IDEOLOGICAL FORMATIONS OF WITNESSING THE HOLOCAUST IN WARTIME DIARIES OF JAROSŁAW IWASZKIEWICZ AND MARIA DĄBROWSKA

The Polish writers Jaros?aw Iwaszkiewicz (1894–1980) and Maria D?browska (1889–1965) spent the years of brutal German occupation in Warsaw. Both witnessed the establishment of the Ghetto, the 1942 deportations, and the 1943 Uprising, as well as the attempts of the Jewish fugitives to hide on the “Aryan side” of the city. Yet their war diaries reveal contrasting attitudes toward the destruction of the Jews. Whereas D?browska projected indifference by practically ignoring the evolving genocide, Iwaszkiewicz expressed dismay and compassion. Iwaszkiewicz and his wife Anna engaged in rescuing Jews while D?browska showed no sympathy for the Jewish plight. Such polarized responses to the Holocaust by individuals who were contemporaries, fellow writers, and prominent members of the intellectual elite of Warsaw raise questions about the nature of witnessing and responding to atrocities. This essay posits that the differences in these writers' attitudes toward the genocide of the Polish Jews were indelibly tied to the ideological systems that shaped their self-identities.     

FORGETTING THE FORGOTTEN ONES

Haim Gouri’s poem “Hanishkahim” (The Forgotten Ones) has appeared in several versions and in a number of collections. Suggesting the noble heroism of soldiers dying in battle, this poem has become an example of the symbolic repertoire employed to enforce national myths. As part of the “Palmah generation” of poets, Gouri’s own life, as well as the imagery of the poetry, articulates the ideals of the sabras who fought and died in the Israeli War of Independence. However, this poem also challenges these myths. “Hanishkahim” questions the State’s memorialization of military heroism while ignoring those soldiers, particularly the disabled, who destabilize the authority of national narratives. In shorter editions of this poem, Gouri’s critique of war commemoration is obliterated. This article examines Gouri’s poem in light of the role editing plays in shaping ideological discourse.     

An Analysis of Factors Related to Educational Achievement

Piaget treats compensatory answers to the water jar problem by assuming that the child multiplies proportions in two dimensions (e.g., half the width by twice the height). Since the problem is three dimensional, a two dimensional analysis will not work to produce conservation. In an empirical test of related hypotheses using a prediction of height of water as an independent index of compensatory ability (N = 118 boys and girls from kindergarten through fifth grade), it was shown that many children compensate who do not conserve, a few children conserve who do not compensate, and conserving children who compensate incorrectly (as almost all do) will reject their compensation-based prediction in favor of the conservation judgment. It is concluded that while a loosely construed theory of compensation might help explain the development of conservation ability in the water jar problem, Piaget's tightly organized theory is at best questionable.     

Age-related decline in the ability to decode emotional prosody: Primary or secondary phenomenon?

Emotion processing deficits can cause catastrophic damage to a person's ability to interact socially. While it is known that older adults have difficulty identifying facial emotions, it is still not clear whether this difficulty extends to identification of the emotion conveyed by prosody. This study investigated whether the ability of older adults to decode emotional prosody falls below that of young adults after controlling for loss of hearing sensitivity and key features of cognitive ageing. Apart from frontal lobe load, only verbal IQ was associated with the age-related reduction in performance displayed by older participants, but a notable deficit existed after controlling for its effects. It is concluded that older adults may indeed have difficulty deducing the emotion conveyed by prosody, and that while this difficulty can be exaggerated by some aspects of cognitive ageing, it is primary in origin.     

Differential Competencies Contributing to Children's Comprehension of Narrative and Expository Texts

The purpose of this study was to examine the connections between the oral reading abilities and the spelling behaviors of third and fifth grade students. Seventy-two third graders and sixty fifth graders from two different schools (one urban and one suburban) were the subjects of the study. Each subject read a selection one level above his/her current grade placement, spelled the words on the appropriate grade level list of the Qualitative Inventory of Word Knowledge and took the appropriate level of the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests. Oral readings were scored for accuracy, rate and phrasing. Spellings were scored for accuracy, phonetic quality and stage of spelling development. These scores were then analyzed using correlations, partial correlations and multiple regression techniques. At both grade levels there were high, significant correlations between spelling and reading variables, with spelling variables accounting for from 40% to 60% of the variance in oral reading measures and a smaller, but still significant percentage of the variance when standardized test scores were used as a control. These results confirm a strong relationship between spelling skill and oral reading ability, supporting the argument that a common body of conceptual word knowledge underlies both.     

Mother-Child Attachment and Gender Identity in Preadolescence

We investigated the relations of two dimensions of attachment insecurity (avoidant with mother, preoccupied with mother) to three dimensions of gender identity (gender typicality, gender contentedness, felt pressure for gender differentiation) in preadolescent children. We hypothesized that attachment insecurity (of either sort) fosters felt pressure for gender differentiation but impedes the development of felt gender typicality and gender contentedness. Participants were 863 Black, Hispanic, and White fifth graders attending public schools in the southeast United States (443 girls, 420 boys; M age = 11.1 years). Each attachment measure was associated with each gender identity measure in the expected way, but some associations hinged on child gender or ethnicity/race. Avoidant attachment was negatively associated with felt gender typicality only for White children, negatively associated with gender contentedness for the entire sample, and positively associated with felt pressure for gender differentiation only for White children. Preoccupied attachment was negatively associated with felt gender typicality for the entire sample, negatively associated with gender contentedness only for boys, and positively associated with felt pressure for gender differentiation only for girls.     

Extended diaper wearing: effects on continence in and out of the diaper

Diaper use is widespread and possibly even increasing across diverse populations in the United States, ranging from infants to very old adults. We found no reports of an experimental analysis of the effect of wearing diapers on the frequency of urinary accidents and the attainment of continence skills (e.g., urinating in the toilet). In this study, we used a withdrawal design to evaluate the effect of wearing diapers on daily urinary accidents and successful voids for an adult who had been diagnosed with mental retardation. Results indicated that wearing diapers increased the rate of accidents and decreased the rate of successful voids. Clinical implications of these results are discussed.     

Who is doing what to whom? Young infants' developing sense of social causality in animated displays

In two different experiments a visual habituation/dishabituation procedure was used to test groups of 3-10-month-old infants for their ability to discriminate the role reversal of two abstract figures (discs of different colors) chasing each other on a computer screen. Results of the first experiment point to a reliable age effect. Only 8-10-month-old infants tended to dishabituate to a role reversal between chaser and chasee. A second experiment shows that in dishabituating to the role reversal, 8-10-month-olds do base this discrimination on relational information between the two discs and not merely on the contrast between their respective vitality or discrete dynamic. By the age of 8-10 months, infants demonstrate sensitivity to information specifying what one disc does to the other, at a distance. These findings point to important changes in perceptual-cognitive development and are discussed in the context of a well described key transition in social-cognitive development occurring at around 9 months of age.