Dr. Geoff Goodman
ext. 4277
ggoodman@liu.edu
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Course Website:
http://myweb.cwpost.liu.edu/ggoodman/home.htm
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Please briefly share your academic, professional, and
clinical experiences.
What are your expectations for this course?
Syllabus:
Did everyone receive a syllabus and relevant readings?
Class dates and holidays
Psychopathologies not covered in this course:
 Learning Disabilities
 Mental Retardation
(educational specialists)
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Provide information about risk factors for child and
adolescent psychopathology
Provide information about protective factors against the
development of child and adolescent psychopathology
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Provide information about the major conditions and
disorders that come to clinical attention
This course does not explicitly cover information about
intervention strategies.
Effects of emotional and behavioral problems in children
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Impairments in academic achievement
Impairments in interpersonal competencies
Impairments in independent living skills
Persistence across the lifespan
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Integrate studies of normal and pathological development
Examine developmental continuities and discontinuities of
traits, behavior patterns, emotional responses, and
diagnoses.
Evaluate evidence across multiple levels of analysis
 a. genetic
 b. biological
 c. psychological
 d. family
 e. neighborhood
 f. culture
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Use interdisciplinary methods
 Clinical and developmental psychology
 Child and adolescent psychiatry
 Genetics
 Neurology
 Public health
 Philosophy of science
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Explore risk and protective factors and their interaction
Use transactional models of influence
 Not linear patterns of association
 Probabilistic, dynamic, nonlinear, complex conceptual models
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Consider social and cultural context in understanding
function and meaning of behavioral and emotional states
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Equifinality – multiple pathways yield the same
psychopathological outcome (mediational models)
 genetic constellation
 environmental deprivation
 prenatal teratogens
 brain injury
 different combinations
of risk factors or sheer
number of risk factors
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Multifinality – same pathway to multiple psychopathological
outcomes (mediational models)
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Consideration of unique subgroups (moderational models):
 Common genotypes
 Common personality variables
 Common socialization practices (e.g., secure base behavior)
 Common neighborhoods
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Consideration of neuroscientific principles and the role of
the brain
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Study of aberrations in normal developmental pathways
Study of normal developmental pathways
Study of normal processes can elucidate atypical processes,
while study of atypical processes can elucidate normal
processes
Progress in one domain depends on progress in another
Mental disorders are not discrete and categorical, but rather,
dimensional and continuous
(flaw with DSM-IV)
 Schizophrenia-spectrum disorders
 Autism-spectrum disorders
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Developmental pathways are lawful and coherent
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Developmental pathways are sometimes discontinuous
(e.g. Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)Conduct
Disorder (CD)Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD))
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Different continuities exist across different subgroups (e.g.,
outcomes of authoritarian parenting in Caucasian, middleclass children versus African American children children)
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Examining both “micro” and “macro”
levels of analysis
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Connecting these various levels from
gene expression to cultural expression
and their mutual influence
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Bottom-up and top-down conceptions
must co-exist
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Risk factors – “antecedent variables that predict such
dysfunction” (p. 13)
 Identify risk factors causal of disorder
 Identify risk factors that are malleable
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Protective factors (resilience; buffering) – “unexpectedly
good outcomes, or competence, despite the presence of
adversity or risk” (p. 14; see Crockenberg (1981) study)
Same risk factors might produce different outcomes,
depending on the presence of protective factors
(multifinality)
Criticism of uniqueness of protective factors because they
exist on the opposite end of the continuum with risk factors
(e.g., IQ, temperament, parenting)
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Children influence parents, teachers and peers
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Parents, teachers, and peers influence children
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Early maturing brain regions influence and are influenced
by environmental factors
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Operation of gene-environment interactions
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Family, school,
neighborhood, and culture
are all central to the
unfolding of both aberrant
and adaptive behavior
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Different cultural contexts
can provide different
meaning to particular
behaviors (e.g., suicide)
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Multiple risk factors related to lowered chances of recovery
Malleability, plasticity, and flexibility in development
Bi-directional influences between genes and epigenetic
factors (e.g., brain structures, behavioral patterns,
environmental influences)