This issue contains a plethora of interesting articles pertaining to socially highly relevant matters. Children in other cultures who are raised under very underprivileged circumstances, such as refugee children, confront mental health workers with issues that transcend cultural bounderies, especially since mass movements of refugees and immigrants are putting great numbers of children into unfamiliar environments. In addition, these children often face severe losses both materially and personally. In order to help these children, mental health workers require tools for identifying their needs in order to develop special interventions. Because existing assessment instruments are often not readily applicable to children and parents in cultures that differ vastly from those in the West, researchers are confronted with problems of adapting or developing new assessment procedures. Paardekooper et al., for example, were confronted with the fact that in their study on the psychological impact of war and the refugee situation on Sudanese children who lived in refugee camps in Uganda, many non-written languages were being spoken. They used trained interviewers and a cartoon-based interview to obtain information on the children's mental health. The authors compared mental health problems of Sudanese refugee children with those of Ugandan children. The refugee children reported more daily stresses, less social support, and more emotional/behavioural problems than children from the comparison group. Also, the refugee children had been confronted with many more traumatic events such as witnessing the murder of a family member. The severity of the problems and the lack of support make the introduction of supportive programmes of paramount importance. This is what the authors intend to do in the future. The findings of this study also underscore our responsibilities with regard to the mental health of the many refugee children who enter Western countries every day.

Open almost any recent social work magazine, or child protection text, and some reference to the abuse of disabled children will be included. Yet awareness of abuse within this group has resulted from a relatively recent growth of interest on the part of psychologists and social work and child protection professionals. Previously, sociocultural and political factors contributed to an otherwise muted response to research dating back to the 1960s, which clearly documents abuse of children who have an impairment or “developmental disability” of some kind. Reviewing this research reveals as much about society's reaction to disability and to disabled children, as it does about the abuse itself. This Annotation presents research in relation to three issues: (1) prevalence of abuse of disabled children; (2) responding to abuse; and (3) preventing abuse.

Much of the relevant literature has focused on the assessment of dangerousness in adults. Up-to-date thinking and research has now taken on the alternative concept of risk and looks not at all-or-nothing long-term predictions, but at short-term frequent decisions about risk, which then assist in the management of the individual and their situation. For this reason it is essential that those presenting evidence for other professionals or for Court should not attempt, or be persuaded, to make long-term predictions. Current research is now showing that some factors, which can be ascertained clinically, are significantly associated with the risk of future violence.

By investigating egg donation families, donor insemination families, adoptive families, and families created by in vitro fertilization, the aim of the present study was to examine parents' emotional well-being, the quality of parenting, and childrens' socioemotional development in families with a child who is genetically unrelated to the mother or the father. The differences that were found to exist between families according to the presence or absence of genetic ties between parents and their children reflected greater psychological well-being among mothers and fathers in families where there was no genetic link between the mother and the child. The families did not differ with respect to the quality of parenting or the psychological adjustment of the child.

This paper presents the results of an exploratory study on the psychosocial effects of the war situation and subsequent flight on South Sudanese children who were compared to a group of Ugandan children who did not have these experiences of war and flight. In addition to the independent variables such as sociodemographic variables and traumatic events and daily life stress, the dependent variable psychological consequences—according to parents and children themselves—as well as the influence of the mediating factors of social support and coping behaviour are presented.

Results showed that Sudanese refugee children had experienced significantly more traumatic events and suffered more daily hassles than the Ugandese comparison group. They were less satisfied with the social support they received. At the same time, they used more coping modes. Compared to Ugandan children, the Sudanese reported significantly more PTSD-like complaints, behavioural problems, and depressive symptoms.

Six per cent of child in a sample of 111 children who were adopted into U.K. families from Romania, and who were systematically assessed at the ages of 4 and 6 years, showed autistic-like patterns of behaviour. A further 6% showed milder (usually isolated) autistic features. Such autistic characteristics were not found in a similarly studied sample of 52 children adopted in the first 6 months of life within the U.K. The children from Romania with autistic patterns showed clinical features closely similar to “ordinary” autism at 4 years but they differed with respect to the improvement seen by age 6 years, to an equal sex ratio, and to a normal head circumference. The children from Romania with autistic features tended to differ from the other Romanian adoptees with respect to a greater degree of cognitive impairment and a longer duration of severe psychological privation.

