Sroufe, A. (2013). The promise of developmental psychopathology: Past and present.

Question 1

What is the major premise of the developmental psychopathology, according to Sroufe?

Answer 1

That it develops. It is different from breaking a leg.

Question 2

The perspective of developmental psychopathology offers enormous promise, according to Sroufe. How?

Answer 2

If pathology develops in a lawful manner, as is the premise, then it should be possible to identify precursors and pathways leading along such pathways or deflect them back toward more functional adaptation.

Question 3

What is the difference between the study of child disorders and developmental psychopathology?

Answer 3

In developmental psychopathology, adult conditions are equally of interest.

Question 4

Sroufe praises the amount of work done in the field of developmental psychopathology, but argues that the progress in the field is restrained because we know too little about ..

Answer 4

how pathology develops.

Question 5

The vast majority of work accomplished takes DSM (or sometimes ICD) categories as the starting point. What is problematic about this?

Answer 5

Using DSM or ICD categories tells us nothing about development.

Question 6

Sroufe also argues that the DSM/ICD system has “massive problems”. Which?

Answer 6

The high amount of comorbidity. The term comorbidity reveals a clinging to views of problem behaviors as entities, despite the evidence to the contrary.

Question 7

Is Sroufe wholly negative toward the research on psychopathology that is based on DSM/ICD categories?

Answer 7

No. He finds the useful for generating hypotheses, and aknowledges their contribution. They just don’t tell us much about development.

Question 8

Sroufe offers two propositions about development. Which?

Answer 8

1. Development is cumulative.

2. Development is best characterized by probabilistic pathways.

Question 9

What is meant by saying that development is cumulative?

Answer 9

Past development shapes subsequent development. We know that adaption at each age is related to adaptation at the next.

Question 10

What about discontinuous development, is that not an argument against the proposition that development is cumulative?

Answer 10

Yes, if there were cases of true discontinuous development. Sroufe gives examples of profound discontinuities where monkeys who had been extremely deprived as infants but were rehabilitated to normal functioning still showed signs of their deprived infant period when being caged for testing.

Question 11

What is meant by saying that development is best characterized by probabilistic pathways?

Answer 11

Probabilistic pathways is the opposite view of it being characterized by linear causalities. Early adversity or early maladaptation does not ineluctably lead to pathology: rather, it initiates a process that may be more likely to lead to pathology if that pathway continues to be supported.

Question 12

Bowlby (1973) used the analogy of branching train tacks in a railway yard to illustrate the proposition that development is characterized by probabilistic pathways. Which five specific corollaries (konsekvens) follow from his model?

Answer 12

1. Any starting path may have numerous possible outcomes (multifinality).
2. Two different initial paths may lead to the same outcome (equifinality).
3. Change is possible all along the way.
4. Change is constrained by how long the pathway has been followed.
5. Pathology is defined by sustained deviation from functional pathways.

Question 13

Sroufe argues that resilience is an example of …

Answer 13

the cumulative nature of development.

Question 14

How does resilience “clearly reveal the cumulative nature of development”?

Answer 14

Resilience is an acquired capacity that reduces the probability of developing behavioral problems despite stress.

Question 15

How does research on “turning points” help us argue that development is cumulative?

Answer 15

Turning points are opportunities for growth such as finding a partner. They’ve been specifically studied with regard to depression, which is stable but marked by discontinuities like these turning points. We see that forming a stable partnership accounts for some decline in depression. However, this change is stronger if the individuals also had secure attachments in infancy. In other words, some individuals are better able to take advantage of opportunities, based on their histories.

Question 16

Please mention evidence in support of multifinality.

Answer 16

Child maltreatment predicts a panoply (a group or collection that is impressive because it is so big or because it includes so many different kinds of people or things) of later problems, with the multifinality including both internalizing and externalizing disorders and a range of specific disorders from anxiety and depression to PTSD, borderline personality disorder and schizophrenia.

Question 17

Please mention evidence in support of equifinality.

Answer 17

Child sexual abuse is a strong predictor of adolescent depression; yet most girls suffering from depression in adolescence were not sexually abused.

Question 18

Please mention evidence in support of “change is constrained by how long the pathways has been followed”.

Answer 18

Anxious attachment in infancy and maladaptation and/or diverse circumstances at age 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 years are all modest predictors of later problems. However, maladaptation across all of these periods much more powerfully predicts outcomes (Sroufe et al., 2005).

