Children Living In Extremes

Bombs and Bodies: Children Living in Extremes

WHAT:

Bombings in Baghdad, bodies floating in New Orleans. Television and computer screens filled with graphic images of death, contorted bodies, and people, especially kids, suffering. Even as these events numb adult minds, they have left children insecure and frightened. At the 2007 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), researchers, several from UCLA, discussed the variety of dangerous domains that impact child development in a symposium entitled "Ecologies of Danger and Cultures of Resilience: Children in Extreme Situations." They will use this framework to describe the effects of danger and trauma on children, and examine the factors that promote child resilience and well-being.

WHO:

Symposium Organizer
Carl A. Maida, UCLA

Symposium Co-Organizer and Moderator
Robert S. Pynoos, UCLA

The Ecology of Danger: Transgenerational Impact among Vervet Monkeys
Lynn A. Fairbanks, UCLA

Responses to Danger in Infants and Toddlers: The Moderating Influence of Family Relationships
Alicia F. Lieberman, UC San Francisco

Katrina's Children: Crisis, Trauma, and Resilience
Howard J. Osofsky, Louisiana State University, New Orleans

Moral Development and Pathological Interference with Conscience Functioning Among Adolescents after Catastrophic Disaster
Alan M. Steinberg, UCLA

Discussant
Thomas S. Weisner, UCLA

BACKGROUND:

Developmental and ecological dimensions of danger to children were discussed. This included aspects of any physical environment that lends itself to a social ecology of danger; behavioral data on the impact of danger on mother and infant interactions; effects of danger on child and adolescent development and on parent and child interactions; the ways major catastrophic events affect children's schematization of the world, self, and others; disturbances in moral development and conscience functioning; post-catastrophe ecological factors that promote resilience and recovery of children and families; and cultural pathways and community settings that mitigate the impact of dangerous events and promote resilience.

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Contact: Mark Wheeler
University of California - Los Angeles