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The effect of mothers' diets on the intelligence of offspring : A study of the influence of vitamin supplementation of the diets of pregnant and lactating women on the intelligence of their children / Ruth Flinn Harrell.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Harrell, Ruth Flin, 1900- author.
- Series:
- PsychBooks
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Child development.
- Pregnancy.
- Lactation.
- Vitamins.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource.
- Other Title:
- effect of mothers' diets on the intelligence of offspring
- Place of Publication:
- New York : Teachers College, 1955.
- Summary:
- "This study attempts to gather factual data on the question: Is the intelligence of the young so related to its early-life nutrition that dietary supplements of vitamins during this formative period exert a measurable effect on the intelligence quotient? This is an important and complex question involving many interrelated factors of which prenatal nutrition is but one. The idea that a maternal diet inadequate in certain respects during pregnancy and lactation might be a factor militating against the optimum development of the nervous system of the fetus occurred to Harrell in the early 1930's. While testing numbers of retarded children and taking their histories, she noted the high incidence of faulty nutrition in the early lives of these mental defectives. At the suggestion of Dr. Walter E. Dandy and with the aid of Dr. E.V. McCollum, she tested the suspected relationship of early-life nutrition to later mental ability in Dr. McCollum's animal laboratory at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. These observations of the maze-learning ability of rats whose mothers were experimentally starved during pregnancy and lactation were not extensive enough to report separately, but their results were consistent and encouraging enough that later Harrell proposed to the other participants of the present study a large scale inquiry using nutritional enrichment during pregnancy and lactation on the human level"--Book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).
- Contents:
- Introductory statement and history of the problem
- Description of the present study
- Results of the present study in Norfolk, Virginia
- Results of the present study in Kentucky
- General summary of results and conclusions.
- Notes:
- Description based on print version record.
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