“[A]n overview of the past suggests that today's investigators areas much determined by history as they are makers of it.” (Cairns, 1983, p. 90)

Moffitt's theory regarding two types of adolescent antisocial behavior wasinvestigated using a prospective, longitudinal study of normal and abnormal development in aprimarily low socioeconomic status, ethnically diverse sample. Results supported the presence ofan early-onset/persistent (EOP) group and an adolescence-onset (AO) group. Groups weremost reliably and significantly distinguished by indices of socioemotional history within the first3 years, but no significant differences were found on early measures of temperament orneuropsychological functioning. EOPs scored significantly lower than other groups on measuresof neuropsychological functioning only during late childhood and adolescence,suggesting that the declines in verbal functioning that have been so reliably found in this andother samples of early-starting antisocial adolescents are progressive and consequent to adverseexperience. In adolescence, AOs were significantly more likely to report high levels ofinternalizing symptoms and life stress, suggesting that AO antisocial behavior is not a benignphenomenon. Implications of these findings for etiologic theories of adolescent antisocialbehavior are discussed.

This longitudinal study investigated the relation between negative reactivity and attachmentin children with Down syndrome (DS). Specifically, we examined whether extremely lownegative reactivity is associated with the enactment and organization of attachment behaviors. Toaddress this issue 30 infants with DS (13 female, 17 male) were observed in Ainsworth'sStrange Situation at 19 and 27 months. The intensity and duration of distress reactions werecoded in 15-s intervals throughout each Strange Situation episode. Children's distressintensity during separations from caregivers was used to place children into Low versusModerate/High Negative Reactivity groups. In addition, ratings of infants' socialinteractive behaviors (contact maintenance, proximity seeking, distance interaction, resistance,and avoidance) were made for each episode and used to assess the quality of infants'attachment relationships. The data indicated that there are high rates of Type A and D insecureattachments within the DS population at each age studied. However, low negative reactivity wasnot consistently related to the activation of the attachment behavioral system, or associated withinsecure attachment relationships. Alternative explanations for the high rate of insecureattachments are discussed.

In concluding his review of the historical underpinnings of the field of developmentalpsychopathology, Cicchetti (1990) asserted the following:. . . this discipline should contribute greatly to reducing the dualisms that exist between the clinicalstudy of and theoretical research into childhood and adult disorders, between the behavioral andbiological sciences, between developmental psychology and psychopathology, and between basicand applied research. (p. 20)

Parental emotions and behaviors that contribute to continuity and change in preschoolchildren's externalizing problems were examined. Mothers and fathers were observedinteracting with their children, and child-rearing styles were reported. Teachers, mothers, andchildren reported children's antisocial, oppositional behavior. Externalizing problemsshowed strong continuity 2 and 4 years later. Proactive parenting (i.e., supportive presence, clearinstruction, and limit setting) predicted fewer behavior problems over time, after controlling forinitial problems; the converse was true for parental anger. In contrast, the hypothesizedameliorative contribution of parents' positive emotion was not found. Parentalcontributions were most influential for children whose initial problems were in the clinical range.In particular, parental anger predicted continuation of problems over time. Paternal, as well asmaternal, influences were identified. Examination of parental emotions and inclusion of fathers isimportant to research and intervention with young antisocial children.

The end of the last millennium witnessed an unprecedented degree of public awarenessregarding mental disorder as well as motivation for policy change. Like Sartorius, we contend thatthe continued stigmatization of mental illness may well be the central issue facing the field, asnearly all attendant issues (e.g., standards of care, funding for basic and applied research efforts)emanate from professional, societal, and personal attitudes towards persons with aberrantbehavior. We discuss empirical and narrative evidence for stigmatization as well as historicaltrends regarding conceptualizations of mental illness, including the field's increasing focuson genetic and neurobiological causes and determinants of mental disorder. We next define stigmaexplicitly, noting both the multiple levels (community, societal, familial, individual) through whichstigma operates to dehumanize and delegitimize individuals with mental disorders and the impactof stigma across development. Key developmental psychopathology principles are salient in thisregard. We express concern over the recent oversimplification of mental illness as “braindisorder,” supporting instead transactional models which account for the dynamic interplayof genes, neurobiology, environment, and self across development and which are consistent withboth compassion and societal responsibility. Finally, we consider educational and policy-relatedinitiatives regarding the destigmatization of mental disorder. We conclude that attitudes andpolicy regarding mental disorder reflect, in microcosmic form, two crucial issues for the nextcentury and millennium: (a) tolerance for diversity (vs. pressure for conformity) and (b)intentional direction of our species' evolution, given fast-breaking genetic advances.

