Week 1 Introduction

Question 1

What do research studies in abnormal child psychology aim to address?

Answer 1

1. What constitutes normal and abnormal behavior for children of different ages, sexes and ethnic and cultural backgrounds
2. Identify causes and correlates of abnormal child behavior
3. Make predictions about long-term outcomes
4. Developing and evaluating methods for treatment and/or prevention

Question 2

List 4 important features that distinguish most child and adolescent disorders (*)

Answer 2

When adults seek services for children, it’s often unclear whose problem it is. Other people refer them that’s why they are in the mental health system.

Many child and adolescent problems involve failure to show expected developmental progress
The problem may be transitory or perhaps an initial indication of more severe problems ahead
Determining the problem requires familiarity with normal and abnormal development

Many problem behaviours shown by children and youths are not entirely abnormal
To some extent, most children and youth commonly exhibit certain problem beharious, but some concerns seem to involve more than these normal concerns
Thus, decisions about what to do also require familiarity with known psychological disorders and troublesome problem behaviours

Interventions for children and adolescents often are intended to promote further development, rather than merely to restore a previous level of functioning
Unlike interventions for most adult disorders, the goal for many children is to boost their abilities and skills, as well as to eliminate distress.

Question 3

What are some possible referral questions for a client below 1-year-old?

Answer 3

Look at physical development, gross motor development

Not so much intellectual development

Question 4

What are some possible referral questions for a client in preschool?

Answer 4

Look for externalizing problems (it’s out there lol): Social and interpersonal development (e.g aggression), speech patterns, unable to follow instructions, separation anxiety

Question 5

What are some possible referral questions for a client between 7-12 years old?

Answer 5

Self-esteem, ability to vocalize thoughts and feelings (more so for 12 y/o, 7 y/o not so much, but then again think about culture differences)

Academic stress (P1 - new school environment, P5/6 - PSLE), truancy, interpersonal issues

Question 6

What are some possible referral questions for a teenage client?

Answer 6

More internalizing issues - Isolation, eating disorders, defiance/bad relationships with family/parents, depression, relationship problems

Question 7

Early views of mental illness were more ______.

What does ______ mean in this case?

Answer 7

biological.

if you have a mental illness, something must be wrong somewhere in your body, so you have to eat medication to get better.

Question 8

Intervention for children and adolescents often are intended to promote _________, rather than merely to restore a previous level of functioning.

Answer 8

further development.

aim to boost their abilities and skills and reduce distress

Question 9

Give an example of an international law/organization that is aimed at protecting the rights of children.

Answer 9

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

Question 10

What policies have Singapore implemented so far when it comes to protecting the rights of children? (*)

Answer 10

Children and Young Persons Act

MSF - Child Protection Service to protect children from abuse

Question 11

What has Singapore come up with to better facilitate the development of children with special educational needs? (*)

Answer 11

Come up with SPED schools + extra resources to see who goes to mainstream school or SPED school.

Mild LD goes to mainstream schools
Moderate and above go to SPED schools

Compulsory Education Act now covers children with moderate to severe special needs.

Question 12

What are the amendments to CYPA and what are some possible reasons behind it? (*)

Answer 12

To better protect abused or neglected children, the age limit for what’s considered a young person has been raised from 16 to 18. This would allow the authorities to intervene in cases of abuse involving older children.

Enhanced Care and Protection Order (ECPO).
ECPO allows MSF and designated caregivers to children who are in out-of-home care to make day-to-day as well as more substantive decisions such as overseas travel - just as what parents would do in normal family settings,

BPC to Family Guidance Order. Don’t just place the blame on the child. Shifts focus on how to better support the family rather than how to punish the child.

Question 13

In Western society, an inkling of the prerequisites for a social conscience first occurred during the _____, when both a philosophy of humane care and institutions of social protection began to take root.

Answer 13

17th century

Question 14

What did John Locke propose?

Answer 14

Believed in individual rights, and expressed the novel opinion that children should be raised with thought and care instead of indifference and harsh treatment.
Rather than seeing children as uncivilized tyrants, he saw them as emotionally sensitive beings who should be treated with kindness and understanding and given proper educational opportunities

Question 15

Who was the person with one of the first documented efforts to work with a special child?

What did this result in?

Answer 15

Jean-Marc Itard, 19th century.

Symbolically, this undertaking launched a new era of a helping orientation towards special children, which initially focused on the care and treatment, and training of the people then termed “mental defectives”.

Question 16

What kind of distinction did Leta Hollingworth make between those with ID and those with mental disorders?

What came out of this distinction?

What still required work?

Answer 16

Argued that many mentally defective children were actually suffering from emotional and behavioral problems due to inept treatment by adults and lack of appropriate intellectual challenge

This view led to an important and basic distinction between people with ID and those with mental disorders, but basic means that it’s still not very clear

Local governments needed to know who was responsible for helping children whose cognitive development appeared normal but showed serious or emotional problems
Solutions were usually religious in nature → suffering from moral insanity → implications that he/she were having disturbances in personality or character.

Question 17

What did Benjamin Rush propose about mental disorders in children?

Answer 17

Children were incapable of true adult-like insanity, because the immaturity of their developing brains prevented them from retaining the mental events that caused insanity
Consequently, the term moral insanity grew in acceptance as a means of accounting for non-intellectual forms of abnormal child behaviour

Question 18

What was one major flaw with early attempts at creating biological explanations?

Answer 18

They were heavily biased in favor of the cause being the person’s fault.

Question 19

How does masturbatory insanity illustrate this flaw?

