Chapter 1 – Introduction:
Descriptions of normality and psychopathology focus on:
1. Statistical deviance: infrequency of certain emotions, cognitions, behaviors – too
much/too little
2. Sociocultural norms: beliefs and expectations of certain groups about what kinds
of emotions, cognitions, behaviors are undesirable or unacceptable
3. Mental health perspectives: theoretically or clinically based notions of distress
and disfunction – DSM-5
Adequate adaptation: considered okay, acceptable, good enough
Optimal adaptation: excellent, superior or the best of what is possible
Mentally healthy children and adolescents experience a positive quality of life,
function well at home, school, and in society, and have no symptoms of
psychopathology interfering with their development
Divergent: four Ds
Disfunction
Distress
Defiance
Danger
Prevalence: proportion of population with a disorder
Incidence: rate at which new cases arise
Barriers to mental health care:
Structural: long waiting lists, high personal costs
Perceptions of psychological problems: belief that they will go away on their
own
Perceptions of mental health and child welfare: lack of confidence in the
system
Stigma of mental illness
Parents: embarrassment, anxiety, guilt
Children: secrecy and rejection
Chapter 2 – Models of Child Development, Psychopathology, and Treatment:
Dimensional/continuous models: emphasize the ways in which typical feelings,
thoughts, and behaviors gradually become more serious problems, which then may
intensify and become clinically diagnosable disorders
Categorical models: bounded and qualitative differences between normal and
abnormal development
Basic models – not mutually exclusive:
1. Physiological models: propose a physiological basis for all psychological
processes and events – structural, biological, chemical
Diathesis-stress model
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, Connectome: diagram of the brain’s neural connections – experience-
dependent plasticity
2. Psychodynamic models – emphasis on:
Subconscious cognitive, affective, and motivational processes
Mental representations of themselves, others, and relationships
Development of personality problems and childhood psychological challenges
during aging
3. Behavioral and cognitive models – emphasis on:
Normal and deviant behavior are learned through classical, operant
conditioning and reinforcement
Individual observable behavior in a specific environment
Cognitive deficits or defects in learning processes of the child
Components and processes of the mind and mental development
4. Humanistic models – emphasis on:
Positive meaningful experiences
Motivation for healthy growth
Creation of a self-image by the child
Positive psychology
5. Family models – emphasis on:
Understanding of personality and psychopathology of the child based on
family dynamics
Considering the shared and unshared surroundings of family members
Diagnostics and therapy focus on the child within the family setting
6. Sociocultural models – emphasis on:
Social context: including gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status
Culture affects development
Components of ecological models are home, classrooms, and the
neighborhood
Birth cohort: people born in a particular historical period share key
experiences and events
> Bronfenbrenner’s model: children’s development is embedded in multiple
settings, environments, and systems
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,Chapter 3 – Principles and Practices of Developmental Psychopathology:
Psychopathology: intense, frequent, and/or persistent maladaptive patterns of
emotion, cognition, and behavior
Developmental psychopathology: emphasizes that these maladaptive patterns
occur in the context of typical development and result in the current and potential
impairment of infants, children, and adolescents
Equifinality: various initial conditions lead to corresponding outcomes/diagnoses
Multifinality: same initial conditions lead to various outcomes/diagnoses
Developmental coherence: belief that beginnings may be logically linked to
outcomes if we carefully evaluate the variables that lead to stability as well as those
that lead to change
Competence: ability to adapt to the environment and to take normal developmental
steps
Each child displays domains of competence: arenas of comfort
Risk: increased vulnerability to a disorder
Resilience: adaptation or competence despite adversity
No universal or fixed property, changes over time and situations
Connected to the protective triad: child features, family attributions,
environment characteristics
Protective factors: the individual, family, and social characteristics that are
associated with this positive adaptation
Risk factors: can be specific of nonspecific
Specific risk: increased vulnerability to a particular disorder
Unspecific risk: increased vulnerability to any, or many kinds of disorders –
many mental disorders
Types of risk factors:
Individual risk factors: child-focused
Family risk factors: associated with the child’s immediate caretaking
environment – parent characteristics
Social risk factors: associated with the child’s larger social environment –
peers and schools
Number of risk factors: risk factors tend to cluster together
Timing of risk factors: later improvements do not balance or cancel out children’s
early risk histories
Positive effect of protective factors:
Reducing the influence of risk factors
Reducing the negative chain reactions that follow exposure to risk
Serve to establish or maintain a sense of self and self-control
Increase opportunities to improve and grow
Chapter 5 – Disorders of Early Childhood:
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, Physiological functioning – three biobehavioral shifts in the first year:
1. Rhythmic routines of feeding, dressing, and comforting
2. Communicating feelings through gestures and vocalizations, playing with toys,
having a number of daily and nightly schedules
3. Exploring the environment by walking, crawling etc.
Disorders of early development:
Pica: ingestion of nonfood substances such as paint, pebbles, or dirt
Rumination: repeated regurgitation of food
Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder: limited appetites, severe selectivity
of food, disorders of arousal
Sleep-wake disorders: insomnia, disorders of arousal, nightmare disorder
Disorder: marked and persistent difficulties settling down and falling
asleep, as well as maintaining sleep through the night, associated with
impaired daily functioning
Problems with sleeping – etiology:
Risk factors related to the child:
Individual differences in the ability to self-regulate and self-soothe
Difficult temperament
Medical condition
Insecure attachment
Risk factors related to parenting:
Reinforcing maladaptive patterns
Problems setting limits
Martial difficulties
Temperament – two dimensions:
1. Reactivity: infant’s excitability and responsiveness
2. Regulation: what the infant does to control its reactivity
Temperament traits/big five:
1. Surgency/extraversion: sociability, positive emotionality
2. Negative affectivity/neuroticism: predispositions to experience fear and
frustration/anger
3. Effortful control/conscientiousness: attempts to regulate stimulation and
response
Parenting dimensions with most impact on temperament in children:
Warmth: connected to the child’s social and emotional needs
Positive and negative control: connected to the child’s needs for autonomy
and self-regulation
Goodness of fit: interplay between infant temperament and parenting
> e.g. Easygoing baby with easygoing parents or fearful baby with strict parents
In any infant-caregiver pair there are matches and mismatches – growth
through match-mismatch-repair cycles – e.g. shy children benefitting from
moderate challenges
Extreme mismatches are problematic – differential sensitivity
Developmental tasks at end of first year of life:
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