This paper presents single-subject analyses of newly developing attachment relationships in10 foster infant–caregiver dyads. Using a diary methodology, at least 2 months of dailydata were provided by foster parents on infants' attachment behaviors. Foster infantattachment was also assessed using the Strange Situation. Foster mother state of mind regardingattachment was measured using the Adult Attachment Interview. For eight infants, diary datarevealed predominant patterns of attachment behavior emerging within 2 months of placement.In most cases, diary data predicted Strange Situation classifications. Both Strange Situation anddiary data indicated that the three children placed in foster care before 12 months of age withfoster parents having primary or secondary autonomous states of mind were classified as havingsecure attachments. The five children placed after 12 months of age showed predominantlyinsecure attachment behavior in the diary and were classified as insecure in the Strange Situation.Contingency analyses of behavioral sequences reported in the diary revealed that foster parentstended to complement their foster childrens' attachment behaviors.

The defining features of developmental psychopathology concepts include attention to theunderstanding of causal processes, appreciation of the role of developmental mechanisms, andconsideration of continuities and discontinuities between normality and psychopathology.Accomplishments with respect to these issues are reviewed in relation to attachment disorders,antisocial behavior, autism, depressive disorder, schizophrenia, and intellectual development.Major research challenges remain in relation to measurement issues, comorbidity, genderdifferences, cognitive processing, nature–nurture interplay, heterotypic continuity,continuities between normal variations and disorders, developmental programming, andtherapeutic mechanisms in effective treatments.

Children's healthy mental development has never been the focus of long-term,committed public health policy in the way that early physical health and development have been.We discuss four types of societal response to illness—cure, care, control, andprevention—and trace the history of public health in terms of its special responsibility tocontrol and prevent disease. We identify four periods in the history of public health: the Sanitarianera (up to 1850), the Bacterial era (1850–1950), the Behavioral era (1950–present),and the Communitarian era (the next century). Looking at this history from the viewpoint of thedevelopmental psychopathology of the first 2 decades of life, we trace progress in public healthresponses to children with mental illness, from a philosophy of control by isolation toward one ofpreventive intervention. We examine primary, or universal, prevention strategies that have beentried, and we suggest some that might be worth reconsidering.

Eighty-two mother–infant dyads, comprising women with psychiatric disorder andindividually matched controls, were followed up over the children's 1st year of life. Themothers with mental illness consisted of two subgroups: first, 25 severely mentally ill motherswho had been admitted to a psychiatric unit with their infants; and second, 16 mothers from acommunity sample meeting research diagnostic criteria for unipolar, nonpsychotic depression.With the exception of six dyads in the in-patient group, observations were made of themother–infant interaction and the quality of the infant–mother attachmentrelationship at 12 months. The nature and course of the mothers' illness was alsodocumented. Although few residual symptoms of maternal mental illness were detected at 1 yearpostpartum, interactional disturbances were evident among the case group dyads. A strongassociation was revealed between infant–mother attachment quality and maternaldiagnosis: a manic episode of illness in the postpartum period was related to security in theattachment relationship, and psychotic or nonpsychotic depression was related to insecurity.Concurrent patterns of mother–infant interaction provided support for this finding.

Efforts to understand the etiology of adult mental disorders by studying children hasproduced unanticipated changes in our understanding of pathology, individual development, andthe role of social context. Among these are the blurring of the division between mental illnessand mental health, the need to attend to patterns of adaptation rather than personality traits, andthe powerful influences of the social world on individual development. Current developmentalviews place deviancy in the dynamic relation between individuals and their contexts. At anotherlevel, when we view the history of developmental psychopathology, dialectical developmentalprocesses are evident as we trace how patterns of adaptation of researchers, expressed intheoretical models and empirical paradigms, increasingly have come to match the complexitiesof human mental health and illness.

