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

Moffitt's theory regarding two types of adolescent antisocial behavior was investigated using a prospective, longitudinal study of normal and abnormal development in a primarily low socioeconomic status, ethnically diverse sample. Results supported the presence of an early-onset/persistent (EOP) group and an adolescence-onset (AO) group. Groups were most reliably and significantly distinguished by indices of socioemotional history within the first 3 years, but no significant differences were found on early measures of temperament or neuropsychological functioning. EOPs scored significantly lower than other groups on measures of neuropsychological functioning only during late childhood and adolescence, suggesting that the declines in verbal functioning that have been so reliably found in this and other samples of early-starting antisocial adolescents are progressive and consequent to adverse experience. In adolescence, AOs were significantly more likely to report high levels of internalizing symptoms and life stress, suggesting that AO antisocial behavior is not a benign phenomenon. Implications of these findings for etiologic theories of adolescent antisocial behavior are discussed.

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

This longitudinal study investigated the relation between negative reactivity and attachment in children with Down syndrome (DS). Specifically, we examined whether extremely low negative reactivity is associated with the enactment and organization of attachment behaviors. To address this issue 30 infants with DS (13 female, 17 male) were observed in Ainsworth's Strange Situation at 19 and 27 months. The intensity and duration of distress reactions were coded in 15-s intervals throughout each Strange Situation episode. Children's distress intensity during separations from caregivers was used to place children into Low versus Moderate/High Negative Reactivity groups. In addition, ratings of infants' social interactive 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 insecure attachments within the DS population at each age studied. However, low negative reactivity was not consistently related to the activation of the attachment behavioral system, or associated with insecure attachment relationships. Alternative explanations for the high rate of insecure attachments are discussed.

The end of the last millennium witnessed an unprecedented degree of public awareness regarding mental disorder as well as motivation for policy change. Like Sartorius, we contend that the continued stigmatization of mental illness may well be the central issue facing the field, as nearly 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 aberrant behavior. We discuss empirical and narrative evidence for stigmatization as well as historical trends regarding conceptualizations of mental illness, including the field's increasing focus on genetic and neurobiological causes and determinants of mental disorder. We next define stigma explicitly, noting both the multiple levels (community, societal, familial, individual) through which stigma operates to dehumanize and delegitimize individuals with mental disorders and the impact of stigma across development. Key developmental psychopathology principles are salient in this regard. We express concern over the recent oversimplification of mental illness as “brain disorder,” supporting instead transactional models which account for the dynamic interplay of genes, neurobiology, environment, and self across development and which are consistent with both compassion and societal responsibility. Finally, we consider educational and policy-related initiatives regarding the destigmatization of mental disorder. We conclude that attitudes and policy regarding mental disorder reflect, in microcosmic form, two crucial issues for the next century and millennium: (a) tolerance for diversity (vs. pressure for conformity) and (b) intentional direction of our species' evolution, given fast-breaking genetic advances.

Parental emotions and behaviors that contribute to continuity and change in preschool children's externalizing problems were examined. Mothers and fathers were observed interacting with their children, and child-rearing styles were reported. Teachers, mothers, and children reported children's antisocial, oppositional behavior. Externalizing problems showed strong continuity 2 and 4 years later. Proactive parenting (i.e., supportive presence, clear instruction, and limit setting) predicted fewer behavior problems over time, after controlling for initial problems; the converse was true for parental anger. In contrast, the hypothesized ameliorative contribution of parents' positive emotion was not found. Parental contributions 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 as maternal, influences were identified. Examination of parental emotions and inclusion of fathers is important to research and intervention with young antisocial children.

This paper presents single-subject analyses of newly developing attachment relationships in 10 foster infant–caregiver dyads. Using a diary methodology, at least 2 months of daily data were provided by foster parents on infants' attachment behaviors. Foster infant attachment was also assessed using the Strange Situation. Foster mother state of mind regarding attachment was measured using the Adult Attachment Interview. For eight infants, diary data revealed predominant patterns of attachment behavior emerging within 2 months of placement. In most cases, diary data predicted Strange Situation classifications. Both Strange Situation and diary data indicated that the three children placed in foster care before 12 months of age with foster parents having primary or secondary autonomous states of mind were classified as having secure attachments. The five children placed after 12 months of age showed predominantly insecure 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 parents tended to complement their foster childrens' attachment behaviors.

The defining features of developmental psychopathology concepts include attention to the understanding of causal processes, appreciation of the role of developmental mechanisms, and consideration 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, gender differences, cognitive processing, nature–nurture interplay, heterotypic continuity, continuities between normal variations and disorders, developmental programming, and therapeutic 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, and prevention—and trace the history of public health in terms of its special responsibility to control and prevent disease. We identify four periods in the history of public health: the Sanitarian era (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 the developmental psychopathology of the first 2 decades of life, we trace progress in public health responses to children with mental illness, from a philosophy of control by isolation toward one of preventive intervention. We examine primary, or universal, prevention strategies that have been tried, and we suggest some that might be worth reconsidering.

