Salman Elbedour

Ecological integrated model of children of war: Individual and social psychology

The psychological trauma associated with war is a topic that has occupied the attention of mental health researchers and practitioners for some time. Most of their attention, though, has focused on the traumatic stress of soldiers, and little attention has been paid to the problems and traumatization of civilians caught in war zones, especially the children. In this paper, the limited research on children of war is reviewed, and themes are extracted. Children suffer from both acute and chronic traumatic stress. The key to determining the amount of suffering has to do with the dynamic interaction among five processes within an ecological framework: the childs psychobiological makeup, the disruption of the family unit, the breakdown of community, and the ameliorating effects of culture. The intensity, suddenness and duration of the war-like experience itself constitute an additional component to this ecological model. In the final section, psychotherapeutic guidelines to help children cope with symptoms associated with war are presented for current and future caregivers. The prevention of war should be the primary task of all.

Children's fears: cultural and developmental perspectives.

A modified version of the Revised Fear Survey Schedule for Children was administered to 865 Israeli Jewish and Israeli Bedouin children, 8-12 yr-old. Consistent with former studies, there was an age-related decline in fears and females reported more fears than males. Comparison of Jewish and Bedouin childrens reports of fears showed significant quantitative and qualitative differences between the two groups. Results underscore the salience of both developmental and cultural factors in the development and nature of childrens fears.

The Effect of Polygamous Marital Structure on Behavioral, Emotional, and Academic Adjustment in Children: A Comprehensive Review of the Literature

Polygamy represents expanded family structures that are based on marriages involving a husband with 2 or more wives. Interestingly, polygamy is legally and widely practiced in 850 societies across the globe. In the last 2 decades, polygamy has been the focus of a significant growth in public, political, and academic awareness. Indeed, several quantitative and qualitative research articles and theoretical papers have emerged during this period, particularly concerning the effects of this form of marital structure on behavioral, emotional, and academic adjustment of children. However, to date, no researcher has provided a summary of the extant literature. Thus, the purpose of this comprehensive literature review is to summarize findings and to discuss implications of empirical studies that have examined whether polygamous marital structures are beneficial or harmful to children in comparison with children raised in monogamous marital structures. This review includes a summary of the findings from all quantitative and qualitative studies in the extant literature that have examined the effect of polygamy on childrens outcomes.

Identity Formation in the Shadow of Conflict: Projective Drawings by Palestinian and Israeli Arab Children from the West Bank and Gaza

Social identity is thought to be the means through which individuals understand themselves in their social context. Understanding the processes of identity formation in the context of intergroup conflict is particularly important, since social identity is critical to understanding how people act. Social identity, though, has been a difficult process to study since it is a purely internal construct. In this study, we argue that free-form drawings provide the greatest insight into how people see themselves in their social context. Data were gathered from Arab subjects in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Among the important findings is that subjects exposed to the greatest conflict tend to organize their identities in ways that include their enemy as well as themselves. This necessarily creates a situation where the conflict becomes self-perpetuating.

Scholastic Achievement and Family Marital Structure: Bedouin-Arab Adolescents From Monogamous and Polygamous Families in Israel

Abstract In a sample of Bedouin-Arab adolescents from monogamous and polygamous families in the Negev region of Israel, the authors examined scholastic achievement levels in the subjects of Arabic, English, Hebrew, and mathematics. There were no significant differences in the scholastic achievement levels in those 4 disciplines between adolescents from monogamous families and those from polygamous families. There was, however, a significant interaction between gender and family marital structure for Hebrew scores: Polygamous family structures tended to engender higher Hebrew scores for the male participants, whereas monogamous family structures tended to engender higher Hebrew scores for the female participants. However, the major overall finding was that polygamous family marital structures did not affect deleteriously the scholastic achievement levels of the Bedouin-Arab participants.

PSYCHOLOGICAL RESPONSES IN FAMILY MEMBERS AFTER THE HEBRON MASSACRE

The authors attempted to determine the frequency of severe psychological responses in surviving family members in a religious Muslim culture. Twenty‐three wives, twelve daughters and twenty‐six sons of heads of households massacred while praying in the Hebron mosque on 25 February 1994 were interviewed with the clinician‐administered PTSD scale; 50% of daughters, 39% of wives, and 23% of sons met criteria for PTSD. PTSD or traumatic bereavement occurs with high frequency after a major tragedy in a Moslem society, despite religious admiration of dead martyrs. Depression and Anxiety 9:27–31, 1999.

Aptitude by treatment interactions and Matthew effects in graduate-level cooperative-learning groups

Abstract The authors investigated the role of group composition on cooperative-learning groups. Participants were 275 graduate students enrolled in 15 sections of an introductory-level education research course who, through a modified stratified random assignment procedure, formed 70 groups ranging in size from 2 to 7. Using group as the unit of analysis revealed a small-to-moderate positive relationship between research aptitude (i.e., mean midterm and final examination scores) and group outcomes (i.e., scores on the article critiques and proposals)—the relationships involving the midterm scores suggested a Matthew effect, with respect to group outcomes. The authors found a positive relationship between degree of group heterogeneity (i.e, variability of the individual midterm scores) and scores on the article critique. A quadratic trend defined the relationship found between group size and performance on the article critique. Finally, a Treatment (i.e., group heterogeneity level) x Aptitude (i.e., mean midterm group performance) interaction was found with respect to the article critiques scores. Implications are discussed.