Research has demonstrated that children who experience familial sexual maltreatment are atrisk for developing psychological difficulties characterized by emotional and behavioraldysregulation. Surprisingly, however, little attention has been directed toward identifyingprocesses in emotional development that differ in maltreated and nonmaltreated children. From adevelopmental psychopathology perspective, the present study examined emotion managementskills (i.e., emotional understanding, emotion regulation) in 21 sexually maltreated girls and theirnonmaltreated peers to determine how the experience of sexual maltreatment may interfere withnormative emotional development. Findings indicated that sexually maltreated girls, incomparison to their nonmaltreated peers, demonstrate lower emotional understanding anddecreased ability to regulate their emotions in accordance with cultural expectations. Further,maltreated girls expected less emotional support and more relational conflict from parents inresponse to sadness displays and from parents and peers in response to anger displays. Thesefindings will be discussed from the functionalist approach to emotional development,emphasizing the importance of social context (e.g., maltreating, nonmaltreating) in thedevelopment of children's emotion management skills.

This essay explores implications of current trends in developmental science forunderstanding psychopathology at the dawn of the new millennium. Over the past half century, ithas become clear that uniform and general principles of development (i.e., those that areapplicable at all times, to all people, and in all places) will be of limited utility in understandingthe processes of greatest interest in development and psychopathology. Instead, such processesare characterized by complexly organized individuals engaged in developmental transactionswithin multiple contexts (ranging from the biological environment of neurons to the culturalsystems of meaning that shape people's lives). These transactions in turn often yieldvariable outcomes. In order to portray how we have come to this conclusion, we first provide aview of contemporary research in three areas of early development: the biology of the developingbrain, the complexities of early emotional development, and the cultural contexts of childdevelopment. We then trace how an increasing appreciation of organized complexity,developmental transactions, and the meaning of context have played out in theemerging field of infant mental health before closing with our vision of new opportunities for thestudy of experience in the midst of variation.

Internal representations of self and primary attachment figures may be one mechanism bywhich maltreatment affects children's interpersonal behavior and relationships with others.Research on the continuity and influence of maltreated children's attachmentrepresentations, however, has not included youngsters removed from abusive or neglectful homeenvironments. This paper examines the influence of maltreated children's maternal andself-representations on subsequent relationships with foster mothers and behavioral adjustment infoster care. Participants included 32 children, ages 9–13 years, who entered fosterplacement for the first time after a sustained relationship with a maltreating biological mother.Upon initially entering foster care, children's maternal and self-representations weresignificantly related to each other and to severity of maltreatment history but not to other factorsbelieved to influence the quality of parent–child relationship (e.g., maternal mental health,partner stability). In addition, these representations significantly predicted children'ssubsequent views of their relationships with foster mothers. Finally, children's behavior intheir foster homes was associated with maltreatment severity, internal representations assessed atentry into foster care, and to concurrent perceptions of their new foster mothers. These findingsadvance our understanding of foster placement's role in maltreated children'sdevelopment and provide preliminary insight into the processes associated with the formation ofpotentially compensatory relationships.

Eighteen children with specific language impairment (SLI), from 6 to 8 years of age, werecompared with 9 control children matched on age and nonverbal ability (CA controls) and with 9younger control children of comparable language level (LA controls). Half of the SLI group wererated on a teacher checklist as having pragmatic difficulties: these were referred to as thepragmatic language impairment (PLI) group; the remainder were the typical (SLI-T) group.Children's responses to adult soliciting utterances were compared. All children usuallyresponded to conversational solicitations, but children in the PLI group were more likely thancontrol children to give no response, and they also made very little use of nonverbal responses,such as nodding. Nonverbal responding was closely related to the quality of children'sresponses. Children who failed to use nonverbal responses also had a relatively high level ofpragmatically inappropriate responses that were not readily accounted for in terms of limitedgrammar or vocabulary. This study lends support to the notion that there is a subset of thelanguage-impaired population who have broader communicative impairments, extending beyondbasic difficulties in mastering language form, reflecting difficulty in responding to andexpressing communicative intents. The analytic methods developed for this project have promisefor the study of pragmatic difficulties in other clinical groups.

