An indicated preventive intervention research program integrating attachment, attributional, and behaviorist perspectives was conducted to test the hypothesis that parent–child relationship disturbances directly effect the child's adjustment to the preschool. Anxious-withdrawn preschool children and their mothers were divided equally into treatment and control groups, and assessed on maternal self-report of parenting stress, behavioral ratings of mother–child interaction, and teacher ratings of the children in the preschool classroom. Results showed significant changes in the treatment group: mothers in the treatment group moderated their level of control to a more appropriate, less intrusive level, while children in the treatment group showed an increase in cooperation and enthusiasm during a problem solving task with mother. Teacher-rated social competence and anxious-withdrawn behavior indicated improvement, although only the former was significant. The demonstration of effects of this home intervention for the mother on the child's behavior in the preschool confirm the transactional model underlying this study and demonstrate the utility of a parent–child interaction training component for the prevention of behavioral–emotional problems in young children.

The ability to talk about the internal states (IS) of self and other is an age-typical development of early childhood that is thought to reflect young children's emergent self–other understanding. This study examined the emergence of an IS lexicon in a cross-sectional sample of young children with Down syndrome (DS) and a cognitively and demographically comparable group of normally developing (ND) children. Children's IS lexicons were derived from transcripts of their spontaneous utterances during two laboratory contexts: a mother–child emotions picture book task and semistructured play. Children with DS produced significantly fewer IS words and fewer IS word types than their MA-matched counterparts. Controlling for corpus size, children with DS also were less likely to attribute internal states to themselves and were more context bound in their use of IS language. In addition, children with DS also differed from ND children in the semantic content of their IS language, with proportionately higher rates of affective words and lower rates for words about volition, ability, and cognition. For both the DS and ND groups, individual differences in IS language production were significantly related to general expressive language skills. However, dissociations were observed for the relation between children's IS word production and nonverbal symbolic play skills in the two groups. These findings suggest some degree of disorganization at the interface among symbolic domains for children with DS. Because IS language is critical to the regulation of social interaction and an early index of self–other differentiation and understanding, children with DS may be at risk for later compromises in self-organization.

Children with both a language impairment and a learning disability are at risk for poor social competence. Yet the processes that place these children at risk remain unclear. A developmental–organizational perspective was used to explore processes underlying risk for poor social competence among language learning disabled children. To this end, the relative influences of language learning disability and social discourse skills on social competence were examined in 50 language learning disabled (LLD) and 50 control (non-LLD) children aged 8–12 years. Findings indicated that social discourse skills mediated the relation between LLD status and children's social competence. Specifically, a domain of social discourse, figurative language, was the strongest mediator of the effect of LLD status on social competence. Additionally, differences were confirmed between the LLD and non-LLD group in two domains of social discourse, recreating sentences and figurative language, as well as social competence. Two other domains of social discourse, understanding ambiguous sentences and making inferences, did not discriminate the groups. The findings emphasize the importance of analyzing interrelations among domains to identify critical factors related to developmental outcomes.

There is a growing acceptance of a holistic, interactionistic view in which the individual is seen as an organized whole, functioning and developing as a totality. This view emphasizes the importance of patterns of operating factors. Within this framework, a standard variable-oriented approach, focusing on the variable as the main theoretical and analytical unit, has limitations. A person-oriented approach would often be preferable, where the main theoretical and analytical unit is the specific pattern of operating factors. Such an approach is presented here, focusing on individual development and psychopathology. A brief theoretical and methodological overview is given and a classification approach is emphasized. Empirical examples concerning the longitudinal study of adjustment problems illustrate a number of issues believed to be important to development and psychopathology: problem gravitation, the significance of single variables and of patterns, the developmental study of syndromes (=typical patterns), and the detection of “white spots” in development.

Thirty-seven families who had a child between the ages of 8 and 15 (mean age = 12.0 years) and had at least one parent who had experienced a recent episode of affective disorder were assigned randomly to one of two psychoeducational interventions. The interventions (clinician-facilitated or lecture-group discussion) were designed to prevent childhood depression and related problems through decreasing the impact of related risk factors and encouraging resiliency-promoting behaviors and attitudes. They were similar in content but differed in the level of the children's involvement and the degree to which the families' individual life experiences were linked to the educational material. Assessments included standard diagnostic and social functioning instruments and interviews designed specifically for this project to assess behavior and attitude change. Each parent and child was individually assessed by separate assessors who were blind to information about the other family members. Parent participants in both groups reported being satisfied with the intervention. Clinician group participants reported a significantly larger number of overall changes, as well as higher levels of change regarding communications about the illness with their children and increased understanding by the children of their illness. Significantly more children in the clinician group also reported they gained a better understanding of parental affective illness as a result of their participation in the project.

