On Mon, 29 Apr 2002, sylvestm went: > I am sutprised that occasionally I encounter students who suck their thumb. > Most of my observations concern female High School and Collegew students. > I find this puzzling.Whereas thumbsucking is usually delegated to childhood > but why this observed phenomena among some African-American female students? > And while on this subject(nodal semantic network)I am curious if Dap Louw > in South Africa could provide some differential data among the various > ethnicities in South Africa re this behavior. > One female African-American student admitted to me that thumbsucking > provided her with a comfort zone.
God help me, but I'm going to reply to this. With anecdote. I do research at a methadone-maintenance clinic in Baltimore. When I first started working there, in 1998, we enrolled an adult who sucked her thumb. She was African-American. In our weekly case conference, one of our nurses said that adult thumbsucking is occasionally seen among African-American women. (One of the other nurses immediately shot back, "I'm the only black woman in the room, and you don't see _me_ sucking my thumb.") I did a literature search and found no reference to racial/ethnic/cultural differences in the prevalence of adult thumbsucking. Since then, we've enrolled one more adult thumbsucker. She's white. At this rate, it will be at least 20 years before we've enrolled enough thumbsuckers to permit a chi-square. --David Epstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
