“Ain't Misbehavin”: Towards a Developmentally-Specified Nosology for Preschool Disruptive Behavior
By Lauren S. Wakschlag, P. Tolan, Bennett L. Leventhal. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 2009
170 citations recorded by the source corpus.
There is increasing consensus that disruptive behavior disorders and syndromes (DBDs) are identifiable in preschool children. There is also concomitant recognition of the limitations of the current DBD nosology for distinguishing disruptive behavior symptoms from normative misbehavior of early childhood. In particular, there appears to be substantial insensitivity to heterotypic manifestations of this developmental period and problems in identifying meaningful heterogeneity. As a result, the developmental basis for much of the current nosology may be called into question. To address these and other critical issues, this paper reviews the foundational elements of clinical and developmental science pertinent to developmental differentiation of disruptive behavior in the preschool period as paradigmatic for developmental specification across the life span and generates an agenda for future research. We begin by reviewing evidence of the validity of DBDs in preschool children. This is followed by an outline of key developmental concepts and a review of the corollary evidence from developmental science. These provides a basis for conceptualizing disruptive behavior in reference to developmental deviation in four core dimensions hypothesized to mark the core features of disruptive behavior syndromes. Finally, we propose a program of research to establish an empirical basis for determining the incremental utility of a developmentally-specified nosology. Central to this approach is a contention that the benefits of developmental specification are extensive and outweigh any disadvantages. This is because a developmentally-specified approach holds substantial promise for increasing sensitivity and specificity for differentiating disruptive behavior from normative misbehavior and from other related syndromes as well as for improving prediction. Further, more precisely-defined, developmentally-based phenotypes are likely to elucidate distinct mechanisms within translational studies and to serve as a catalyst for the generation of novel treatments.
Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental and Educational Psychology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5d5389dddda463e290423c56e2ced8e83fb3fa76
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Citations in the corpus
- Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties in Preschool (2013, background): “Until now, there has been a reliance on viewing childhood problems as ‘‘downward extensions’’ of adult or adolescent problems (Wakschlag et al. 2010).”
- The Validity of the Multi-Informant Approach to Assessing Child and Adolescent Mental Health (2015, unknown): “For example, to assess cross-contextual variations in preschool children's disruptive behavior , researchers recently developed the Disruptive Behavior Diagnostic Observation Schedule (DB-DOS; Wakschlag et al., 2010).”