Читать книгу Child Development From Infancy to Adolescence - Laura E. Levine - Страница 63

Scientific research strives to identify general principles that describe average or typical patterns. We want to be able to make general statements about what usually happens. But you cannot spend much time observing children or adolescents without recognizing how different each one is from all the others. Our study of children needs to deal with both aspects of development—those aspects that are universal and shared by all or almost all members of a particular group, and those in which we differ from each other.

Throughout this book you will learn about general conclusions that are drawn from research. Although these are true as general statements, there also are numerous exceptions that give us insights we would not have otherwise. For example, children who grow up in poverty are at risk for a number of developmental and mental health problems, but some of these children manage to thrive in the face of great difficulty. In Chapter 13 we look at the factors that promote resilience in the face of a wide range of developmental risks and contribute to these individual differences.

While we can make a number of valid general statements about how development proceeds, the developmental pathway of any given individual is difficult to predict. Different pathways can result in the same outcome, a process known as equifinality (equi = equal, finality = ends). For example, depression may result from biological and genetic processes, but it also can result from early traumatic experiences. However, it is also true that the same pathway can lead to different outcomes, known as multifinality (Cicchetti & Toth, 2009). For example, children who are victims of abuse can have many different long-term outcomes that can include depression but also resilience and healing. Individual characteristics of a child or an adolescent, including the child’s temperament, sociability, and physical and intellectual ability are just some of the characteristics that may influence the specific outcome in any given situation.

Equifinality: The principle by which different developmental pathways may result in the same outcome.

Multifinality: The principle by which the same pathway may lead to different developmental outcomes.

Individual differences. Characteristics of individual children, such as age, gender, or ethnic background, can affect the developmental process, so outcomes that apply to one child will not necessarily apply to another. This means we must always be mindful of individual differences when we reach our conclusions.

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Although we routinely pay attention to how personal characteristics such as gender, race, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status and others impact an individual’s development trajectory, the concept of intersectionality reminds us that these characteristics do not exist in isolation, but rather intersect with each other in complex ways that create unique developmental trajectories. Being a Black woman is a different experience from being a Black man, and being a Black woman is different from being a White woman. Both of these social identities—race and gender—can be a source of privilege or oppression. For example, while a Black woman may be harmed by both racism and sexism, a Black man may experience racism but also benefit from the gender inequity that may exist (Rosenthal, 2016). One of the goals of this theoretical framework is to use research to inform social policy and promote social justice and equity.

Intersectionality: A theoretical framework that examines the effects of the overlap of social identities such race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic status on development.

This understanding of individual differences also has changed the way we view behavioral and emotional disorders. In the field of developmental psychopathology, psychological disorders are now seen as distortions of normal developmental pathways (Cicchetti, 2016). Accordingly, in this book we include these disorders in our discussions of typical development. For example, language disorders appear with the discussion of typical language development, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder appears in the section in which we describe the typical development of attention. Thinking about atypical development this way may help reduce the stigma associated with mental disorders because it helps us see them as individual differences in development rather than simply as illnesses.

Developmental psychopathology: An approach that sees mental and behavioral problems as distortions of normal developmental processes rather than as illnesses.