Tenets of Developmental Psychopathology

1. Tenets of Developmental Psychopathology • Must understand behavior in context • Children actively shape their environments • Organizational perspective • Continuity across time will manifest as coherence of patterns, not continuity in specific behaviors • Risk factors • Distinguished from • vulnerability factors • protective factors • Resilience • Interest in individual differences

2. Developmental pathways, I • Lewis Chapter in book • Trait models and their limitations • Environmental models and their limitations • Interactional Models • Describes 2: Type 1 in which person and environment remain unchanged by interaction, and Type 2 in which person and environment are ‘transformed’ by interaction • Goodness-Of-Fit model is a Type 1 model • Transactional Model (or Transformational Models)

3. Continuity Across Development • Why should be there be continuity from early childhood disruption to later adjustment problems? • Process mechanisms can be specified • E.g., attachment, chains of stresses, physiological, genetic

4. Evidence for Continuity, I • More continuityLess contintuity • Follow-back Follow-up • Clinic attenders General population • Externalizing dis. Internalizing disorder • Global maladjust- Specific diagnostic ment criteria

5. Evidence for Continuity, II • Stronger evidence for indirect than for direct effects of early experience on later adjustment across time • Moderating effects can play a role in determining long term impact • E.g., gender • Example: continuity of depression

6. Developmental Tasks, I • Can Disorders Be Conceptualized as Failures at Developmental Tasks? • 0-3months • Infants prewired to engage the world • Show initial self-regulation abilities (predisposed to elicit caregivers’ soothing/regulating responses)

7. Developmental Tasks II • 0-3 mos: • Infants selectively responsive to certain touch, high pitched voice, certain visual displays • Begin to develop small motor routines • 3 mos-- begin to ‘make interesting spectacles last’ • 3 most-- infants begin social smile, vocalizing responses (cooing), more eye contact • Can baby accept soothing? • Does baby appropriately engage the world?

8. Developmental Tasks III • 2-7 months-- building capacity for selective attachments • Laughter, increased capacity to engage the caretakers • 6 mos, begins to enjoy familiar people more than others • Can infant begin to ‘read’ cues from caregivers? • Does infant respond with range of emotion?

9. Developmental Tasks IV • 7-10 months: • Differentiation of somatic vs. emotional states • Increased differentiation and intensity of emotions • Stranger anxiety -- 8-9 mos * • Means-end associations more clear • Does baby learn to respond appropriately when upset, to get its needs met?

10. Developmental Tasks, 9-24 Mos v     Imitation v     Emergence of attachment v     Stringing together of related behaviors v     Capacity for self-control, delay of gratification v     Use of distal communication v     Disorders: lack of imitation, inability to form attachment (or other emotional/behavioral system), limited intentionality

11. Developmental Tasks, 18-30 Mos Capacity for Mental Representations Language Development       Representing ‘maternal object’       ‘Transitional Object’       Object and person constancy       Increasing organization of representations       Problems: Unable to, or partially able to, form mental representations

12. Developmental Tasks, 30-48 Mos v     Increased language development v     Increased means-end representations, cause and effect linking of representations v     Increasing complexity of categorization v     Personal responsibility (‘causal’ self) v     Affect and behavior better connected v     Improved capacity for self-regulation v     Problems: deficits in cause-effect reasoning, confusion of self with other, including needs, feelings; impulse control problems