Assignment Part I: Introduction to Child Psychopathology
1. How have conceptualizations of child psychopathology and its treatment changed over time?
2. What are the main features of Developmental Psychopathology? What is used by this approach in order to understand child abnormal behavior?
3. What are the 3 features in the definition of a mental disorder? What makes defining abnormal behavior challenging?
4. What are common developmental tasks that children must master at different ages?
5. What is a developmental pathway? Define and give examples of multifinality and equifinality.
6. What are the issues that research studies in Abnormal Child psychology seek to address?
7. What is the problem associated with the fact that it is the adult who seeks services for a child?
8. To what extent do most children commonly show certain problem behaviors?
9. What are risk and protective factors? How are they related to resilience? Give examples.
10. What is a theory and how does it differ from a risk factor?
11. What is a gene-environment interaction? Give an example of how a gene-environment interaction may give rise to the development of psychopathology.
12. What is the notion of continuity and discontinuity in the development of abnormality? Give examples.
13. What is neural plasticity?
14. What is role of the endocrine system in the stress reaction (note the HPA axis)?
15. What roles are the major neurotransmitters thought to play in psychopathology?
16. Describe emotion reactivity and emotion regulation. How do they relate to the development of child psychopathology?
17. Describe the qualities of the three primary temperamental dimensions: Positive Affect and Approach, Fearful or inhibited, Negative affect or irritability and how they relate to the development of child psychopathology.
18. How do classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and social learning each explain the acquisition of deviant behavior?
19. Describe the different attachment patterns and how they relate to child psychopathology.
20. What is the Bronfenbrenner's ecological model? What systems are involved at each level (name the levels and describe the systems involved in each level)? Need Assignment Help?
Assignment Part II: Research in Child Psychopathology
1. What are three types of measurement methods used in studies of child psychopathology? How might studies come to different conclusions based on the measurement methods used?
2. Define reliability. What are three forms of reliability?
3. What is internal validity? Describe three potential threats to internal validity and give examples.
4. What is external validity? How do the characteristics of the sample in a study affect external validity?
5. What are incidence and prevalence? What do they each provide a measure of?
6. What is a mediator and a moderator? Give an example of each using a diagram and description.
7. Give an example of an ABAB reversal single-case experimental design using fictitious data. Be sure to label each phase and interpret the findings appropriately.
8. What are three threats to validity that random assignment to a treatment and control group controls for?
9. What is informed consent? How should informed consent be obtained with child participants?
Assignment Part III: Assessment, Diagnosis, and Treatment
1. What is the goal of the idiographic and nomothetic approaches to assessment?
2. How might the child's age, gender, and culture that influence how symptoms are expressed, recognized, and assessed?
3. What is the difference between structured and unstructured clinical interviews? Which is more reliable and valid and why?
4. What are three pros and three cons of the use of diagnostic labels?
5. What is a categorical classification and what is a dimensional classification and how do they differ? What approach is used by the DSM-5?
6. What are the major points of criticism against the DSM-5?
7. In what ways are treatments for children different from treatments for adults?
8. How do cultural adaptations to EBTs affect child and/or family outcomes?
9. What are evidence-based treatments? In order for a treatment to be considered an EBT, what research standards must be met?
10. What is the difference between treatment efficacy studies and treatment effectiveness studies?
11. What are the major differences between research therapy and clinic therapy? How effective is clinic therapy compared to research therapy?
Assignment Part IV: Intellectual Disability
1. What was the Eugenics scare?
2. What was the purpose of Binet's first intelligence scale (1905)?
3. Name and describe the three limitations to the use of IQ tests in determining intelligence?
4. Name and describe the two components in the definition of Intellectual Disability?
5. What is the definition in IQ points of subaverage intelligence?
6. Distinguish between organic and cultural-familial intellectual disability. In your answer be sure to contrast the characteristics (e.g., degree of severity, minority and socioeconomic group representation) associated with each.
7. Name and describe the 4 levels of severity of intellectual disability based on the level of needed supports.
8. What is the most common inherited form of intellectual disability? How does it present in males versus females?
9. What is the chromosomal cause of Down Syndrome? Describe the language and social phenotype associated with Down Syndrome.
Assignment Part V: Autism Spectrum Disorder
1. Who first proposed the idea of autism as a spectrum?
2. What is perseverative speech?
3. What are instrumental gestures and what are expressive gestures? Which ones are more difficult for children with ASD?
4. Provide examples of deficits in social-emotional reciprocity, one of the diagnostic features of ASD.
5. What is pragmatic use of language and how do children with ASD function in this area?
6. What are self-stimulatory behaviors and what are the current explanations for these behaviors?
7. What medical conditions are most commonly associated with ASD?
8. Several different cognitive accounts of ASD have been proposed, including theory of mind deficits, weak central coherence, and executive functioning deficits. Describe each of these cognitive deficits and how they could account for the symptoms of ASD. What symptoms are they able to explain and what symptoms are they not able to explain? What are the limitations of each theory as a "primary deficit"?
9. Discuss the emergence of the symptoms of autism. In your answer, please discuss the pattern(s) of symptom onset.
10. What brain regions are implicated in the "social brain" theory of ASD? What behaviors are each of the brain regions thought to support?
11. What are the specific neural connectivity problems associated with ASD?
12. What are best practices in ASD intervention?
Assignment Part VI: Communication and Learning Disorders
1. What are phonemes?
2. What are the diagnostic criteria for language disorder?
3. What is the prognosis for children with delays only in expressive language versus those who also have receptive language delays?
4. What is the prevalence of language disorder? Is it more common in boys or girls?
5. Describe the course and associated characteristics of language disorder.
6. Describe the difficulties children with fluency disorder have.
7. What is social communication disorder? How does it relate to PDD-NOS in the DSM-IV and ASD in the DSM-5?
8. What two major changes were made from the DSM-IV to the DSM-5 in the criteria for specific learning disorder? What was the justification for these changes?
9. What are the core deficits associated with SLD with impairment in reading? How do these deficits impact reading?
10. Describe the associated characteristics of SLD.
11. Describe the gender differences associated with SLD, in terms of prevalence, presentation of symptoms, and associated characteristics/co-morbidity.
12. Describe the underlying deficits in language-based learning disorders.
13. What neurological abnormalities have been identified in individuals with language-based learning disorders and how are these thought to be related to specific learning deficits?
14. Name and describe three interventions used to treat SLD.