UPI Study › Courses › Abnormal Psychology › Free lessons › Lesson 9.2 Free with a free account
Developmental Stages, Accumulated Risk, and the Limits of the Framework
Abnormal Psychology · Chapter 9: Vulnerability, Stress, and the Development of DisordersSection 9.2 · lesson 34 of 9711 min · free with a free account
Free preview
Create a free account to keep watching
It takes a minute and costs nothing. Your free account unlocks all of Chapter 1 and 3 more lessons of Abnormal Psychology.
Lesson complete
Earn the 3 college credits for Abnormal Psychology
Enrolling adds a quiz after each lesson, the graded work and the official transcript. Recommended for credit by NCCRS.
Next lesson: What Clinical Assessment Is, and Why It Matters →← Defining Vulnerability, Environmental Stress, and Resilience FactorsNext lesson: What Clinical Assessment Is, and Why It Matters →
In this lesson
Adding time to the diathesis-stress account, and reading what it cannot do.
- Explain how developmental timing shapes an exposure's effect
- Distinguish cumulative risk, chains, and cascades
- Separate equifinality from multifinality
- State each limitation and what remains unsettled
Transcript
Everything said in the video, section by section (1,527 words). Read along, or search it.
Vulnerability, Stress, and the Development of Disorders
Developmental Stages, Accumulated Risk, and the Limits of the Framework
The previous section gave us vulnerability, stress, and a threshold. This one adds the thing that was missing. Time. Because the same exposure does not do the same thing at every age. And adversities do not arrive as a list. They arrive in an order, and they interact. We will look at how risk accumulates, and at how it spreads sideways. At two principles that block prediction in opposite directions. And at turning points, which are the finding that most contradicts determinism. Then we take the framework's five real limitations seriously. One line to hold through all of it. Early adversity raises population-level risk. It does not determine any individual outcome.
A Perspective
A Trajectory With a History, Not a State
Developmental psychopathology studies typical and atypical development together. It treats a disorder as a deviation in a pathway. It is a perspective rather than a theory, and it changes the question being asked. Three commitments follow. First, typical development is the comparison, not background. Understanding what went differently requires understanding what ordinarily happens. Second, the question shifts from what is wrong now. Third, because a pathway can change direction, this perspective is non-deterministic. Now an important note before we continue. This material is educational, and it is not a basis for diagnosis. Childhood adversity is discussed at the level of broad categories only. If any of it affects you personally, please speak with a qualified professional or a doctor.
Timing
Early Is Not Automatically Worse
Sensitive periods are windows when a system is particularly open to environmental influence. So the same exposure carries different consequences at different ages. An exposure meeting a capacity that is still forming can affect how that capacity forms. The same exposure meeting an established capacity is absorbed by a system that works. Now here is the part that gets missed. This cuts in both directions. Early exposure is not automatically worse. An adversity in early childhood may be absorbed with little lasting consequence. Because the child does not yet have the apparatus to sustain a threat interpretation over time. The same adversity in adolescence may have a larger effect. It meets a person who can anticipate consequences and compare themselves to others. So what determines the outcome is the fit between the demand and what the person can do.
Early Context
Formative, and Not the Same as Blame
Conditions before and around birth have been associated with later neurodevelopmental differences. Maternal health, nutrition, exposure to substances, complications during delivery. Treat these as contributions to the diathesis side of the framework. The early caregiving environment is the pattern of responsiveness and availability a child experiences. It is named here as a formative context, because so much later development builds on it. Early relational experience shapes expectations, and those get carried into later relationships. Now a caution that belongs here, rather than after. Calling caregiving formative is not a claim that parents are responsible for later difficulties. Caregiving capacity is itself shaped by resources, health, support, and circumstances. A caregiver's difficulty in providing responsiveness is far more often about load than will. This course describes family factors as factors. It does not assign blame.
Middle And Teen
Each Period Builds What the Next One Assumes
Each developmental period presents characteristic tasks. And a vulnerability can follow from difficulty with them. But because each task builds a capacity that the next period assumes. Middle childhood is organized around competence and comparison. Succeeding at structured learning, finding a position among peers, developing self-regulation. Difficulty there carries forward, and here is the mechanism. A child who has not established peer relationships enters adolescence without the social base. Adolescence involves identity, increasing autonomy, and a reorientation toward peers. It is also a period of elevated onset for several condition families. Reorganization in brain systems governing reward and control, on different timetables. These are proposed mechanisms rather than established ones.
Later Life
Vulnerability Is Not Fixed After Childhood
Vulnerability is not fixed after childhood. A framework that stopped at eighteen would misdescribe most of the lifespan. Adulthood brings occupational demand and insecurity. Partnership and its ending. Becoming a parent. Caring for aging relatives. Later life brings transitions and losses that are frequently underweighted. Retirement removes a role, a structure, and a network, all at once. Bereavement accumulates. Physical health changes constrain activity. And social contact often contracts without any decision having been made. Two things follow from all of this. Protective factors can be built at any age, so they are not childhood provision only. And a first presentation in adulthood requires the same developmental reasoning.
Cumulative Risk
The Count Carries Information the Type Does Not
Cumulative risk is a finding about counting. The number of adversities predicts outcome more strongly than the type of any one. And the relationship is graded rather than a step. As the count of distinct adversities rises, so does the proportion showing poor outcomes. That adversities do not act independently. And that quantity carries information beyond the identity of any single exposure. Now be equally precise about what it does not establish. It does not establish that each adversity contributes equally, which counting implies. It does not establish a mechanism. Counting describes a pattern without explaining it. And most importantly, it does not apply to any individual. These counts were developed for population research, not for assessing a person.