A 1-year cohort of children born at term in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1987/8 was screened for failure to thrive in infancy using a conditional longitudinal standard which identified those whose weight gain was in the lowest 5%. A group of 136 cases and 136 controls (from the same GP practice and living in a neighbourhood with the same deprivation index) was followed up at 7–9 years of age, when 79% of cases and 87% of controls were successfully studied. Cases at 7–9 were significantly shorter (mean 126.0 cm, SD 5.6) than controls (mean 130.7 cm, SD 5.9); adjusted for parental heights a difference of 4.4 cm (95% CI 2.92 to 5.90 cm) remained. They had smaller head circumferences (mean 51.9 cm, SD 1.8) than controls (mean 52.8 cm, SD 1.7), were significantly lighter (medians 23.8 kg, IR 21.5 to 26.9 in cases, and 27.9 kg, IR 25.2 to 31.6 in controls) and had a lower body mass index (median 14.9, IR 14.1 to 16.0 in cases, and 16.3, IR 15.3 to 17.8 in controls). Despite these large growth differences, no statistically significant differences in cognitive outcomes were found. Mean IQ was 87.6 (SD 17.4) in cases and 90.6 (SD 17.1) in controls; after adjustment for organic cause and mother's IQ the mean difference was 1.7 IQ points (95%CI −5.2 to 1.9). There were no statistically significant differences in the reading, spelling, or reading comprehension scores; the mean standardised reading score was 93.5 (SD 16.2) for cases and 94.5 (SD 15.6) for controls. These results show that when carefully defined by velocity-based anthropometric criteria, nonorganic failure to thrive in infancy is followed by persisting stunting and wasting, and a reduced head circumference, but is not associated with cognitive or educational disadvantages at school age.

The nature and correlates of psychological disorders of preadolescent children from the longitudinal Australian Temperament Project (ATP) are reported. Almost half of the children identified via checklists completed by mothers, teachers, and the children themselves as being in the at-risk range for disorder received a DSM-III-R diagnosis. Nine per cent of comparison, or low-risk, children also received a diagnosis. Internalising disorders were the most common, and 44% of cases had multiple problems. Children rated as problematic by all three informants or by child plus teacher were the most likely to receive a diagnosis. The at-risk group had more difficult temperament, poorer family and peer relationships, lower levels of social skills, and were of lower SES than the comparison group. There were minimal differences on these variables between at-risk children who did, or did not, receive a DSM-III-R diagnosis. It is argued that especially for boys, checklists from multiple informants are effective tools for identifying clinically significant disorders.

Data gathered over the course of a longitudinal study of a birth cohort of over 900 New Zealand children were used to examine factors associated with the formation of affiliations with delinquent or substance using peers in adolescence (15 years). The findings of this study include:

(1) Adolescent peer affiliations were associated with a wide range of prospectively measured social, family, parental, and individual factors. This analysis indicated that those children most at risk of forming deviant peer affiliations were those from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, dysfunctional families, who showed early onset conduct problems and other difficulties.

(2) Regression analysis suggested that specific factors that were associated with increased risks of later deviant peer affiliations included family socioeconomic status, parental conflict, mother/child interaction, childhood sexual abuse, parental alcoholism, parental criminal offending, parental illicit drug use, parental smoking, early conduct problems, early anxiety/withdrawal, and early smoking experimentation.

It is concluded that peer affiliations in adolescence are shaped by a complex social, family, and individual process that includes social stratification, family functioning, and individual behavioural predispositions.

This research reports the findings of two studies conducted to measure and then investigate differences between delinquent, nondelinquent, and at-risk youths' orientations towards reputation enhancement. In the first study, concerning item selection and scale development, the factor structure and content validity of a potential Reputation Enhancement Scale were tested by examining the item responses of the scale completed by 230 high-school students. In the second study, the scale was validated by comparing the item responses of 80 delinquent, 90 at-risk, and 90 nondelinquent adolescents with the responses of the original students. The instrument was found to be reliable (alphas from .64 to .92), indicating that the factors are dependable across different samples, and the coefficients of congruence were sufficiently high to investigate meaningful group differences. Three second-order factors (Conforming Reputation, Nonconforming Reputation, Self-presentation) were derived from the 15 first-order factors. Although multivariate analyses revealed significant differences between the reputational orientations of delinquent, at-risk, and nondelinquent participants, the self-presentation second-order factor did not differentiate the three groups.

