Other Cool Stuff

OTHER COOL STUFF

CONCLUSSION

Psychopathology-Variation of symptoms across development ,Deviations from normal development,Early precursors of psychological disorders, The role of multiple pathways

Normal versus abnormal-Culture, society, ethnicity and personal views play a role in defining what is normal versus abnormal

Some important behaviours….Unusual behaviour,Distress to the child,.Distress to the family In danger

Psychopathology as deviation from the average

Continuity versus discontinuity

Odjers et al., 2007

Gene x environment interactions-Occur all the time,Begin before the infant’s birth,Timing is crucial

Continuous versus discontinuous development-Social learning theorists claim that development is continuous,Stage theorists believe that development is discontinuous,Both social learning and stage theorists are right!

Discontinuity in development (Stages)

Development follows a series of qualitatively distinct stages/In a given stage, children will exhibit the characteristics of that stage.The stages occur in the same order.Transitions from one stage to another happen quickly

Whether development is continuous or discontinuous depends on…

The behaviour ,The underlying process or mechanism,.Timing

Mechanisms of change

Biological mechanisms,Behavioural mechanisms,Cognitive mechanisms,All mechanisms interact with each other

Change occurs through two processes…(Piaget)

Assimilation is the process through which children incorporate new experiences into their preexisting schemas
Accommodation is the process through which children adapt to new experiences by modifying their preexisting schemas

Behaviour mechanisms

•Habituation =Infant’s capacity to habituate to familiar stimuli begins in the prenatal period and help infants to learn

•Conditioning =Infants generalise past experiences to new situations

•Statistical learning =Infants learn the likelihood that an event will follow another

Cognitive mechanisms

•Processes=-Object recognition, memory, making associations,Processes change as children grow,Strategies.Children develop a range of strategies to problem solve,By using a variety of strategies children adopt to new situations more effectively

Cognitive mechanisms…Cont-Metacognition,Reflection,Knowledge,Children who know a topic well are in a better position to learn and remember new material,Children can also form analogies between old and new material

Some conclusions…

Children initiate responses from others,G x E occur all the time,Mechanisms influence each other,The sociocultural and historic context influence development
What are the implications for improving children’s development?

Ramchandani, 2003

Several common psychiatric disorders (etc) affect adults of child rearing age.

These disorders have been shown to notably impair social and psychological functioning, leading to diff in work and family life. In recent years, recognition has increased of the potential impact that parental psych disorder have on child.

Slominski, 2010

offspring of mentally ill parents – higher rates of psychiatric diagnoses in childhood (Friedman, 96) , more likely to show developmental delayes, lower academic competence & difficulty with social relationships (Oyserman, 2000)

-this research- not outcome, but process of influence- sample of parents and offsprings followed over the course of 40y

-early childhood- may be most vulnerable- completely dependent on parents for emotional and physical needs.

Adult competence- not only good mental health but- high school diploma, job, ability to maintain stable relationships etc.

(reference 5)

Although it is our hope that children will grow up in a happy supportive environment, this is not always the case. Thus, it is vital to develop and understanding of …

Unfortunately, many children encounter more than one risk factor – under these circumstances, the effect of risk factors is cumulative and may lead to dysfunction when the adaptive capacity of the individual child is overwhelmed.

Several common psychiatric disorders (etc) affect adults of child rearing age.

Impairments – broadly speaking two groups – internalizing (depression, anxiety) externalizing (ADHD, conduct disorders)

-children of parents with depression risk for anxiety, depression, substance abuse so not specificity of effect but risk for range of developmental outcomes.

Being diagnosed good or bad? Could lead to improvements (symptoms will decrease) or bad (or convince yourself you have some symptoms because you’ve read that depression has those symptoms –focus attention of disorder and explain everything according to that or factors related to stigma and having a diagnosis of disorder => implications for identify and self-concept).

Depression – parenting more withdrawed with adhd and anxiety – parenting more intrustive.

