How research on child maltreatment has informed the study of child development: perspectives from developmental psychopathology

Abstract

Introduction Throughout the past decade, a growing number of investigators have focused their theoretical formulations and empirical research on the normal processes of ontogenesis in the social, emotional, social-cognitive, cognitive, and linguistic domains and on the relation between functioning in childhood and later developmental outcome (Lewis, Feiring, McGuffog, and Jaskir, 1984; Main, Kaplan, and Cassidy, 1985; Sroufe, 1979a, 1983). Much of this work has been guided by the organizational perspective on development (Cicchetti and Schneider-Rosen, 1984, 1986; Cicchetti and Sroufe, 1978; Sroufe, 1979b; Sroufe and Waters, 1976; Werner, 1948) and has been conducted in order to expand our knowledge of the normal developmental process. The study of children who are at high risk for developmental deviation and psychopathology can contribute greatly to our extant theories of normal development (Cicchetti, 1984; Werner, 1948). For example, the empirical investigation of populations where divergent patterns of socioemotional, cognitive, linguistic, and social-cognitive development may be expected as a consequence of the pervasive and enduring influences that characterize the transaction between the child and the environment, such as is the case with maltreated children and their families, provides the appropriate basis for affirming and challenging current developmental theories. Additionally, the study of the developmental organization of high risk children simultaneously allows for the formulation of a more integrative theory of development that can account for the nature of the interrelations among the social, emotional, linguistic, and cognitive/social-cognitive domains (Cicchetti and Schneider-Rosen, 1984; Hesse and Cicchetti, 1982).