospital for treatment of protein energy malnutrition between the ages of eight to 15, 16 to 21 and 22 to 27 months, respectively. The comparison group had not been clinically malnourished throughout the whole period up to 27 months of age. All the children came from one tribe and were individually matched for sex, age, education and home environment. It was found that the three malnourished groups fell significantly below the comparison group in anthropometric measurements and in tests of intellectual and motor abilities. No evidence was found for a relationship between the deficit and age at admission. Further analysis among the 60 malnourished children revealed that anthropometry and intellectual and motor abilities are the more affected the greater the degree of 'chronic undernutrition' at admission, but no correlation was found with the severity of the 'acute malnutrition'. The results show a general impairment of intellectual abilities, with reasoning and spatial abilities most affected, memory and rote learning intermediately and language ability least, if at all, affected. These findings are discussed in the context of a comprehensive and critical appraisal of the existing literature.