Developmental Psychopathology: summary of all exam material
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Course
Developmental Psychopathology (201800070)
Institution
Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
Book
Disorders of Childhood: Development and Psychopathology
A comprehensive summary of all the required literature and the Developmental Psychopathology lectures of the Bachelor of Educational Sciences (UU). Includes all 14 chapters of the book “Disorders of Childhood.”
Week 3..................................................................................................................................................................... 20
Disorders of childhood: chapter 7....................................................................................................................................20
Disorders of childhood: chapter 9....................................................................................................................................21
Hoorcollege 4: Clinical field ADHD and autism................................................................................................................22
Week 7..................................................................................................................................................................... 46
Hoorcollege 10: Dyslexia and dyscalculia........................................................................................................................46
Hoorcollege 11: Developmental language disorder........................................................................................................48
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,Week 1
Disorders of childhood: chapter 1 t/m 5
Psychopathology refers to intense, frequent, and/or persistent maladaptive patterns of emotion,
cognition and behavior. Developmental psychopathology extends this description to emphasize that
these maladaptive patterns occur in the context of typical development and result in the current and
potential impairment of infants.
Central premise of developmental psychopathology = suggests that we gain a better understanding
of children’s disorders when we think about those disorders within the context of typical
development. Can be understood only by placing descriptions of disorders against the background of
usual emotional, cognitive and behavioral development.
Common descriptions of normality/psychopathology focus on:
1. Statistical deviance; the infrequency of certain emotions, cognitions and/or behaviors.
2. Sociocultural norms; the beliefs and expectations of certain groups about what kinds of emotions,
cognitions, and/or behaviors are undesirable/unacceptable.
3. Mental health perspectives; theoretical or clinically based notions of distress and dysfunction.
With sociocultural definitions, value judgements are the very basis of definitions of disorders. A key
value judgement involves distinctions between adaptation and maladaptation, and personal or groups
standards of adequate or optimal adaptation.
Prevalence and incidence rates are both measures of the frequency of psychopathology. Prevalence
refers to the proportion of a population with a disorder. Incidence refers to the rate at which new
cases arise.
Barriers to care are widespread and have been extensively summarized.
Types of barriers:
- Structural barriers: limited policy perspectives, disjointed systems, lack of provider availability,
long waiting lists, inconveniently located, transportation difficulties and inability to pay or
inadequate insurance coverage.
- Perception barriers: inability to acknowledge a disorder, denial of problem severity, beliefs that
difficulties will resolve over time or will improve without formal treatment.
- Services perception barriers: lack of trust in the system, previous negative experiences and the
stigma related to seeking help.
There are several dimensions of stigma, including negative stereotypes, devaluation and
discrimination; two targets of stigma, the individual and the family; and two contexts of stigma, the
general public and the self/individual.
Dimensional models of psychopathology emphasize the ways in which typical feelings, thoughts,
and behaviors gradually become more serious problems, which then may intensify and become
clinically diagnosable disorders. There are no sharp distinctions between adjustment and
maladjustment; also referred to as continuous or quantitative.
Categorial models of psychopathology emphasize discrete and qualitative differences in individual
patterns of emotion, cognition and behavior. There are clear distinctions between what is normal and
what is not; also referred to as discontinuous or qualitative.
Physiological models propose that there is a physiological (genetic, structural, biological or
chemical) basis for all psychological processes and events. Research focused on the human
connectome (=the diagram of the brain’s neural connections) makes use of graph theory, diffusion
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,imaging and quantitative analysis. In contrast to explanations of microscopic connectivity (=between
neurons), explanations of the connectome focus on macroscopic connectivity (=between brain
regions) and include descriptions of nodes, hubs and modules.
o Nodes = number of connections, distances between them (the path length), centrality and
clustering.
o Hubs = nodes with extensive connections to other nodes.
o Modules = groups of nodes with strong interconnections.
With greater connectivity within and across brain regions, the medial parietal cortex, the cingulate
cortex, the superior frontal cortex and the insula are hubs in the connectome model.