Chains
Every Link Is Probabilistic, and Every Link Is Open
A chain of risk is a different claim from cumulative risk, and the difference matters. Cumulative risk counts. A chain specifies an order, and a connection between steps. In a chain, one adversity raises the probability of the next. So consequences compound through a series of linked steps. Two features of chains deserve emphasis, and both are hopeful without being soft. First, they are probabilistic at every link. Each step raises the probability of the next, rather than causing it outright. Second, they are open to interruption at every link. Breaking any single link changes everything downstream of it. Which is why an intervention late in a chain can still alter the outcome. That is what makes this model clinically useful rather than merely descriptive.
Cascades
A Chain Runs Forward; a Cascade Spreads Sideways
A developmental cascade is different again. A difficulty in one domain produces difficulties in others over time. Spillover across areas of functioning, rather than progression within one. Where a chain runs forward, a cascade spreads sideways. A child with an early language difficulty may struggle with classroom instruction. Which affects academic attainment. That is domain one. Falling behind academically affects how peers regard them, and how they regard themselves. Reduced social contact affects mood. Domain three. And low mood affects concentration, which affects attainment again. The starting point was in one domain, and the difficulties are now in four. The case rests on preventing the spread, not on the severity of the original problem.
Two Principles
Neither Direction of Inference Survives
Two principles now, and together they place a hard limit on linear prediction. Equifinality is the principle that different starting points converge on the same outcome. Multifinality is the principle that the same starting point diverges to different outcomes. Notice that they block inference in opposite directions. Equifinality means an outcome does not identify its cause. Multifinality means a cause does not identify its outcome. Two people with the same diagnosis may need entirely different formulations and treatments. And knowing that someone experienced a particular adversity tells you comparatively little. Including, importantly, that a common outcome is no disorder at all. A turning point is an event or change that alters the direction of a pathway. A stable relationship. Entry into education or employment that supplies a role. Notice what those have in common. They change the environment the person develops in.
Five Limits
Answerable, but Not Answered
Now five limitations, each at its strongest. First, breadth. The framework is compatible with almost any observation. A framework that forbids nothing predicts nothing. Specific hypotheses generated within it are testable, and some have failed. Second, circularity. Vulnerability is usually identified after the outcome. A person presents, a history is taken, and a diathesis is found in that same history. The corrective is the prospective longitudinal design, which establishes temporal order. Third, individual prediction, and this one does not go away with better data. It follows from equifinality and multifinality. Fourth, retrospective bias. Recall is reconstructive rather than reproductive. Fifth, specificity. The framework predicts that something may go wrong. It does not predict what, which leaves a large part of a clinician's question unanswered.
One Pathway
Sara, Across Three Periods
One composite, followed across three periods. Sara is now twenty-seven, presenting with low mood and difficulty sustaining employment. Her mother worked two jobs without local support, and was frequently unavailable. Note the framing there. That unavailability was a consequence of load, not unwillingness. In middle childhood her reading lagged, and she was moved to a lower set. Falling behind affected how peers regarded her, and she formed few stable friendships. That is the cascade, from an academic domain into a social one. By eleven she disliked school and attended irregularly, which widened the gap further. Three adversities were now in place, which is cumulative risk. And each had raised the probability of the next, which is a chain. She left education at sixteen, and low mood appeared around seventeen. At twenty-two she enrolled on a vocational course with small-group teaching and a tutor. Her reading improved with the first sustained teaching input she had received. Now note what the turning point actually was. It was not a change in Sara. It was an environment that supplied teaching, a role, and a group.
About Abnormal Psychology at UPI Study
Abnormal Psychology (Psychology 180) is a self-paced online course of 97 video lessons in 25 chapters, from the main theoretical perspectives and clinical assessment to anxiety, mood, psychotic and personality disorders, treatment and the law. It carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits.
Every lesson transcript is free on pages like this one, and the videos are free with a free UPI Study account. Enrolling adds a practice quiz after each lesson, the graded work and final exam that earn the credit, lifetime access, and an official transcript on completion. UPI Study has helped over 130,000 students with college credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
Enroll now → Course details Download the syllabus All Psychology and social science courses Every course with PRO →
Why take it here
Why students take Abnormal Psychology with UPI Study
Where the credit goes
Universities that work with NCCRS
Abnormal Psychology carries a NCCRS credit recommendation. These universities work with NCCRS; some are UPI Study's signed partners. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
Thomas Edison State UniversitySigned partner
University of the PeopleSigned partner
Charter Oak State CollegeSigned partner
Strayer UniversitySigned partner
Columbia Southern UniversitySigned partner
Indiana TechSigned partner
Penn StateWorks with NCCRS
Southern New Hampshire UniversityWorks with NCCRS
SUNYWorks with NCCRS
+many more cooperating universitiesFind my college →Find my college → Not listed? Ask Athena in the corner of this page, or book a 15-minute call.
FAQ
Questions students ask us
About Developmental Stages, Accumulated Risk, and the Limits of the Framework
What is developmental psychopathology?
What is the difference between cumulative risk and a chain of risk?
What is the difference between equifinality and multifinality?
Is adversity in early childhood always more harmful than adversity later in life?
About the Abnormal Psychology course
How many college credits is Abnormal Psychology?
How much does Abnormal Psychology cost and what is included?
Which universities accept UPI Study credits?
How long does Abnormal Psychology take?
How are the exams done?
How do my credits reach my college?
Ready for the full course? Earn 3 credits in Abnormal Psychology.
97 video lessons, a quiz after each one, and the graded work that earns the credit. Recommended for credit by NCCRS.
3 credits · NCCRSEnroll →