Normal Development and Developmental Psychopathology
Normal development and developmental psychopathology
A candidate must distinguish normative variation from disorder. Key concepts: developmental milestones and trajectories; prematurity-adjusted age; temperament; attachment; sensitive periods; risk and resilience; equifinality and multifinality; developmental cascades; and the distinction between delay (slow but typical sequence) and deviation (atypical sequence, e.g., regression). Developmental psychopathology frames symptoms as transactions between child and context, so impairment and context matter as much as symptom counts. Normal variation includes late talking with intact nonverbal communication, varied motor timing, and culturally patterned independence. Red flags include loss of previously acquired skills, lack of joint attention or gesture, persistent asymmetry, and regression after age 2.
Traps: labeling a bilingual child's code-switching as language disorder; using chronological age for a preterm infant; treating a single parent report as a trajectory; and missing that anxiety or trauma can mimic ADHD or autism. Questions often ask which finding most warrants referral; the best answer usually combines loss of function, cross-setting impairment, and atypical quality rather than a single milestone miss.
Worked example/rule of thumb: An 18-month-old says three words but points to share interest, follows a point, and responds to name. Late expressive language alone is common; joint attention and gesture are stronger discriminators. Rule: regression or absent social communication is more concerning than slow but forward progress.