Clinical Assessment of Child and Adolescent Personality and ...

58 CHAPTER 3 CLASSIFICATION AND DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGYDevelopmentalPsychopathologyAs mentioned earlier, the overridingprinciple of developmental psychopathologyis that children’s emotional andbehavioral functioning must be understoodwithin a developmental context(Rutter & Garmezy, 1983). Therefore,it follows that the assessment of children’semotional and behavioral functioning mustalso be conducted within a developmentalframework. Such themes as understandingbehavior in a developmental contextand conducting assessment within a developmentalframework are broad principlesthat have several important specific implicationsfor the assessment process.Developmental NormsFirst, a developmental approach recognizesthat a child’s emotional and behavioralfunctioning must be understood withinthe context of developmental norms. Tobe specific, there are numerous behaviorsof children that are common at one age,but relatively uncommon at others. Forexample, bedwetting is quite common priorto age 5, and even at age 5, it is present in 15 -20% of children (Doleys, 1977; Walker,Milling, & Bonner, 1988). Similarly, childhoodfears tend to be quite common, andthe types of fears that are most commonshow a regular progression with childdevelopment (Campbell, 1986). For example,separation anxiety is not uncommonin infants toward the end of the first yearof life (Bowlby, 1969), whereas fears ofthe dark and imaginary creatures are quitecommon in preschool and school-age childrenbut decrease in prevalence with age(Bauer, 1976).These are just a few of the many development-relatedchanges in the prevalenceof specific child behaviors. Knowledge ofthese developmental changes in behavioris crucial to clinical assessment becausethe same behavior may be developmentallyappropriate at one age but indicativeof pathology at another. Therefore, assessmentof children and adolescents mustallow development-based interpretations.The critical nature of these interpretationsimplies that selection of assessmenttechniques must be based, at least in part,on the availability of age-specific norms.Further, given the rapid developmentalchanges experienced by children and adolescents,comparisons must be made withinfairly limited age groups. Whereas foradults using a comparison group that spansthe ages from 25 to 35 may be justifiable,a comparison group for children that spansthe ages 5–15 would be meaningless, giventhe many changes in development thatare subsumed within this period. Becausethe normative information provided by anassessment instrument and the appropriateuse of norm-referenced information bythe assessor are critical components to theclinical assessment of children, these issuesare discussed in great detail throughoutthis book.Developmental ProcessesUnfortunately, many assessors believe thatsimply comparing the assessment informationwith age norms is all that is neededto take a developmental approach to childand adolescent assessment. This is a muchtoo limited view of development, and howcan it be applied to understanding bothnormal and pathological outcomes in children.A developmental approach is a “process-oriented”approach. Put simply, thismeans that any developmental outcome,be it a normal personality dimension or aproblematic behavioral pattern, is the endresult of an interaction of numerous interrelatedmaturation processes (e.g., socioemotional,cognitive, linguistic, biological).