Perspective on Development & Psychopathology Flashcards
Etiology
Study of causation: factors that might be causally related to childhood disorders. Focuses on the fact that many of these psychological disorders are multiple caused.
Developmental Psychopathology Perspective
Abnormal development is multiple determined. Must look beyond current symptoms and consider developmental pathways and interacting events. Children and environments are interdependent: both children and the environment are active contributors to adaptive and maladaptive behaviour (transactional view).
Organization of Development - Sensitive periods
Early patterns of adaptation evolve with structure over time. Sensitive periods: Time in development when environmental influences on development are really enhanced, and a stressor might have a disproportionately strong influence. Current abilities or limitations are influence by prior.
An integrative approach
No single theoretical orientation explains various behaviours or disorders. Abnormal child behaviour is best studied form a multi-theoretical perspective.
Biological Perspectives
Neurobiological perspective: The brain is the underlying cause of psychological disorders. The fetal brain develops from all-purpose cells into a complex organ.
Neural plasticity: the brain’s anatomical differentiation is use-dependent. Experience plays a critical role in brain development.
Biological Perspectives: Maturation of the brain
Areas governing basic sensory and motor skills mature during the first 3 years of life. Perceptual and instinctive centres are strongly affected by early childhood experiences. Prefrontal cortex and cerebellum are no required until 5 to 7 years old. Major restructuring occurs from ages 9 to 11 due to pubertal development and again in adolescence. These are all examples of sensitive periods in development.
Genetic Contributions
Expression of genetic influences = Malleable & responsible to social environment. Genetic influences are probabilistic, not deterministic. Most forms of abnormal behaviour are polygenic.
Behavioural genetics
A branch of genetics that investigates possible connections between a genetic predisposition and observed behaviour. Lots of twin studies.
Molecular genetics
Used to identify specific genes for childhood disorders. Long-term goal is to determine how genetic mutations alter how genes function.
Gene-Environment Correlations (3 types)
Ways that a person’s genes and their environment are systematically interrelated. Three types:
1. Passive: Simple association between the genes you have a the environment that you’re in.
2. Evocative: You as a function of who you are because of your genes, evoke or elicit reactions from the environment.
3. Active: My genes are pushing me to seek out certain experiences or certain things in my environment.
Neurobiological Contributions
Neurotransmitters make biochemical connections. Neurons more sensitive to a particular neurotransmitter cluster together and form brain circuits. Psychoactive drugs are used in treatments.
Psychological Perspectives
Have value in explaining the development of psychopathology - transactions must be considered. Emotions play a role in establishing an infants ability to adapt to new surroundings. Behavioural and cognitive processes assist a young chid in making sense of the world.
Emotions Influences
Emotions and affective expression: Are core elements of human psychological experience, are a central feature of infant activity and regulation, help with internal monitoring.
Emotion reactivity and regulation
Emotion reactivity: individual differences in the threshold and intensity of emotional experience.
Emotion regulation: enhancing, emanating, or inhibiting emotions arousal.
Both are important signals of normal and abnormal development.
Emotional Influences - Temperament (3 primary dimensions)
Shapes individual’s approach to their environment & vice versa. 3 primary dimensions (Rothbart):
1. Surgency: Positive affect and approach
2. Effortful Control: Tendency to be more fearful or inhibited. Holding themselves back. Cautious.
3. Negative affectivity: negative affect or irritability.
Temperament
Early infant temperament may be linked to psychopathology or risk conditions. High Self-regulation: A good formula for healthy, normal adjustment.
Behavioural & Cognitive Influences: Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA)
Four primary operant conditioning principles: Positive and negative reinforcement + positive and negative punishment. Explains behaviour as a function of antecedents and then consequences. Cares about what behaviours you’re exhibiting, whether they’re leading to adaptive or maladaptive outcomes, and what are the things immediately before that are prompting those behaviours that I can potentially intervene upon.
Behavioural & Cognitive Influences: Classical conditioning
A learning process that occurs when a neutral stimulus is paired with a stimulus that already elicits a response. This creates an automatic association between the two stimuli.
Behavioural & Cognitive Influences: Cognitive Theorists
How thought patterns develop over time
Behavioural & Cognitive Influences: Social-cognitive theorists
Social cognition relate to how children think about themselves and others. Models & ‘latent learning’. Whereas classical and operant are thinking about what you are doing, they think about how people learn form others and models. You don’t always have to be engaged in a certain behaviour to learn from that.
Infant-Caregiver Attachment
Attachment: the process of establishing and maintaining an emotional bond with parents or other significant individuals.
An internal working model of relationships comes from a child’s initial crucial relationship.
The family and peer context
Subsystems receiving the most attention involves roles of mother-child and the marital couple. Less attention is given to roles of siblings and fathers. Family systems theorists argue that understandings or predicting the behaviour of a particular family member cannot be done in isolation from other family members.
The family and peer context: how the family deals with typical and atypical stress
Is crucial to a child’s adjustment and adaptation. The outcome of stressful events depends on: the nature and severity of stress; the level of family functioning prior to the stress; and the family’s coping skills and resources. Major family and individual issues interfere with consistent and predictable childcare and basic needs.
Family, Social & Cultural Perspectives
Social and environmental contexts have large impact on development. Proximal influences: things in context that are closer to the child (events, friends, family). Distal influences: things in the context that are further away from the child. People in a family will have some shared environmental influences (same school), but also non-shared environmental factors (different sports).
Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Systems theory
Microsystem: parents, siblings, teachers (direct and frequent contact with child who have a big influence).
Mesosystem: Interactions between different things or people within the microsystem (people within a child’s system interacting with each other, e.g. parent-teacher conferences).
Ecosystem: Child is not directly engaging, but has an influence on them (parent’s workplace).
Macrosystem: Society and culture, cultural elements that influence children’s development (social conditions).
Chronosystem: Has to do with time (parental divorce is a stressor that happened at a specific point in time).
Strengths and weaknesses of Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Systems Theory
Strengths: Conceptualizes development as product of biological and environmental forces interacting within a complex system.
Weaknesses: Systems perspectives may never provide a coherent picture of development. Human development may be more predictable than bioecological model implies.
Velez-Agosto Et Al., 2017
Reconcepitalization of Bronfenrenner with culture moved from macrosystem to a factor that permeates all levels of the ecological system.