Attachment closely related to quality of parent-child interactions. Anxiour parents more controlling, also quite involved though – so attachment style secure. Depressive parents – more withdrawed , ruminate more – so insecure attachment style. ADHD- no studies because ADHD thought not to be a valid disorder. – but parents inconsistent, lax parenting.

Parents may have the greatest influence on children’s beh during early childhood, as there are fewer non-family influences in the lives of young children.

Moreover, because early childhood is a time of tremendous learning and growth, facilitated by the social environment, younger children may be more susceptible to parental behavior than older children (Connell, 2002).

age= moderator

SOCIALIZATION (Baumrind, 1971)

-2 global domains of parenting

1) parental warmth – nurture, support and reassurance towards offspring. Being emotionally sensitive and available to children’s needs.

2_ parental control – discipline behaviour, such as teaching children to act in accordance with rules, setting limits in a consistent, unemotional way, enhancing compliance, having age-appropriate expectations and monitoring activities and whereabouts.

-warm + control= authoritative -> better adjusted children (Steinberg, 1989)

control but not warm – authoritarian

-warm but not control- permissive

-not warm not control- neglecting.

Jacobsen (1997) – very few adult psychiatric facilities routinely collected data on whether their patients have small children . Services are either child or adult specific. But problem is complex.

PROBLEMS

-Psychosocial

-transmission of psychopathology from one generation to another is not necessarily disorder specific.

-hard to assess – risk factors are highly intercorrelated –parental psychiatric status, maltreatment and low socio-economic status (Walker, 1989).

-heritability estimates- 54% to 82% for ADHD, 21 to 74% for behaviour disorders and 11 to 72% for internalizing disorders (Wamboldt, 2000).

Intergenerational transmission of psychopathology (Beardslee, 98). – most of early research. –between 25-50% of children of parents with mental illness will experience some level of psychiatric disorder in their lifetimes, compared with 10-20% of children whose parents are not.

One of first longitudinal study – sample children 6 to 19 over 4y. initial assessment -30% mmet criteria for at least one. 4year follow up, still greater rates-26% compared to children of non-ill (10%). Episodes of longer duration, earlier onset and had greater number of comorbid compared to control.

Mediators- mechanism through which parental M.I is related to child outcomes.

Moderators- influence the degree to which parental mental illness influences child outcomes.

At family level, lower family cohesion, a chaotic home environment, poorer communication and increased parent-child discord- more prevalent among families with a parent with M.I. (Warner, 95)- associated with increased risk for beh and em problems in children (Davies, 97). Family discord exposes children to stressful conditions and to poor models for handling interpersonal conflict (Hammen, Brennan ,2004).

Disturbances in family functioning associated with parental depression may decrease parents’ ability to provide children with the support they require to achieve competence and overcome the adversity often associated with parental mental illness. (Oyserman, 2000).

An important aspect- timing of parent illness in relation to the child’s development. Murray & Cooper (2003) found that children of mothers with depression showed cognitive, emotional and biological disturbances and that these were related to maternal depression occurring within the first years of life, rather than later or overall exposure.

Halligan (2007) –followed children- 13 y long- maternal postnatal depression-0 associated with increased risk for depression in offspring only if there had also been later episodes of maternal depression. In contrast, anxiety disorders in offspring were elevated in the maternal PND group regardless of occurrence of subsequent mental illness. So primacy of early M.I for some disorders, but perhaps not for all.

Socioeconomic stress mediates or moderates impact of parental M.I on children. Specifically, the stress associated with poverty, single parenthood, social isolation, low levels of education and minority status may increase the likelihood of beh and emotional probl in children of parents with mental illness (Buka, 2001) – mediators- lfewer social resources, greater exposure to violence, increased risk for being victims of abuse.

-effects bidirectional or transactional, with parents and children mutually influencing each other in dynamic and reciprocal rel (Sameroff, 2003).