Reports follow-up study of 181 young highly stressed urban children, classified as stress-resilient (SR) and stress-affected (SA) 1½–2 years earlier. At follow-up (T2), children were retested on five initial (T1) test measures: self-rated adjustment, perceived competence, social problem solving, realistic control attributions, and empathy; parents and teachers did new child adjustment ratings, and parents participated in a phone interview focusing on the T1–T2 interval. Child test and adjustment measures and parent interview responses at T2 sensitively differentiated children classified as SR and SA at T1. Test and interview variables used at T1 and T2 correlated moderately across time periods. At T2, four child test indicators (i.e., rule conformity, global self-worth, social problem solving, and realistic control attributions) and four parent interview variables (positive future expectations for the child, absence of predelinquency indicators, good parent mental health in the past year, and adaptive parent coping strategies) sensitively differentiated children classified as SR and SA at T1. No relationship was found between family stress experienced in the T1–T2 interval and changes in children's adjustment during that period.

Contrary to the standard assumption that psychopathology stems from developmental immaturity (retardation, fixation, regression), people diagnosed with psychopathology typically develop along distinctive pathways in which they build complex, advanced skills. These pathways are based on adaptation to trauma, such as maltreatment, or to problems in affective–cognitive regulation, such as those in autism. They do not fit normative developmental frameworks. Research has characterized several types of distinctive pathways, especially those arising from maltreatment; they are marked by normal developmental complexity but distinctive affective–cognitive organization. In one study sexually abused depressed adolescent girls admitted for treatment in a mental hospital described themselves-in-relationships with age-appropriate, complex developmental levels equal to those of both nonabused depressed girls and other adolescents. At the same time, they showed a powerful negativity bias contrasting with the positivity biases of other girls. Many of them produced dramatic switches in affective–cognitive organization across assessments contrasting with the similar organization showed by other girls. In another study toddlers from maltreating families showed a consistent negativity bias in play and representations of interactions. We show how to portray these distinctive developmental pathways through the example of Hidden Family Violence, in which people dissociate their private violent world from their public, good-citizen world.

This paper examines critically four habits of social scientists: a reliance on constructs for processes that do not specify the class of agent or the context of action, skepticism toward empirical truths that are inconsistent with political or social goals, a reluctance to use profiles or characteristics that have different weights to classify persons, and an aversion to treating subjects with extreme values as representing special categories. These points are made in the context of the author's research on temperaments in children.

The MacArthur Story Stem Battery was used to examine maternal and self-representations in neglected, physically abused, sexually abused, and nonmaltreated comparison preschool children. The narratives of maltreated children contained more negative maternal representations and more negative self-representations than did the narratives of nonmaltreated children. Maltreated children also were more controlling with and less responsive to the examiner. In examining the differential impact of maltreatment subtype differences on maternal and self-representations, physically abused children evidenced the most negative maternal representations; they also had more negative self-representations than nonmaltreated children. Sexually abused children manifested more positive self-representations than neglected children. Despite these differences in the nature of maternal and self-representations, physically and sexually abused children both were more controlling and less responsive to the examiner. The investigation adds to the corpus of knowledge regarding disturbances in the self-system functioning of maltreated children and provides support for relations between representational models of self and other and the self-organizing function that these models exert on children's lives.

By adolescence, appraisal of one's past life experience becomes critical to the stage-salient issue of identity formation. This study examined adolescents' perceptions of their maltreatment experiences. It scrutinized the combined and unique contribution of five maltreatment types (i.e., physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, neglect, and exposure to family violence) to variance in adolescent adjustment. It was predicted that these maltreatment types would account for significant variance in adjustment when controlling for the context variables of age, sex, socioeconomic status, IQ, and stressful life events. Adolescents (N = 160, aged 11–17) were randomly selected from the open caseload of a child protection agency. Participants completed global severity ratings regarding their experiences of the five types of maltreatment, as well as a battery of measures assessing self- and caretaker-reported externalizing and internalizing symptomatology. The youths' maltreatment ratings significantly predicted self-reported adjustment, even when controlling for all context variables. Psychological maltreatment was the most predictively potent maltreatment type, and enhanced the predictive utility of other maltreatment types. Significant sex differences in the sequelae of perceived maltreatment were evident. Also, interactions between youths' ratings and those obtained from CPS files were detected. The findings were consistent with recent research in child maltreatment, and contribute to our understanding of developmental psychopathology among adolescents.