Gene-by-environment effects
1. Passive correlations: children are exposed to different environments provided by their genetically
related parents. Highly intelligent children raised by highly intelligent parents are exposed to
more educational opportunities.
2. Active correlations: children select of create their own environment as a function of their genetic
background. Extraverted children seek out other children; highly intelligent children choose to
read.
3. Evocative correlations: children experience different reactions or responses to their genetically
influenced emotions or behaviors. Highly anxious children may be shielded from even mildly
stressful situations.
There appear to be a limited set of risk alleles that impair general processes. Risk alleles include
common variants (=shared by individuals with and without disorders) and rare variants (=both
inherited and newly appearing). Polygenic models emphasize the likelihood that many genes have
small effects and attempt to account for the multiple type of genetic variations and processes that
result in genetic burdens, that influence the development of both mild and severe forms of disorders.
Physiological models suggest that there are inborn or acquired vulnerabilities to disorders that may
lead to psychological distress and dysfunction. According to this physiological diathesis-stress
model, structural damage or chemical imbalance does not by itself lead to disorder. Rather,
diatheses/predispositions such as genetic risk for disorder, in combination with additional stress lead
to the emergence of a disorder.
Psychodynamic models (Freud) consist of a fixation-regression model, which suggested that
individuals who failed to work through developmental issues become stuck in the past. Disorders
were rooted in (repressed) child-traumas.
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, Psychodynamic models emphasize:
1. unconscious cognitive, affective and motivational processes.
2. Mental representations of self, other and relationships.
3. The meaningfulness of individual experiences.
4. A developmental perspective focused on the origins of typical and atypical in early childhood
and the constantly changing psychological challenges faced by children as they age.
The behavioral models (Skinner) have an outward orientation, focusing on the individual’s
observable behavior within a specific environment. The models are based on core concepts of
learning theories. These theories propose that both typically and atypical behavior are gradually
acquired via processes of learning, including classical conditioning, operant conditioning and
observational learning. The construct reinforcement (negative and positive) is critical in all these
learning processes.
With the more theoretically cognitive models (Piaget) the focus is on the components and processes
of the mind and mental development. The neoconstructivist approach emphasizes evolutionary
contexts, experience-expectant learning and both qualitative and quantitative change across
development.
Humanistic models emphasize personally meaningful experiences, innate motivations for healthy
growth and the child’s purposeful creation of self. The humanistic model is related to positive
psychology.
Family models propose that the best way to understand the personality and psychopathology of
particular children is to understand the dynamics of their particular families. Shared environment are
the aspects of family life and function that are shared by all children in the family. Shared
environmental variables are contrasted with genetical variables (things are explained by one or the
other). Nonshared environment are the aspects of family life and function that are specific and
distinct for each child. Nonshared environmental variabilities contribute to sibling dissimilarity.
Sociocultural models emphasize the importance of the social context, including gender, race,
ethnicity and SES in the development, course and treatment of psychopathology.
A birth cohort includes individuals born in a particular historical period who share key experiences
and events. For example, kids growing up during the Great Depression, Generation X and Y etc.
Types of adaptational failures can be viewed as either delay (child acquires language more slowly
than others), fixation (child continues to suck her thumb long after others have stopped) or deviance
(child behaves strangely). This is one way of thinking about the connection between typical and
atypical development.
Another way of thinking about this connection is to examine the notion of process. This suggests that
adaption is an ongoing activity, so small problems lead to larger problems; it unfolds over time.
The concept of developmental pathways illustrates the principle that adjustment and maladjustment
are points or places along a lifelong map. With this perspective, development is cumulative and
developmental pathways are probabilistic, not deterministic. Meaning early difficulties do not
directly and always lead to disorder. Developmental pathways can be characterized as broad and
narrow.
Equifinality and multifinality refer to similarities and differences in individual pathways to a
disordered outcome.
Equifinality = sets of differing circumstances that lead to the same diagnosis.
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