Morrison And Shaffer Analysis

In this research article Morrison and Shaffer explain the process of a fertilized egg’s journey in ordinary biological reproduction. The main focus is after around six days of conception where the zygote’s nutrients begin to deplete. Thus, the hole that was created by the zygote releasing an enzyme is used as a pathway for the zygote to connect to the mother’s bloodstream by utilizing tendrils and around fourteen days the egg has implanted itself (Morrison & Shaffer). The egg does this in order to secrete hormones, as well as, other properties and protect itself from the mother’s immune system. The tendrils eventually form into the placenta in which allows only certain substances such as nutrients and oxygen into the egg. However, the researchers …show more content…
There have been numerous studies conducted, prior to Morrison and Shaffer’s research, that continue to provide support for the common hypothesis that prenatal alcohol consumption causes both psychological and physical abnormalities in children. However, Morrison and Shaffer take the research a step further by statistically analyzing children who were diagnosed with FAS by comparing morphological characteristics and the total psychopathology scores. An interesting aspect of the methodology of the study was that there was no control group, meaning that there was no group of children that were within the same age range that did not have FAS in order to compare the physical and psychological effects with the FAS children. Instead the researchers conduct a cross-sectional study where they compare preschool children to school aged children with both groups diagnosed with FAS in order to distinguish if the effects of FAS continues to be sustained when children age. The only time the researchers compare and contrast the FAS children with children who do not have FAS is with the IQ study by use of averages of test scores among the …show more content…
What stood out to me the most, and which I was surprised was not mentioned in the discussion of the article, was that I noticed more intriguing aspects other than correlation on the bar graph of morphological damage and total psychopathology score. School age children generally exhibited a higher total psychopathology score than the preschool age children. This raises several questions such as: “does the psychopathology of children who are diagnosed with FAS worsen as they age?” With this study it is hard to determine considering the two groups consist of different children, a considerable amount of longitudinal studies would need to be conducted in order to find support or rejection of the hypothesis. Another question that came to mind when looking at the graph was “why was there a slight drop in total psychopathology for school age children who had severe morphological damage while the preschool age children had a higher total?” “Could it be that through continuous treatment the children’s pathologies will lessen in severity?” Or there is a possibility that it is a minor blip in the study based on the test group. As with the previous question, there needs to be more studies with a longitudinal group with an addition of the type of treatment the children are receiving if