This study examined the roles of verbal and nonverbal sources of information in the ability of persons with and without autism to recognize emotion. Child, adolescent, and young adult participants in four groups [Lower Functioning Autism (LFA) (n = 17), High Functioning Autism (HFA) (n = 18), Lower Functioning Comparison (LFC) (n = 18), and High Functioning Comparison (HFC) (n = 23)] identified emotions shown (happy, angry, sad, surprised, or neutral) in video clips of individuals expressing emotion verbally, nonverbally, or both. Verbal expressions of emotion were either Explicit, Implicit, or Neutral, whereas nonverbal expressions were Animate or Flat (3 × 2). Pairwise ANCOVAs indicated no group differences between HFA and HFC groups or between the LFA and LFC groups, and indicated instead group differences between higher and lower functioning persons. With groups collapsed into High Functioning (HF) and Lower Functioning (LF), significant group differences were found. Performance of LF individuals suggested they had difficulty inferring how a person felt based on what the person said, if the emotion was not explicitly named. Performance of HF individuals suggested they relied more on nonverbal than on verbal information to determine a speaker's emotion, except where the emotion was explicitly named. Results suggested that persons with autistic spectrum disorders can use affective information from multiple sources in much the same ways as persons of comparable developmental level without autism.

The developmental interplay between nature and nurture is discussed, with particular reference to implications for research in developmental psychopathology. The general principles include individual differences in reactivity to the environment, two-way interplay between intraindividual biology and environmental influences, and the need to consider broader social contextual features. Individuals actively process their experiences; they also act on their environment to shape and select their experiences, and individual characteristics change over time. Key findings on genetic effects include their ubiquitous influence, the multifactorial origin of most psychopathology, the involvement of several genes in most mental disorders, some genetic effects operate through dimensional risk features rather than directly on disorder, some genetic effects are dependent on gene–environment correlations and interactions, and genetic effects increase with age. Key findings on environmental effects include their ubiquitous influence, the genetic mediation of some supposed environmental effects, the importance of passive gene–environment correlations, the paucity of evidence regarding environmental effects on lifetime liability to psychopathology, the lack of understanding of environmental effects on the organism, and the importance of nonshared environmental effects. Research strategies to investigate environmental risk mediation include the range of genetically sensitive designs, migration studies, secular trend investigations, studies of nonfamilial environments, and examination of intraindividual change in relation to measured environmental alterations. Proximal processes involved in person–environment interplay are discussed in relation to person–environment interactions and evocative and active person–environment correlations.

This longitudinal study of 137 female high school seniors investigated the relationship of attachment cognitions, current psychological functioning, and psychological functioning 12 months later. Attachment cognitions, assessed with the Revised Adult Attachment Scale and the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment, were significantly associated with current symptomatology. The Revised Adult Attachment Scale, in interaction with initial symptomatology, predicted depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, and personality disorders 12 months later. The Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment parent subscales predicted eating disorder and personality disorder symptomatology, whereas the peer subscales predicted substance abuse, eating disorder, and personality disorder symptomatology.

We evaluate the usefulness of 11 key epigenetic concepts from the behavior genetic research paradigm for advancing the field of developmental psychopathology. Key assumptions, empirical examples, and caveats in interpreting results are presented. We emphasize the usefulness of incorporating both dimensional (e.g., temperament trait) and categorical (e.g., diagnosis) variables, environmental measures, direct behavioral assessments, and multiple, theoretically relevant occasions of study into classic twin and family studies. We highlight contemporary techniques for identifying specific chromosomal regions associated with behavioral patterns, and the importance of considering nonmendelizing genetic influences when discerning the panorama of genetic influences on behavior.

The dynamic nature of resilience necessitates that children from high-risk backgrounds who are functioning adaptively despite experiences of adversity must be examined over time. In the current investigation, the adaptation of school-age maltreated and nonmaltreated socioeconomically disadvantaged children was examined over 3 consecutive years. In accord with predictions, a higher percentage of nonmaltreated children than of maltreated children were found to be resilient. Moreover, a higher percentage of maltreated than of nonmaltreated children were shown to exhibit functioning consistently in the low adaptive range. Differential predictors of resilience were found in maltreated and nonmaltreated children. Specifically, for maltreated children, positive self-esteem, ego resilience, and ego overcontrol predicted resilient functioning, whereas relationship features were more influential for nonmaltreated children. These findings are discussed in relation to the unfolding of resilient self-organizational strivings in maltreated and nonmaltreated children.