Question 19

Sroufe et al. found in their longitudinal research a measure that predicted ADHD symptoms across childhood. Which?

Answer 19

A measure of “intrusive” care at age 6 months, and a measure of a child’s capabilities for self-regulation at 42 months.

Question 20

One of the measures that Sroufe et al. found to predict ADHD symptoms across childhood was a measure of “instrusive” care, taken at 6 months. How is this measured?

Answer 20

At this age infants have very modest capacities to regulate arousal. However, they do have a primitive “signal” system, for example, turning away during face-to-face interaction when arousal becomes too high. Caregivers properly reading such behaviors slow the pace of stimulation, building it up again as the infant is ready, thereby extending the capacity for coping with higher levels of arousal. In contrast, caregivers who intensely stimulate an unprepared infant, whose behavior is at cross-purposes with the infant’s readiness, repeatedly overwhelm and compromise the infant’s capacities.

Question 21

One of the measued that Sroufe et al. found to predict ADHD symptoms across childhood was a measure the child’s capacities for self-regulation at 42 months. How i this measured?

Answer 21

The parent’s task is to let the children stretch coping capcities, regulating themselves when they can. Only when the child’s capacities are about to be exceeded does the sensitive parent step in with regulatory assistance. However, some parents precisely add load to the child at these moments, teasing, ridiculing, pushing, distracting with flirting or giggling, and other behaviors that we subsume under the label of “parent-child boundary violations”. Such ill-timed and poor-quality stimulation would critically disrupt growing capacities for regulation.

Question 22

Sroufe found yet another variable (not “instrusive” care, not self-regulation) that predicted later ADHD symptoms. Which?

Answer 22

“Motor maturity”, an item on the Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale. It was not a predicted a priory to relate to ADHD at all. Could be example of equifinality.

Question 23

Sroufe et al. mentions Moffitt (1993). What did she do?

Answer 23

Moffitt (1993) used the Dunedin longitudinal data to suggest a developmental perspective on conduct problems. She proposed that individuals with manifestly similar problems could represent two distinctive groups based on history, specifically life-course-persistent (LCP) cases and adolescent limited cases. Moffitt considered the LCP group to represent a “neuropsychological disorder”, more in keeping with the disease model underlying the DSM.

Question 24

Why does Sroufe argue that we don’t need to conclude that the group with life-course persistent (LCP) conduct problems represent a “neurpsychological disorder”?

Answer 24

Sroufe argues that persistence could be caused by the behavioral pattern itself. One need to assume any endogenous precondition to account for persistence.

Question 25

What were Sroufe et al.’s findings on the adolescent limited group?

Answer 25

They had early histories as benign as a never antisocial group, but their adolescent conduct problems did have consequences for their adult functioning. They had significantly fewer adult problems than did the LCP group, but significantly more than the never antisocial group. Sroufe et al. argues that this group should be called adolescent onset and not adolescent limited.

Question 26

What makes adult depression and childhood depression distinct?

Answer 26

Childhood depression is more rare than adult depression. Childhood depression has a gender ratio that is close to equal with a slight predominance of boys, but depression in adolescence and adulthood has notably more females than males.

Question 27

Childhood depression predicts adult depression by how much?

Answer 27

Not a lot. There is little stability here. It has ever been reported that conduct problems in childhood are a better predictor of adult depression that is childhood depression.

Question 28

Differences in adult depression and childhood depression has caused researchers to theorize that …

Answer 28

They might represent distinctive pathways and that they might be distinctive conditions.

Question 29

What was found to be the strongest two predictors of childhood depression?

Answer 29

abuse (.30) and about equally much: a poor early parental care composite based on observation, early life stress, and low parental social support.

Question 30

What is found to be the strongest predictor of adolescent depression?

Answer 30

Maternal depression. Here there was a strong interaction with gender, revealing that maternal depression had a much greater impact for depression in girls.

Question 31

Does early experience play a special role in development or is it equally important to the other stages?

Answer 31

Sroufe argues that theoretically it should matter more because development is cumulative and early experience is first. He also points to a lot of research that shows how early experience predicts later behavior, and animals studies that show the impact that experience has on brain development and gene expression.

Question 32

According to Jimerson, Egeland, Sroufe, & Carlson, 200, dropping out of school can be predicted with x accuracy by age y.

Answer 32

It can be predicted with 77% accuracy by age 3 from measures of care and support.