Abnormal Child Psychology 2 Flashcards
What 3 features are associated with a a Psychological disorder?
- Distress
- Impairment/limitations in functioning
- Increased risk of further suffering or harm
What is a Psychological Disorder?
A pattern of behavioral, cognitive, emotional or physical symptoms shown by the individual
What features are associated with abnormality in children
Impairment in adaptive functioning, dysfunctional behavior
- Exaggerations of otherwise normal emotions, behaviors, or cognitive processes
- Poor adaptation to an environment
- Impairment in developmental progress
- Deviations from the norm.
True or False: Stigmatization is a challenge
True
Why do we need to be careful of labels especially when it concerns a child?
“Labeling a child can exacerbate negative academic evaluations, behavioral evaluations, evaluations of personality, and overall assessments of the child”.
What must definitions of abnormal child behavior take into consideration
The child’s level of competence
What is Competence?
- The ability to successfully adapt in the environment
- Successful adaptation is influenced by culture and ethnicity
What are Developmental Tasks necessary for?
- Allow us to
understand if a
child is doing well - Understand experiences and behaviors within
broad domains
What are the Developmental Tasks of Infancy to Preschool?
- Attachment to caregiver
- Language
- Differentiation of self from environment
What are the Developmental Tasks of Middle Childhood?
- Self control and compliance
- School adjustment - attendance and appropriate conduct
- Academic achievement
- Getting along with peers?
- Rule governed conduct
What are the Developmental Tasks of Adolescence?
- Successful transition to secondary schooling
- academic achievement
- involvement in extracurricular activities
- Forming close friendships within and across gender
- Forming a cohesive sense of self identity
What are Developmental Pathways?
An active and dynamic sequence and timing of certain behaviors and relationships between these behaviors over time
What is Multifinality?
Similar early experiences lead to different outcomes.
What is Equifinality?
Different factors lead to a similar outcome
What is a Risk Factor?
a variable that precedes a negative outcome of interest
What is a Protective Factor?
a personal or situational variables that mitigates a child developing a disorder
What is Resilience?
- The ability to fight off or recover from misfortune
- Associated with strong self-confidence, coping skills, avoiding risk situations
What is the “protective triad” of resources?
- Strength of the child
- Strength of the family
- Strength of the school/community
What is Developmental Psychopathology?
Approach to describing and studying disorders of childhood, adolescence and beyond in a manner that emphasizes the importance of developmental processes and tasks.
What are the Three Prominent Assumptions in Developmental Psychopathology?
- Abnormal development is multiply determined.
- Child and environment are interdependent and Transactional
- Abnormal development involves continuities and discontinuities
What is Etiology?
How biological, psychological and environmental process interact to produce outcomes that are observed over time.
What is Nature?
The degree to which our genes dictate
emotional, cognitive and behavioral outcomes
such as personality traits, levels of aggression,
frustration tolerance, intelligence, empathic
responsiveness, etc…
What is Nurture?
The degree to which variables in the
environment during development, including in
utero, are determinants of these aforementioned
outcomes.
What occurs in the Prenatal environment?
- Reciprocal influence
- Person and environment interaction.
- Both good and bad affect the developing fetus.
- possible harms to the developing fetus
- Dosage & duration
- Genetic make-up: susceptibility
What is a Teratogen?
harmful environmental agent
True or False: externalizing problems (behaviors) and a dx of conduct disorder during childhood have been shown to be associated with prenatal stress, independent of postnatal maternal or genetic factors.
True
What are some indicators of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome?
- Microcephaly - small head
- Low nasal bridge
- epicanthal folds - skin fold of the eyes
- micrognathia - small lower jaw
- thin upper lip
- minor ear abnormalities
- smooth philtrum - groove that naturally forms above the upper lip
- small palpebral fissures - whites of the eyes
True or False: Brain and nervous system do not function as underlying causes of psychological disorders.
False: they do function as underlying causes
True or False: The early years of life do not matter because early experiences do not affect the architecture of the maturing brain.
False: they do matter and they do affect the architecture of the maturing brain
What is Neural Plasticity?
the brain is most malleable early on, and the brains anatomical differences are use-dependent.
In the first few years of life, approximately 700 new neural connections are formed every second, what sort of sensory pathways are formed?
like those for basic vision and hearing are the first to develop, followed by early language skills and higher cognitive functions
What are some facts regarding Neural Plasticity?
- The brains atomical differentiation is use dependent.
- Our developmental history creates a brain that dictates behaviors seen in adolescence and adulthood.
- Most disorders are ‘adolescent emergent’.
- What came before adolescence creates this manifestation of psychopathology
How important of a role does the caregiver play when it comes to brain development in children?
- children whose mothers
nurtured them early in life
have a larger hippocampus - the more severe the
caregiver’s neglect, the more pronounced the brain damage can be.
How are Neural connections formed and strengthened in children?
- Neural connections are formed and strengthened when the caregivers responds to a child’s cries, eye-contact, or is picked-up and held.
- Serve and return interactions shape brain architecture
What may happen if the caregiver’s responses are inconsistent or they are not responding
- Future physical, mental, and emotional health may be compromised.
- The body’s stress response is activated, flooding the developing brain with potentially harmful stress hormones.
How does Stress affect early childhood development?
- Children exposed to severe early life stress experience emotion regulation difficulties, which correlate with the development of psychopathology.
- Volumetric differences in the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortexin children exposed to early life stress.
How is the cerebellum affected by sensitive to ones environment?
- In one study, those who experienced mild to moderate family difficulties between birth and 11 years of age had developed a smaller
cerebellum at age 17, an area of the brain associated with skill learning, stress regulation and sensory-motor
control. - The cerebellum is consistently found
to be smaller in some psychiatric illnesses.
