PSYCH 2AP3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: John Bowlby, Autonomic Nervous System, Critical Role

• School: McMaster University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH 2AP3
• Professor: Geoffrey Hall

Document Summary

This perspective integrates the understanding and study of normal developmental processes with those of child and adolescent psychopathology: it is interested in the origins and developmental course of disordered behaviour, as well as individual adaptation and competence. Developmental psychopathology is a systems framework for understanding disordered behaviour in relation to normal development. Rather than imposing specific theoretical explanations, it is a way of combining various theories or approaches around a core of developmental knowledge, issues, and questions. Development refers to change over the lifespan that results from ongoing transactions of an individual with biological, psychological, and sociocultural variables, which themselves are changing. Although quantitative change in development is noteworthy, qualitative change is more salient. Early development of the biological, motor, physical, cognitive, emotional and social systems follow a general course. Development proceeds in a coherent pattern, so that for each person, current functioning is connected both to past and future.