The literature is reviewed in order to see what support, direct or indirect, was to be found for adopting a communication perspective in gaining insight into childhood asthma. A study is presented on the communication (pattern and efficiency) of parents having an asthmatic child in a standardized communication situation in which a communication conflict is induced. Parents of children with severe chronic heart disease were used as control couples. As expected, the parents having asthmatic children proved to be a heterogeneous group with respect to communication efficiency. Two-thirds of the couples showed a communication as efficient as that of the control couples, whereas one third demonstrated an extremely inefficient communication in that they failed totally to cope with the experimentally induced communication conflict.

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This paper presents the results of a Rorschach assessment of a group of children with severe asthma (n = 21) compared to a control group (n = 21) of normal school children, matched for age and intellectual abilities. The design allows comparable data on total responses, movement, forms, color and other determinants. The mode of perception differs significantly between the groups. These differences will be discussed according to old hypotheses of personality traits as causative factors in the etiology of asthma.

The authors investigated the link between children's temperament and the development of asthma and allergies. Prospective longitudinal data on children at the ages of 3-5 months, 3-5 years, and 7-9 years were collected. At age 7-9 years, analyses were performed on data for 3 groups of children (n = 42): those with asthma (no allergies), those with allergies (no asthma), and those with neither asthma nor allergies (the control group). Data for children who developed asthma or allergies prior to age 7-9 years were not analyzed. Differences were found in the premorbid period between the control group and the children who later developed asthma or allergies as well as between the asthma and allergy groups. After onset of illness, no temperamental differences were observed between the 3 groups. The study shows the importance of longitudinal design for asthma research.

Objectives.To investigate the association between childhood hay fever and emotional and behavioural disturbances.Design. Cross-sectional controlled clinical study. The hay fever group was compared with an age-matched control group without any atopic symptoms.Mean age for the groups was 7.8 years (SD 0.7).Method. The dependent variables were normalized t-scores on the Child Behavior Check List (CBCL 4-16, version 2.2; Achenbach & Edelbrock, 1983). In series of ANOVAs, the hay fever group (N = 43,23 boys and 20 girls) was compared with healthy controls (N = 51, 28 boys and 23 girls).Results. The hay fever group had significantly higher scores on depression, withdrawal, somatic complaints and aggression. They also had a significantly higher total problem score and higher scores on the internalizing and the externalizing scales. There were no differences on the social competence scales. Conclusions.Children suffering from hay fever show other behavioural and emotional coping patterns than normals. Investigators should be reluctant in attributing the CBCL somatic symptom scale to psychological disturbances.