Next Steps in Research on Children Exposed to Community Violence or War/Terrorism

The articles in this special issue of Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review provide an overview of what is known about children's exposure to community violence and war/ terrorism, and indicate significant gaps in extant research. These gaps and research needs are summarized in this conclusion.     

Introduction

This issue of Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, Children Exposed to Domestic Violence: Current Status and Research Directions, addresses the current status of our knowledge as well as critical research needs in the area of children exposed to domestic violence. Although much has been learned in recent years about children exposed to violence, significant research gaps remain, the identification of which may help to build a more complete and rigorous science base in this area. This journal issue represents the distillation of a 3-day workshop on children exposed to violence, held in July of 2002, that identified what is known about children exposed to violence and what this information tells us about future research directions. Although many federal agencies have supported some research in this area, there is a need for more targeted attention on the topic, particularly with regard to measurement, sampling, and interventions/services. The papers in this issue were selected with these themes in mind. Although no single issue could cover the entire field, we intend to offer a representative sample of where we are and where we need to go with the hope of stimulating additional thought, collaboration, and research in this important area.     

Disproportionate deficit in associative recognition relative to item recognition in global amnesia

In two experiments, we tested the hypothesis that medial temporal lobe (MTL) amnesic patients and, likewise, diencephalic (DNC) amnesic patients evidence a disproportionate deficit in memory for associations in comparison with memory for single items. In Experiment 1, we equated item recognition in amnesic and control participants and found that, under these conditions, associative recognition remained impaired both for MTL patients and for DNC patients. To rule out an alternative interpretation of the results of Experiment 1, in Experiment 2 we compared the performance of amnesic and control participants on a one-item recognition task and a two-item recognition task that required no memory for the association between members of word pairs. In the MTL group, when single-item recognition was equated to that of the controls, two-item nonassociative pair memory was equivalent as well. In the DNC group, nonassociative pair memory was impaired, but this impairment did not fully account for the impairment in associative memory. These findings indicate that memory for novel associations between items is disproportionately impaired in comparison with memory for single items in amnesia.     

Abortion, Intimacy, and the Duty to Gestate

In this article, I urge that mainstream discussions of abortion are dissatisfying in large part because they proceed in polite abstraction from the distinctive circumstances and meanings of gestation. Such discussions, in fact, apply to abortion conceptual tools that were designed on the premiss that people are physically demarcated, even as gestation is marked by a thorough-going intertwinement. We cannot fully appreciate what is normatively at stake with legally forcing continued gestation, or again how to discuss moral responsibilities to continue gestating, until we appreciate in their own terms the goods and evils distinctive of gestational connection. To underscore the need to explore further the meanings of gestation, I provide two examples of the difference it might make to legal and moral discussions of abortion if we appreciate more fully that gestation is an intimacy.     

Mother Knows Best? Mother and Child Report of Behavioral Difficulties of Children of HIV-Infected Mothers

Children of HIV-infected mothers have more psychosocial adjustment difficulties than do those of noninfected mothers. In this study, child psychosocial adjustment in children of HIV-infected women is examined across the three stages of HIV-infected: asymptomatic, symptomatic and AIDS. Participants were 99 HIV-infected women and 148 noninfected women. Children were not identified as being HIV infected. Mother and child reports of behavioral difficulties are compared, and competing hypotheses about mother report of child behavior difficulties are tested. Results indicate an ascending linear trend for child report of internalizing and externalizing difficulties from the noninfected stage through increasingly severe stages of HIV-infection. According to mother report, child externalizing and internalizing difficulties are nonlinear, as mothers report an increase through the infected symptomatic stage, then a decrease in the AIDS stage. Implications for assessment, prevention and intervention in families with maternal HIV infection are discussed.     

Assessment and Diagnosis of DSM-IV Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety disorders, the 2nd most common type of mental disorders, are among the most frequently missed or misdiagnosed disorders (Frances & Ross, 1996). Once they are diagnosed, effective treatments exist for them. This article provides a review of current knowledge on the assessment and diagnosis of anxiety disorders classified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Emphasis is on the recognition of anxiety as a dominant symptom, frameworks for determining specific anxiety disorders, and patterns of comorbidity.