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Parents' ratings of conduct and school problems were evaluated in 79 subjects with palatal clefts. Subjects were divided into four groups consisting of: (1) unilateral complete clefts of the lip and palate (UC Group); (2) unilateral complete clefts of the lip and palate with associated congenital malformations (UC-C Group); (3) cleft palate only (CPO Group); and (4) cleft palate only with associated congenital malformations (CPO-C Group). Comparisons between groups suggested that subjects with associated congenital malformations, whether or not they had UC or CPO, tended to have more serious school and conduct problems when compared to children with clefts and no associated congenital malformations. The association of congenital malformations with a cleft lip and palate increased the risk of reported conduct problems at home and behavioral and learning problems at school.

A standardized questionnaire was used to record parents' ratings of the frequency of conduct problems and their tolerance of the problems. According to parent report, children without facial clefts and children with facial clefts displayed conduct problems with about the same frequency. However, parents of children with facial clefts were significantly more tolerant of problems in their offspring. These data suggest that the social learning environments in the homes may be different for the two groups of children.

The decision to seek secondary treatment for facial clefts is often the result of concerns about the esthetic acceptability of appearance. There are no standard techniques to assess cleft impairment for esthetic acceptability. Therefore, it is not possible to evaluate objectively either the need for or the benefits of treatment. If it could be shown that people agree closely on how they rate the esthetic appearance of cleft impairments that vary in severity, then esthetic measures of cleft impairment could be developed with human judgment as the yardstick. The goals of this study were: (1) to examine the reliability with which children express their preferences for cleft impairments that vary in severity, (2) to determine if other facial characteristics influence the reliability of children's preferences for cleft impairments, and (3) to evaluate if age and gender of children influence preferences for cleft impairments. Based on preratings, eight types of photographic slides were created that varied in severity of cleft impairment and global facial attractiveness. A second sample of subjects then rated the slides on the esthetic acceptability of appearance. Children ranked the photographic types consistently. They least preferred the photographic types depicting severe impairment or low facial attractiveness, or both, and most preferred faces with no impairment or moderate attractiveness, or both. There were also developmental effects in that younger children tended to have less consensus in their ratings of appearance than older children. Finally, boys displayed greater consensus than girls.