This article explores the implications of recent welfare-related policy change for thewell-being of children in low-income families, and for research investigating child developmentprocesses and outcomes. It provides an overview of current welfare-related policies and exploresthe implications for developmental researchers. The article also synthesizes early findings fromresearch, highlighting both overall impacts and the more nuanced evidence that while families aretransitioning off welfare, only a small number are transitioning out of poverty, and a subgroup offamilies at risk are not faring well. It then examines, from a theoretical and methodologicalframework, what developmental psychopathology might bring to the study of welfare-relatedimpacts on children in the context of this complex and changing policy landscape, and whatwelfare researchers might bring to the field of developmental psychopathology. The articleconcludes with broad recommendations for both research and policy.

In recent years, womens' roles have changed dramatically, prompting researchers toexamine the impact of these changes on the development of women and children. In this article,we examine three major changes that women have experienced over the past several decades:increased participation in the paid labor force, changes in domestic labor and child-care patterns,and increased numbers of female-headed single-parent families. For each, we first describe thenature of the changes that have occurred over the last 50 years. We then review researchconcerning the effects of these changes on the development of women and children. Finally, wediscuss the implications for social policy that stem from this research. It is broadly concluded thatresearch informed by a developmental–contextual perspective may contribute importantlyto the development of social policies focused on promoting the well-being of women and children.

The purpose of this paper is to trace the role of culture as an explanatory construct indevelopmental processes and outcomes, and its implications in the understanding ofdevelopmental psychopathology. Literature reviews were conducted by historical period:1930–1939, 1960–1969, and 1990–1999. The percentage of the totalarticles and chapters pertaining to cultural issues increased as a function of time. Both conceptualand methodological continuities and discontinuities were observed among the three periods. Thepreponderance of comparative studies using deficit models still remains, but more enlightenedalternative conceptual models, within culture studies, and measures of cultural processes, areemerging. In contrast, although contextual influences are considered important in developmentalpsychopathology, the field lags in its empirical consideration of cultural influences. The need toseriously address these issues will increase as globalization and rapid cultural change becomeeven more the norm than the exception.

The uneven profile of performance on standard assessments of intelligence and the highincidence of savant skills have prompted interest in the nature of intelligence in autism. Thepresent paper reports the first group study of speed of processing in children with autism (IQ 1SD below average) using an inspection time task. The children with autism showedinspection times as fast as an age-matched group of young normally developing children (IQ 1SD above average). They were also significantly faster than mentally handicappedchildren without autism of the same age, even when these groups were pairwise matched onWechsler IQ. To the extent that IT tasks tap individual differences in basic processing efficiency,children with autism in this study appear to have preserved information processing capacitydespite poor measured IQ. These findings have implications for the role of general and specificcognitive systems in knowledge and skill acquisition: far from showing that children with autismare unimpaired, we suggest that our data may demonstrate the vital role of social insight in thedevelopment of manifest “intelligence.”

The influences of three risk factors (insecure attachment, maternal depressive symptoms, andeconomic risk) on children's depressive symptomatology were examined. Subjects were85 children from a range of income levels; all subjects were between 7 and 9 years of age.Children's depressive symptomatology was assessed with the Dimensions of DepressionProfile for Children and Adolescents. Results indicated that children at high economic risk weremore likely to exhibit depressive symptomatology than were children at low economic risk.Security of attachment was significantly related to children's depressive symptomatology.In addition, a significant relation was noted between children's depressivesymptomatology and the depressive symptomatology of their mothers. Contrary to expectations,no significant relation was found between maternal depressive symptomatology and security ofattachment. A multiple regression analysis revealed that security of attachment, maternaldepressive symptomatology, and economic risk accounted for 47% of the variability inchildren's depression scores. Secure attachment served as a buffer; economic risk wasassociated with depressive symptoms only among insecurely attached children.