Child characteristics- because parental M.I often seriously impairs rel within family, strong interpersonal skills may help children develop positive rel with non-fam adults, which may contribute to adaptive functioning.

Gender- boys and girls often exhibit divergent resp to parental M.I with girls more likely to develop depression and boys conduct problems ??? (early research though)

Boundary ambiguity “state in which family members are uncertain in their perceptions about who is in or out of the family and who is performing what roles and tasks within the family system (Boss & Greenberg, 84, p. 536).

-part of it – psychological absence – physical maintenance of his/her family role while behaving as absent at the level of psychological and emotional processes. – depressed mothers characterized like this.

When a family member is “there but not there” the “ambiguity freezes the grief process and prevents cognition, thus blocking coping and decision making processes (Boss, 2007).

Sex and age – boys more vulnerable than girls to effects of fathers’ depression, especially early (20). But maybe differential exposure- spend more time with child of same sex (10).

-marital conflicts and unhappiness – beh problems (67, in ref 1) -conflict actually better predictor than depression (ref 1)

ref 9

there is empirical evidence that the association between parenting and children's externalizing behavior problems is longitudinally mediated through the development of effective self-regulation(Eisenberg, 2005). maternal warmth, sensitivity, and disciplinary strategies as predictors of self-regulation

Parenting categories

1)acceptance- general parenting approach characterized by interactional warmth and responsiveness (including acceptange of children’s feelings and behaviours, active listening, praise) as well as emotional and behavioral involvement in children’s lives and activities (Maccoby, 1992)

impaired = criticism & rejection . Hypothesized that parents who demonstrate acceptance of children’s expressions of negative affect (rather than criticizing) help promote children’s emotion regulation by allowing children to learn, through trial and error, to tolerate negative affect (Gottman, 1997)

2)control -> excessive regulation of children’s activities and routines, autocrating parental decision making, overprotection or instruction to children on how to think or feel (Barber, 1996). ->affects mastery over environment.-> lack of mastery = anxiety (Schwarz, 1985).

3)modeling of anxious behavior -> describing problems to children as irresolvable or dangerous, encouraging (rewarding) children to view problems in a catastrophic manner and estinguishing problem-solving categories.

Parenting style is hypothesized to create an emotional climate for the parent-child relationship.

Parenting practices=specific. –directly affect children’s emotional and behavioural regulation.

Developmental psychopathology perspective

1)Multifinality – a single risk factor (controlling parenting style) can have a variety of outcomes-including anxiety, other psychological problems,or successful adaptation, depending upon the context in which it operates.

2)Equifinality – there are multiple pathways to the same anxiety disorder (social phobia) and that a single risk factor such as parenting cannot universally account for the development of a given disorder.

Really good -> for example –genetic traits and temperament may play and important role in the development of social anxiety and withdrawal (Rubin & Stewart, 1996) but parenting could play an important role in maintaining this problem (by permitting school avoidance).

Social learning theorists -> family interactions play an enormous role in developing and maintaining children’s beh competencies as well as difficulties.

Hernstein’s matching law (1974)- rate of reinforcement a child receives for aggressive beh in the context of reinforcement garnered by non-aggressive beh predicts frequency of aggressive acts.

Context may be internal of external: mothers experiencing depression evaluate or respond to child beh more negatively in the context of a depressive episode than when they are not depressed (Querido, 2001).

Relational Frame Theory -> verbal humans learn in more varied ways than non-verbal organisms. Events’ inherent properties become unimportant compared to the relations between the events themselves and the contexts in which those events ultimately occur. => violent neighbourhood-> parents will be worried, -> authoritarian disciplinary practices perceived as protective –will increase in frequency (Kitchick & Forehand, 2002).

Overwhelmed parents may have developed the rule “because I am so overwhelmed, I don’t have time to learn something new to manage behaviour” – they are using other, timeconsuming strategies-insensitive to the fact that they aren’t working in the long run and may actually increase the probability that their children’s behavior will continue to worsen.