The incomplete interface between remediation-oriented research and basic science research has hampered progress toward gaining insight into the etiologies of autism, despite the availability of abundant research data. Investigators of these two research domains differ in their background training and primary goals, which necessarily affect their missions, perspectives, research questions posed, methodologies selected, and interpretation of data from the research. Miscommunication between the two types of researchers has brought about disagreement on nearly every aspect of the research process. We discuss both sides of the impasse: a traditional clinical practice perspective based on the requirement for finding immediate answers to the remediation question and the basic science perspective with the goal of delineating the sequence of biological changes from the initial cause(s) of abnormal development to behavioral outcome. Although remediation-oriented research aims at alleviation of symptoms for today's patients, we propose that a basic science perspective seeks insight into the triggering causes and pathogenesis of the disorder from which better diagnosis and remediation may be devised for patients in the future. We suggest that research in autism can progress beyond the impasse of disagreement and competition toward information integration and insight by means of dialogue, data exchange, discussion, collaboration, and cooperation.

Interparental conflict is a known risk factor for child adjustment problems; yet few studies have examined its long-term effects. This study tests the following hypotheses: Interparental conflict has both longitudinal and concurrent influences on the functioning of young adult children, and the relationship between young adults and their parents mediates these influences. We assessed a community sample (N = 243) of families when the target child was in early to middle adolescence. We then reassessed them 6 years later during young adulthood. The links of interparental conflict measured at the two time points to young adults' general psychopathology and antisocial behavior were examined using multiple regression analyses. The quality of the relationship between young adults and each parent was added to each equation as a potential mediating variable. Results showed that concurrent, but not earlier, interparental conflict predicted males' antisocial behavior. No support was found for the mediational model, but support was found for an alternate model positing direct effects for interparental conflict and the parent-young adult relationship on young adult functioning. For females and males, problematic relationships with mothers and fathers predicted greater general psychopathology, while problems in paternal relationships predicted higher levels of antisocial behavior only for females.

A framework that emphasizes and integrates individuals' intersubjective experiences with Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory (PVEST) is introduced and compared with self-organizational perspectives. Similarities, differences and advantages of each framework are described. In a demonstration of PVEST's utility, a subset of data from the 3rd year of a longitudinal study (14- to 16-year-old middle adolescent African–Americans) is used for examining an achievement variable: negative learning attitude. Explored separately by gender, a regression model that contained risk, stress, and a reactive coping variable for the prediction of negative learning attitudes was investigated. For boys, stress was an independent stressor across steps independent of the other variables entered; social support was particularly important for males. For girls, not only was stress not important but it was also only the social support variable, perceived unpopularity with peers, that was a significant predictor of girls' negative learning attitude. Particularly for boys, the findings suggest critically important roles for teachers and peers in the negative learning attitude of midadolescent economically disadvantaged African–American students.

The organization of the adolescent self-portrait is discussed within a framework that focuses on the construction of multiple self-representations across different relational contexts. Contradictions between self-attributes in different contexts create conflict, beginning in midadolescence when cognitive-developmental structures allow one to detect but not resolve opposing attributes. Conflict is greater across roles than within roles. Moreover, for certain roles (e.g., self with mother vs. self with father) conflict is higher. Females, particularly those with a feminine gender orientation, report greater conflict involving attributes in more public contexts. Opposing self-attributes also raise concerns for adolescents about which attributes reflect true versus false self-behaviors. Conflict is more frequent for opposing attributes that pit true against false self-characteristics. False self-behavior is associated with liabilities including devaluation of false self-attributes, low self-esteem, and depressive reactions. Perceived support across relational contexts is highly predictive of favorable evaluations of attributes, high self-esteem, and true self-behavior within corresponding contexts. Strategies for resolving potential contradictions in self-attributes would appear to emerge as one moves into late adolescence and adulthood, when multiple self-representations are perceived as both appropriate and desirable, and the individual can achieve some degree of integration through higher level abstractions and the narrative construction of his or her life story.

This paper questions the assumption that children's social and emotional competence be placed within the developing child, rather than in the interaction of the child with the range of peer social ecologies in which the children might function. This paper presents a new nonstatistical mathematical approach to modeling children's peer social interaction in small groups using nonlinear difference equations in which both an uninfluenced and an influenced regulatory set point of positive minus negative interaction can be separately estimated. Using this model and the estimation procedure, it is possible to estimate what a focal child and the group initially brings to the group interaction and also how these regulatory set points are influenced by the interaction to determine two influenced regulatory set points. Six-person mainstreamed and specialized groups were established involving three types of unacquainted preschool boys: children with and without developmental delays and a language disordered but intellectually normally functioning group, using a methodology that ensured appropriate matching of child and family characteristics. For each 2-week play group, the social interactions of each child were observed during a designated free play period. Handicapped children were observed in either a specialized or mainstreamed setting. The application made of this modeling process in this paper is generating theory to attempt to understand influence processes. Parameters are introduced that reflect uninfluenced target child and group set points, emotional inertia, and influence functions.