The role of intelligence and feedback in children's strategy competence.

A test-intervention-test study was conducted investigating the role of intelligence on four parameters of strategy competence in the context of a numerosity judgment task. Moreover, the effectiveness of two feedback types on these four parameters was tested. In the two test sessions, the choice/no-choice method was used to assess the strategy repertoire, frequency, efficiency, and adaptivity of a group of low-, average-, and high-intelligence children.

Risk factors for childhood burn injuries: a case-control study from Greece.

During a 12-month period 239 children who presented with a burn injury at the Emergency Department of a teaching children's hospital in Athens, with city-wide coverage, and 239 gender- and age-matched controls with minor non-injury ailments were interviewed. The questionnaire covered sociodemographic characteristics of the children and their families, information allowing the construction of a burn avoidance index in their homes and items from the Achenback scale that were synthesized into a child activity score. The data were analyzed through conditional logistic regression.

Juvenile delinquents' perceptions of childhood parental rearing patterns.

This study compared individuals who have been identified as engaging in delinquent behavior, but who perceive their childhood differently. It examined the differentiating family and social characteristics between delinquents who were maltreated in childhood (based on self-report data) and delinquents who were not maltreated. The sample consisted of the entire population of juvenile delinquents (N = 287) in all institutions and prisons in Greece.

A needs survey among patients in Leros asylum.

The recent exposure of the plight of inmates living in poor conditions at the state asylum on the Greek island of Leros has caused public and professional outrage. If Greece is to avoid mistakes made by other countries, the plans for rehabilitating the patients and closing the hospital should from the outset include identification of the precise needs of patients for support and care. The survey of the patients' characteristics and needs for care found that most patients had no outside friends or relatives, and most were unable to perform basic daily skills.

Psychotic patients' attributions for mental illness.

The study examined the attributions concerning mental illness of young psychotic out-patients participating in a rehabilitation programme. The sample consisted of 50 men and 33 women (mean age 26 yrs) diagnosed by their treating psychiatrist as psychotic, with main symptoms: hallucinations (59 per cent), depression (12 per cent), non-specific (29 per cent). Subjects replied to a personally administered questionnaire, designed to obtain ratings of importance for several causes of mental illness, and a measure of how optimistic they felt about their future psychological health.

Evaluation of psychiatric morbidity following an earthquake.

Greece has been characterized by high earthquake activity in comparison not only with Mediterranean countries, but also with many parts of Eurasia. In the present study an assessment of the psychiatric morbidity was carried out in the city of Kalamata, Greece, two weeks after the earthquake in September, 1986. A random sample of residents divided into three categories was assessed.

A double-blind placebo-controlled study to compare the autonomic effects of fluvoxamine with those of amitriptyline and doxepin in healthy volunteers.

A double-blind placebo- and standard-controlled study was designed to determine the autonomic effects of fluvoxamine, a putative antidepressant possessing a high 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) re-uptake-blocking activity with essentially no effects on noradrenaline. The study employed single doses of fluvoxamine (50 mg, 75 mg and 100 mg), amitriptyline (50 mg and 75 mg), doxepin (50 mg and 75 mg) and placebo, each of which was administered to 17 healthy volunteers according to a repeated-measures latin square design balanced for drug carry-over. Both amitriptyline (Ami) and doxepin (Dox) produced statistically significant decreases in salivary flow relative to placebo, and these effects were still present 24 h after taking medication.