Depressed mothers – if child misbehavior occurs in the frame “I’m a bad parent/a failure” then interacting with a difficult child may take on unbearably aversive qualities.

parenting styles- determinants of both negative and positive self-control mechanisms in offspring. Social learning theory –stronger relationships between parenting style and self-regulatory processes would be expected from the parent who is in the same sex as the respondent.

Permissive parent of same sex- associated with poor self-regulatory processes for both men and women .(drinking behaviour)

According to Bronson (2000), the “human brain increases in weight from 300 grams at birth to approximately 1.300 grams at maturity”. A tramutatic life experience, such as neglect or maternal depression can interfere with the development of subcortical and limbic areas of the brain-> extreme anxiety, depression, or inability to form healthy attachments to others. Adverse experiences throughout childhood can also impair cogn abilities, resulting in processing and probl solving styles that predispose an indiv to respond with aggression to stressful or frustrating situations (Shore, 1997).

Develop research – indiv dif in self-reg may be a function of differences in child-rearing practices. One longit study, which obs infants until age of 15y , revelealed that those who reported low perceived attach to parents were also found to have “greater problems of conduct, inattention, depression and the frequent experience of negat life events (Raja, 1992). -> support for idea that lack of positive attachments to parents maty be associated with problems with developing self-reliance in early adolesc”.

file:///C:/Users/Alex/Downloads/Handbook%20of%20Parenting%202nd%20vol%204,%20Social%20Conditions%20and%20Appli.pdf

Diathesis stress models biologically based vulnerability + external stressors (Cummings, 2000).

file:///C:/Users/Alex/Downloads/Handbook%20of%20Parenting%202nd%20vol%204,%20Social%20Conditions%20and%20Appli.pdf

Authoritative parenting (warm and involved with moderate amounts of control) has been linked to the most positive outcomes in the cognitive and social-emotional domains of development (Baumrind, 1993). The processes linking warm parenting that includes moderate levels of control, to positive adjustment for the child is through the child's internaliza-tion of social rules (Kochanska, 1994) and, more generally, through the child's feelings of being loved and accepted by his or her parents (Rohner, 1986). Accordingly, parenting that is harsh and cold decreases the likelihood that the child will sufficiently internalize rules of conduct and is likely to lead to feelings of rejection. Harsh, inept, parent-centered behavior provides many opportunities for children to learn aggressive approaches to social relationships through operant conditioning and modeling (Dodge et al., 1990;Patterson et al., 1992).

It is important to make a distinction between the more general domains of parenting, such as warmth, negativity, or control, and specific parenting behaviors such as using reasoning or spanking. There is evidence that the correlates of these specific parenting behaviors may be culturally bound, perhaps due to cultural group differences in the values that are placed on these parenting behaviors. The use of physical discipline, for instance, has been shown to be unrelated to externalizing, aggressive behavior among African-American children but to be positively correlated with such behavior problems among European-American children (Deater-Deckard, Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1996).

parenting practices that include provision of positive reinforcement, open displays of warmth and affection, involvement in and acive monitoring of children’s activitie,s, and consistent but not overly harsh discipline practices –relate to measures of adaptive child adjustment (academic competence, self-confidence, and positive peer relations)

-psychopathology – common processes that are common in every disorder. ?

List and why.

& major differences among disorders -transdiagnostic processes.

+information processing – misinterpreting the environment (conduct disorders-interpret neutral in a negative, challenging way, anxious- interpret in a threatening way, depressed- negative about themselves, other people, future-triad by Beck.

+clinical presentation (internalizing-about self, externalizing-about others)

+attention (ADHD- attention one of the main common indiv, anxious-will focus on anxious stimuli-spiders, depression-focus on repetitive thoughts)

+ affect (dysregulation -> ADHD or depression –negative affect or lack affect)

+ focus on self – have problems with self-concept. (anxious- will say they lack social skills, depressed will ruminate, antisocial-will feel like others are against them ….also insight into disorder (lose insight or focus on it too much)