Similarity in General Mental Ability in Bedouin Full and Half Siblings.

Abstract A small battery of g loaded mental ability tests were administered to 274 children from 106 Bedouin families (mean age = 15.0 years, range of age = 7.9 – 18.9 years) attending grade schools in the southern region of Israel. The children were chosen on the basis of being members of families in which the father has two wives and the respondent having a sibling (half- or full-sibling) in the same school. The three measures (Raven, Digit Span and Pedigrees) yielded a large single general factor (the first unrotated principal component— g ) replicating their behavior in Western populations. Model-fitting with Mx demonstrated that a model with shared environmental and nonshared environmental influence could explain the data for all three measures as well as the g factor although it was not possible to exclude an additive genetic and nonshared environmental model for the Raven data. The full-sibling maximum likelihood correlation for g was .49; the half-sibling maximum likelihood correlation was .43. These correlations are essentially the same as those based on similar measures gathered on full-siblings and half-siblings of about the same age in Western populations. A contrast measure (Elithorn Mazes) was included in the battery of tests because it has shown little or no familial similarity in previous studies. Similar results were obtained for our full- and half-siblings as well (.0 and .15). These findings demonstrate internal validity for these tests in this cultural context and support the proposition that shared family environment is a strong determinant of sibling similarity for children in this age range.

Adolescent Intimacy A Cross-Cultural Study

This study examined and compared perceptions of intimacy in friendships among Israeli Jewish and Israeli Bedouin adolescents. Questionnaires assessing perceived intimacy and self-disclosure in close friendships were completed by 288 Jewish and 327 Bedouin 7th-, 9th-, and 11th-grade students. Overall, results showed that intimacy was perceived to reflect a balance between closeness and individuality in close friendships. Yet Jewish and Bedouin adolescents reported on distinctive patterns of balancing closeness and individuality. Jewish adolescents, as opposed to Bedouin adolescents, perceived less of a need to control or to try to be similar to each other in friendships. Bedouin adolescents tended to emphasize control of and conformity to friends. Age and sex differences in the Jewish and Bedouin cohorts reflected the interplay of developmental and cross-cultural aspects of intimacy in adolescence. The results underscore the salience of intimacy for peer relations during the adolescent years and indicate the importance of understanding close friendships within this cultural context.

Consanguineous Marriage and Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities among Arab Bedouins Children of the Negev Region in Southern Israel: A Pilot Study

In this article, we present data from two special education schools that serve the Arab Bedouin population in the Negev region in southern Israel. Data were collected on 221 children (53.8% female and 46.2% male) with moderate and severe intellectual and developmental disability (IDD) in order to assess the extent of consanguineous background in these children. Findings showed that 61.5% of all the participants were offspring of parents who were biologically related, both first and second cousins. Almost 70% of the participants were diagnosed with moderate IDD, 20% with severe IDD, and 10% diagnosed with other developmental disorders. It is recommended to further investigate this population for a more detailed history and specific genetic disorders for appropriate genetic counseling for those already married and also to focus public health efforts to decrease the rate of marriages between relatives. Consanguinity is a well-known risk factor for genetic disorders, including diseases and syndromes that present with intellectual and developmental disabilities. This is due to autosomal recessive disorders and also other inherited disorders. The vast majority of the behavioral genetics studies, which for the most part have focused on twins and adoptees (1, 2) have been conducted in highly industrialized western societies such as the United States and Northern European countries. Despite the important and influential research undertaken on the impact of genetics and consanguineous marriage and the extent to which public awareness has been raised by these findings, only a limited number of investigations have been carried out in collective, non-western societies (e.g., Africa, Asia, and the Middle East) and there is scant empirical evidence regarding the genetic influence of consanguineous marriage in these societies. In these societies, consanguineous marriage is a common feature. There is, for example, a long tradition of such marriages in Japan, India, Sudani tribes, and Arab societies (3–8). Consanguineous marriage is also commonplace in the population of about 200,000 Bedouin Arabs living in the Negev desert in the south of Israel. Studies conducted in Indian rural and urban populations showed a higher frequency of consanguineous marriages in rural compared with urban communities (9, 10). One study (11) showed that about 50% of all marriages in the rural population were consanguineous marriages with 52.6% of these consanguineous marriages involving first cousin; whereas, in the urban area, consanguineous marriages accounted for about 30% of the total number of marriages, with 60.9% of these marriages involving first cousin relationships. Research indicates that a large segment of the world population practices certain forms of “inbreeding.” According to Bittles (5), 20–50% of all marriages occur between biologically related people in parts of Central, South, and West Asia and North Africa. The most popular matches are between first cousins, double first cousins (where the spouses share both sets of grandparents), or uncles and nieces. Although less than 1% of marriages are consanguineous in North America and Europe, up to 10% of marriages in East and West Africa and South America are between kin. The percentages could also be high in rapidly growing populations in Middle Africa, the Caribbean, Central America, East Asia, and Southeast Asia, for which no reliable figures exist. Changes in culture and the influence of the Western World also affect the rate of consanguineous marriage resulting in a decrease today (12). Among parents of 14,237 newborns in Bahrain in 2008–2009, the total consanguinity and first cousin marriage rates over a period of 4 months in 2008 were 10.9 and 6.9% respectively; while during all of 2009 the rates were 11.4 and 6.8% respectively (12). Compared with earlier data, first cousin marriage rates in Bahrain declined from 24% to nearly 7% (12).