Answer 19

E.g Masturbatory insanity → example illustrates how such thinking can lead to an explanation of abnormal behaviour without consideration of objective scientific findings and the base rate of masturbation in the general population
Also shows how prevailing political and social climates influence definitions of child psychopathology both today and in the past.
Views of masturbation evolved from the moral judgment that it was a sin of the flesh, to the medical opinion that it was harmful to one’s physical health, to the psychiatric assertion that sexual overindulgence caused insanity.

Question 20

What was done to change this view, and who spearheaded it?

Answer 20

Clifford Beers.

Believed that mental disorders are a form of disease → criticized society’s ignorance and indifference and sought to prevent mental disease by raising the standards of care and disseminating reliable information
Thus, detection and intervention methods began to flourish, based on a relatively more tempered view of afflicted individuals (but still quite frightened and ill-informed la).

Question 21

What was one limitation of Beers’ model?

Answer 21

Unfortunately, because this paradigm was based on a biological disease model, intervention was limited to persons with the most visible and prominent disorders (e.g psychoses and severe ID).

Question 22

List two psychological attributions of abnormal behavior in children

Answer 22

1. Psychodynamic Theory

2. Behaviorism

Question 23

What did Freud propose about mental disorder in children?

Answer 23

Roots of disorders were traced back to early childhood.

He believed that individuals have inborn drives and predispositions that strongly affect their development, but he also believed that experiences play a role in psychopathology

Question 24

List ways in which psychodynamic theory advanced our ways of thinking about the causes and treatment of mental disorders.

Answer 24

1. First to give meaning to the concept of mental disorder by linking it to childhood experiences
2. Incorporated developmental concepts into an understanding of psychopathology at a time when early childhood development was virtually ignored by mainstream child psychiatry and psychology
3. Emphasis on the fact that personality and mental health outcomes had multiple causes (no singular specific cause)

Question 25

What did Anna Freud propose about mental disorders?

Answer 25

expanding his ideas to understanding children, in particular by noting how children’s symptoms were related more to developmental stages than were those of adults.

Question 26

What did Melanie Klein argue about children’s play?

Answer 26

Actions can be viewed as a form of unconscious fantasy.

Question 27

Psychodynamic approaches were popular during ___ to ____

Answer 27

1930s to 1950s

Question 28

List some criticisms of psychodynamic theory

Answer 28

not empirically supported

Question 29

What is John Watson famous for?

Answer 29

theory of emotions and behaviorism

Question 30

What population did behavior therapy initially focus on?

Answer 30

Children with ID or severe disturbances because it was believed that psychoanalytic practices were inappropriate for such children

Question 31

Define what a psychological disorder is

Answer 31

A pattern of behavioral, cognitive, emotional or physical symptoms shown by an individual.

Associated with one of more of these 3 features:

• Shows some degree of distress like fear or sadness
• Behavior indicates some degree of disability
• Such distress and disability –> Increases risk of further suffering/harm, such as death, pain, disability or an important loss of freedom

Question 32

What definition does this exclude?

Answer 32

This definition excludes circumstances in which such reactions are expected and appropriate as defined as one’s cultural background.

The 3 features only described what a person does or does not do in certain circumstances. They don’t attribute causes or reasons for abnormal behavior to the individual alone. But ideally you should consider individual and situational - right now it’s mainly situational

Question 33

Definitions of abnormal child behavior must take into account ____________

Define ________.

Answer 33

Competence

ability to successfully adapt to the environment.

Question 34

Definitions of competence vary across ______ and _______.

Answer 34

culture and ethnicity.

Question 35

What can be used to decide if a child’s performance deviates from that of their same-age peers in something?

Answer 35

Developmental tasks, which include broad domains of competence like conduct and academic achievement.

Tells us how children typically progress within each domain as they grow.

Question 36

List 3 examples of developmental tasks from infancy to preschool.

Answer 36

Attachment to caregivers
Language
Differentiation of self from the environment

Question 37

List 3 examples of developmental tasks in middle childhood.

Answer 37

Self-control and compliance
School adjustment (attendance, appropriate conduct)
Academic achievement (e.g., learning to read, do arithmetic)
Getting along with peers (acceptance, making friends)
Rule-governed conduct (following rules of society for moral behavior and prosocial conduct)

Question 38

List 3 examples of developmental tasks in adolescence.

Answer 38

Successful transition into secondary school
Academic achievement - learning skills needed for higher education or work
Involvement in CCAs
Forming close friendships within and across gender
Identity formation (cohesive sense of self-identity)

Question 39

List one fundamental developmental task that can be found across life stages.

Answer 39

Conduct.

Indicates how well a person follows the rules of society.

Question 40

What is another way to judge deviancy?

Define it.

Answer 40

Developmental pathways - sequence and timing of particular behaviors and possible relationships between behaviors over time.

Question 41

How do developmental pathways allow us to understand normal and abnormal development?

Answer 41

Can visualize development as an active, dynamic process that can account for very different beginnings and outcomes

Helps us understand the course and nature of normal and abnormal development.

Question 42

Distinguish between multifinality and equifinality.

Answer 42

Multi: Same beginning with different endings
Equi: Different beginning same ending.

Question 43

What does the concept of resilience exemplify?

Answer 43

A direct causal pathway rarely leads to a particular outcomes.

Different risk and protective factors and different interactions between these. See these as processes, not absolutes.

Question 44

How can protective factors be derived?

Answer 44

Protective triad: individual, family, school and community.

Question 45

Who are those that are disproportionately afflicted with mental health problems?

Answer 45

Children from:

• Disadvantaged families and neighbourhoods
• Abusive/neglectful families
• Those receiving inadequate child care or experiencing chronic stress
• Very low birth weight
• Born to parents with mental illness or substance abuse problems