Factors influencing birth defects include maternal age (teenagers and women over 32 are at risk), genetics, drug use, diet habits, and environmental hazards. The physical, social, and economic costs of birth defects are extreme. Prevention must involve efforts to change some of these factors. (Author/CS)

From the analytic grief framework one can formulate a philosophy related to counseling the rape victim or the woman facing unwanted pregnancy. This article describes such a philosophical orientation and the counseling interventions which emerge from it. (Author)

Text of an affidavit in the case, Kennedy v. Detroit Board of Education. Reports on a study which established that prenatal nutrition is directly related to brain size and volume determined at 48 hours of infancy and at eight months of age. Pinpoints the relationship between inadequate nutrition in pregnancy, infant brain size, and intellectual…

Sociogenic brain damage is a condition produced by impoverished social environments. It is related in this paper to the question of what IQ tests really measure. (DM)

Dr. Kenneth Clark, interviewed by Dante Peter Ciochetto, discusses compensatory education, mobilization for reading and arithmetic in ghetto schools, and the Metropolitan Applied Research Center. (JM)

By including measurements of body length and head size along with birth weight, four distinct patterns of fetal growth impairment were identified. Diagnostic criteria presented make allowances for effects of race, sex, fetal age, and parity on each pattern. (Author/KW)

Intelligence and speech-language development of eight children (3.6 to 11.6 years old) with classic galactosemia were assessed by standardized tests. Each of the children had delays of early speech difficulties, and all but one had language disorders in at least one area. Available from: Journal of Pediatrics, C.V. Mosby Co., 11830 Westline…

Researchers of physiological factors resulting in reading disabilities have studied intelligence, prenatal and postnatal influences, sensory factors such as adequate visual, hearing, and tactile functioning, and genetic predetermination. Chronic health problems which cause frequent absences from school can also result in lower achievement. (JN)

Describes the relationship between neonatal crying and anthropometric indices of fetal growth. No differences were found between cry features of underweight and overweight infants; both groups required more stimulation than average weight infants to elicit crying. It is suggested that certain cry features may reflect the risk status of neonates…

This paper presents further evidence to demonstrate the existence of intra-uterine effects within the normal range of intelligence. The argument is then extended further to estimate the effects of organic factors in the environment that are also pathogenic for intelligence. Various implications of these factors are discussed. (Author/KC)

Findings from a study reported in this paper indicate that the differences in family background that affect IQ are largely the result of genetic differences among parents, which affect the parents' own status attainment and which are passed on genetically to their offspring, whose status attainments are subsequently affected. (Author/EB)