Children in war and its aftermath: mental health issues in the development of international law

Children now experience war as they never have in the past. This article presents clinical impressions of children from war zones and suggests interventions that might ameliorate the horrors of war for some of these children. It also describes the evolving framework in international law (i.e., the United Nations) that provides a context for implementing some of these interventions and for insulating children from some of the devastating effects of war.     

On the partial independence of optimism and pessimism

This study tested the hypothesis that the moderate correlation between optimism (O) and pessimism (P) scores (their non-bipolarity) found in earlier studies may be an artifact of the differential sensitivity of O and P items to two response sets: defensive pessimism and Pollyannaism. The data failed to support either component of the hypothesis. Thus, defensive pessimists, as measured in two quite different ways, had lower depression scores (BDI) than genuine pessimists, but contrary to prediction, had higher depression scores than optimists. Moreover, deleting P items with a strong defensive quality from the P scale failed to increase the correlation between O and P scores. Similarly, controlling Pollyannaism by a partial correlation procedure failed to increase the strength of the relation between O and P. The results in general support the notion that optimism and pessimism are not polar opposites. This article is based on a dissertation presented by the senior author to the Division of Graduate Studies and Research of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy degree.     

Building humane communities respectful of children: the significance of the convention on the rights of the child

The greatest promise of international human rights law is in stimulating thoughtful self-examination by those who strive to do what is right. Perhaps more than any other instrument, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC; 1989) offers the opportunity to use a global moral consensus to transform life at the neighborhood level in order to promote "the full and harmonious development of...[the child's] personality" (CRC, 1989, preamble). The CRC also presents a normative framework to guide psychologists' advocacy on behalf of children.     

Acoustic confusions and order forgetting

This paper reports two experiments employing a PETERSON and PETERSON (1959) paradigm, aimed at showing order as opposed to item forgetting in acoustic confusion experiments. In the first experiment two subsets from the acoustically similar vocabulary C V B D G T P E, i.e. D V B and C G T, were selected. One group of Ss were presented with the items from subset D V B in different orders for 4 trials, another group with the subset C G T. Interpolated activity lasted twenty seconds and presentation was auditory. The second experiment was similar to the first, but presentation was visual and interpolated activity lasted only 5 sec. In both experiments the incidence of order errors significantly and considerably exceeded the incidence of intrusion errors. This leaves open the possibility that in acoustic confusion experiments, confusions can be accounted for by assuming order rather than item forgetting, contrary to CONRAD's (1965) hypothesis.