Postdischarge feeding of growing “Preemies”: concerns with limiting fat intake [letter]

The didactic update on requirements, types of feeding and dosages of nutrients by Su is a useful guide for clinicians on optimization of nutrition in preterm infants. We take this opportunity to focus on postdischarge nutrition in very preterm infants, which has not yet reached consensus, because of concerns regarding the potentially negative consequences of rapid catch-up growth on obesity and metabolic programming. Some formula feeding approaches have been proposed when mother’s milk is not available.

Reply to letter to the Editor: Expert opinion on best practice guidelines and competency framework for visual screening in children

The aim of this study was to describe experts’ perception of best-practice guidelines and competency framework for visual screening in children. This study uses qualitative data and shows individual/ group conceptualization. The use of evidence from qualitative studies has traditionally been a fundamental source of knowledge in the clinical and social sciences.

Letter names and sounds: their implications for the phonetisation process

Our aim was to analyse the impact of the characteristics of words used in spelling programmes and the nature of instructional guidelines on the evolution from grapho-perceptive writing to phonetic writing in preschool children. The participants were 50 5-year-old children, divided in five equivalent groups in intelligence, phonological skills and spelling. All the children knew the vowels and the consonants B, D, P, R, T, V, F, M and C, but didn’t use them on spelling. Their spelling was evaluated in a pre and post-test with 36 words beginning with the consonants known. In-between they underwent a writing programme designed to lead them to use the letters P and T to represent the initial phonemes of words. The groups differed on the kind of words used on training (words whose initial syllable matches the name of the initial letter—Exp. G1 and Exp. G2—versus words whose initial syllable is similar to the sound of the initial letter—Exp. G3 and Exp. G4). They also differed on the instruction used in order to lead them to think about the relations between the initial phoneme of words and the initial consonant (instructions designed to make the children think about letter names—Exp. G1 and Exp. G3 —versus instructions designed to make the children think about letter sounds—Exp. G2 and Exp. G4). The 5th was a control group. All the children evolved to syllabic phonetisations spellings. There are no differences between groups at the number of total phonetisations but we found some differences between groups at the quality of the phonetisations.