The purpose of the current study was to build on the emerging effort to produce a meaningful typology of child behavior for school-aged children. The Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC) Parent Rating Scales for Children (PRS-C) norming data were collected for 2029 6- to 11-year-old children at 116 sites representing various regions of the United States. The PRS-C has 130 items that are rated by the parent on a 4-point scale of frequency, ranging from “never” to “almost always”. The Ward method of cluster analysis was used to identify the initial centroids or cluster seeds in this norming sample. An iterative clustering method, a K-means procedure, was used to refine the Ward cluster solution. A nine-cluster solution was selected based on both rational and empirical considerations. The resulting clusters were labeled adapted, physical complaints/worry, average, well-adapted, minimal problems, attention problems, internalizing, general psychopathology-severe, and disruptive behavior problems. The nine-cluster solution is similar to those of Achenbach (1991), Thompson, Kronenberger, and Curry (1989), and other researchers. At the same time, some significant differences exist. The resulting typology points the way toward future cluster studies of child psychopathology and normal behavioral development by delineating additional research and theoretical directions.

This study compared the expressed emotion (EE) scores obtained using individual interviews with parents with the scores obtained in whole family interviews. Interviews were carried out with 31 parents of 16 adolescents referred because of an eating disorder. There was moderate correlation of scores between the two interviews regarding critical comments, emotional overinvolvement, and warmth, but it was low for positive remarks. The study suggests that the whole family interview, which is time saving, is useful in assessing expressed emotion. The levels of expressed emotion, particularly the relatively low levels of critical comments and emotional overinvolvement, are similar to those of previous studies.

The study aimed to investigate a group of children with severe learning disabilities, challenging daytime behaviour, and severe sleep problems to see if successful behavioural treatment of the children's sleep problems resulted in reduced daytime challenging behaviour as reported by mothers and teachers.

A randomised controlled trial of behavioural interventions for the children's sleep problems was conducted (N=30). The intervention group received an individually tailored behavioural programme and were supported by telephone calls from the therapist. Baseline assessments of the children's behaviour were made using the Aberrant Behavior Checklist and were repeated 1 month and 3 months after the start of intervention.

There were no behavioural changes that were specific to children in the treatment group. However, improvements in some behaviours were seen in both the intervention and the control group at the 1-month and 3-month assessments and there was agreement between mothers' and teachers' reports for many of these changes.

The results suggest that nonspecific effects of participating in the study (including an increased sleep duration, which was seen in both groups), rather than resolution of sleep problem per se, may have a beneficial effect on child behaviour and these factors need to be identified for therapeutic use.

Inferior auditory temporal processing has been postulated as causally linked to phonological processing deficits in disabled readers with concomitant oral language delay (LDRDs), and absent in specifically disabled readers with normal oral language (SRDs). This investigation compared SRDs, LDRDs and normal readers aged 7–10 years on measures of auditory temporal processing (temporal order judgement) and phonological decoding (nonword reading). LDRDs exhibited deficits in temporal order judgement compared with normal readers, from whom SRDs did not differ significantly. These findings suggest that auditory temporal processing and oral language are related; however, very large within-group variability in the auditory temporal processing data further suggests that this relationship prevails in only a proportion of disabled readers with concomitant oral language weakness. In nonword reading, LDRDs performed worst of all, but SRDs also exhibited significant deficits compared with normal readers. Taken together, our results preclude the conceptualisation of temporal processing deficits as the unitary cause of phonological and language deficits in disabled readers.

This study was designed to test the prediction that adolescents with autism would have specific limitations in imitating the “style” of another person's actions. In a series of original tasks that tested the delayed imitation of novel nonsymbolic actions, 16 participants with autism and 16 nonautistic participants group-matched for age and verbal ability were proficient in copying goal-directed actions, but in 3 out of 4 tasks, strikingly fewer participants with autism imitated with style with which the demonstrator executed the actions. An additional finding was that on 2 conditions that involved copying self-orientated actions, only 5 of the participants with autism but 15 of the 16 nonautistic participants spontaneously adopted the orientation-to-self on at least 1 occasion. The results are discussed with reference to theories concerning imitation deficits in autism, and with regard to the proposal that autism involves an impairment in intersubjective contact between affected individuals and others (Hobson, 1989, 1993; Rogers & Pennington, 1991).