Lecture notes Developmental Psychopathology - Exam 1

DP – Hoorcollege aantekeningen – Samenvatting
EXAM 1
HC 1: FUNDAMENTALS I
Developmental Psychopathology (DPP)
- The study of normal development that has gone awry
- Abnormal development that leads to psychopathological problems in children and
adolescents
- Problem behaviors for both youth and his/her environment

NORMAL AND ABNOMRAL BEHAVIOR
What is abnormal behavior?
- Not just atypical, but can be also harmful
o Externally or internally
- Developmentally inappropriate
- Need to consider a variety of variables
o Most important/crucial: age and situation/context
o Gender
o Culture (ethnicity or race)
- Parents and professionals may differ on their views of a child and what is considered
(in)appropriate
- Society has changing views of abnormality

Developmental Psychopathology perspective
- Abnormal development is multiply determined
o Must look beyond current symptoms, larger context
o Consider developmental pathways and interacting events
- Children and environments are interdependent – transactional view
o Both children and the environment as active contributors to adaptive and
maladaptive behavior
o Maladaptive in one situation can be adaptive in another situation
- Abnormal development involves continuities and discontinuities
o Continuity  developmental changes are gradual and quantitative, predictive of
future behavior patterns
o Discontinuity  developmental changes are abrupt and qualitative; not
predictive of future behavior patterns

Changes: Typical and atypical
Approximate Normal Common behavior Clinical disorders
age (years) achievements problems
0–2 - Eating - Stubbornness - Mental retardation
- Sleeping - Temper - Feeding disorder
- Attachment - Toileting - Autistic disorder
difficulties
2–5 - Language - Arguing - Speech and
- Toileting - Demanding language disorders
- Self-care skills attention - Problems stemming
- Self-control - Disobedience from child abuse
- Peer relationships - Fears and neglect
- Overactivity - Some anxiety
- Resisting bedtime disorders, such as
phobias
6 – 11 - Academic skills and - Arguing - ADHD
rules - Inability to - Learning disorder
- Rule-governed concentrate - School refusal

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games - Self-consciousness behavior
- Simple - Showing off - Conduct problems
responsibilities
12 – 20 - Relations with - Arguing - Anorexia
opposite sex - Bragging - Bulimia
- Personal identity - Anger outbursts - Delinquency
- Separation from - Risk-taking - Suicide attempts
family - Drug and alcohol
- Increased abuse
responsibilities - Schizophrenia
- Depression


Developmental tasks
Infancy Middle childhood Adolescence
- Attachment to caregivers - Self-control and - Successful transition to
- Language compliance secondary schooling
- Differentiation of self - School adjustment - Academic achievement
from environment - Academic achievement - Involvement in
- Getting along with peers extracurricular activities
- Rule-governed conduct - Forming close friendships
within and across gender
- Forming a cohesive
sense of self-identity

Behavioral indicators of abnormal behavior
- Developmental delay
- Developmental regression or deterioration
- Extremely high or low frequency of behavior
- Extremely high or low intensity of behavior
- Behavioral difficulty persists over time
- Behavior inappropriate to the situation
- Abrupt changes in behavior
- Several problems behaviors
- Behavior qualitatively different from normal

Factors involved in judgements of (ab)normality
- Developmental norms
- Cultural norms
- Gender norms
- Situational norms
- Role of adults
- Changing views of abnormality

How common are problems
- 5,4 -35,5% of youth aged 4-18 have DPP problems
- 15-20% of the youth that have problems have ‘clinic levels’ of disorder symptomology
- According to the APA
o 10% of youth have serious problems
o 10% have mild or moderate problems
- Infants and toddlers are also at risk
- Variability in rated due to:
o Different estimation methods
o Different populations

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o Different definitions of psychopathology
- Many do not receive help  making it harder estimate

Impact of developmental level
- Some evidence that disorders have a particular age of onset
o It doesn’t occur at that age, but occurs more frequently at that age
- Sometimes onset is insidious
- Some behaviors are easier to determine at a particular age

Impact of gender
- Gender can impact:
o Timing
o Severity
o Expression (expected behaviors)
 Expected behavior because of a social norm
- Concerns about gender bias exist
- External problems decrease over time: occurs more by males
- Internal problems increase over time; occurs more by females

Historical influences
- Early explanations of psychopathology
o Adult-focused
o Demonology
o Somatogenesis (bodily imbalances)
o Strong focus on single cause
- Nineteenth century
o Classification  Kraepelin
o Some childhood disorders identified
 Mental retardation received attention
o Progress made on conceptualization of etiology
- Influential theories
o Sigmund Freud & Psychoanalytic theory  his psychosexual theory of
development was one of the first developmental stage theories
o Behaviorism  behavior is learned – caused by interactions with the
environment
o Social learning theory  learned behavior also comes from observations of one’s
environment

Perspective and theory
- Perspective
o View, approach, cognitive set
- Paradigm
o Perspective shared by investigators
 Same assumptions and concepts
 Same methods for evaluation
- Theories of psychopathology
o Micro and macro

Models
- Interactional  variables interrelate to produce an outcome
- Transactional/systems  ongoing reciprocal transactions of environment and person