Eighty-two mother–infant dyads, comprising women with psychiatric disorder and individually matched controls, were followed up over the children's 1st year of life. The mothers with mental illness consisted of two subgroups: first, 25 severely mentally ill mothers who had been admitted to a psychiatric unit with their infants; and second, 16 mothers from a community sample meeting research diagnostic criteria for unipolar, nonpsychotic depression. With the exception of six dyads in the in-patient group, observations were made of the mother–infant interaction and the quality of the infant–mother attachment relationship at 12 months. The nature and course of the mothers' illness was also documented. Although few residual symptoms of maternal mental illness were detected at 1 year postpartum, interactional disturbances were evident among the case group dyads. A strong association was revealed between infant–mother attachment quality and maternal diagnosis: a manic episode of illness in the postpartum period was related to security in the attachment 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 has produced unanticipated changes in our understanding of pathology, individual development, and the role of social context. Among these are the blurring of the division between mental illness and mental health, the need to attend to patterns of adaptation rather than personality traits, and the powerful influences of the social world on individual development. Current developmental views place deviancy in the dynamic relation between individuals and their contexts. At another level, when we view the history of developmental psychopathology, dialectical developmental processes are evident as we trace how patterns of adaptation of researchers, expressed in theoretical models and empirical paradigms, increasingly have come to match the complexities of human mental health and illness.

Research has demonstrated that children who experience familial sexual maltreatment are at risk for developing psychological difficulties characterized by emotional and behavioral dysregulation. Surprisingly, however, little attention has been directed toward identifying processes in emotional development that differ in maltreated and nonmaltreated children. From a developmental psychopathology perspective, the present study examined emotion management skills (i.e., emotional understanding, emotion regulation) in 21 sexually maltreated girls and their nonmaltreated peers to determine how the experience of sexual maltreatment may interfere with normative emotional development. Findings indicated that sexually maltreated girls, in comparison to their nonmaltreated peers, demonstrate lower emotional understanding and decreased ability to regulate their emotions in accordance with cultural expectations. Further, maltreated girls expected less emotional support and more relational conflict from parents in response to sadness displays and from parents and peers in response to anger displays. These findings will be discussed from the functionalist approach to emotional development, emphasizing the importance of social context (e.g., maltreating, nonmaltreating) in the development of children's emotion management skills.

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

Eighteen children with specific language impairment (SLI), from 6 to 8 years of age, were compared with 9 control children matched on age and nonverbal ability (CA controls) and with 9 younger control children of comparable language level (LA controls). Half of the SLI group were rated on a teacher checklist as having pragmatic difficulties: these were referred to as the pragmatic language impairment (PLI) group; the remainder were the typical (SLI-T) group. Children's responses to adult soliciting utterances were compared. All children usually responded to conversational solicitations, but children in the PLI group were more likely than control 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's responses. Children who failed to use nonverbal responses also had a relatively high level of pragmatically inappropriate responses that were not readily accounted for in terms of limited grammar or vocabulary. This study lends support to the notion that there is a subset of the language-impaired population who have broader communicative impairments, extending beyond basic difficulties in mastering language form, reflecting difficulty in responding to and expressing communicative intents. The analytic methods developed for this project have promise for the study of pragmatic difficulties in other clinical groups.

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

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

In recent years, womens' roles have changed dramatically, prompting researchers to examine 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 the nature of the changes that have occurred over the last 50 years. We then review research concerning the effects of these changes on the development of women and children. Finally, we discuss the implications for social policy that stem from this research. It is broadly concluded that research informed by a developmental–contextual perspective may contribute importantly to 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 in developmental processes and outcomes, and its implications in the understanding of developmental psychopathology. Literature reviews were conducted by historical period: 1930–1939, 1960–1969, and 1990–1999. The percentage of the total articles and chapters pertaining to cultural issues increased as a function of time. Both conceptual and methodological continuities and discontinuities were observed among the three periods. The preponderance of comparative studies using deficit models still remains, but more enlightened alternative conceptual models, within culture studies, and measures of cultural processes, are emerging. In contrast, although contextual influences are considered important in developmental psychopathology, the field lags in its empirical consideration of cultural influences. The need to seriously address these issues will increase as globalization and rapid cultural change become even more the norm than the exception.

The uneven profile of performance on standard assessments of intelligence and the high incidence of savant skills have prompted interest in the nature of intelligence in autism. The present paper reports the first group study of speed of processing in children with autism (IQ 1 SD below average) using an inspection time task. The children with autism showed inspection times as fast as an age-matched group of young normally developing children (IQ 1 SD above average). They were also significantly faster than mentally handicapped children without autism of the same age, even when these groups were pairwise matched on Wechsler 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 capacity despite poor measured IQ. These findings have implications for the role of general and specific cognitive systems in knowledge and skill acquisition: far from showing that children with autism are unimpaired, we suggest that our data may demonstrate the vital role of social insight in the development of manifest “intelligence.”

The influences of three risk factors (insecure attachment, maternal depressive symptoms, and economic risk) on children's depressive symptomatology were examined. Subjects were 85 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 Depression Profile for Children and Adolescents. Results indicated that children at high economic risk were more 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 depressive symptomatology and the depressive symptomatology of their mothers. Contrary to expectations, no significant relation was found between maternal depressive symptomatology and security of attachment. A multiple regression analysis revealed that security of attachment, maternal depressive symptomatology, and economic risk accounted for 47% of the variability in children's depression scores. Secure attachment served as a buffer; economic risk was associated with depressive symptoms only among insecurely attached children.