Infant Psychopathology Research Articles

The diagnosis of infant psychopathology: current challenges and recent contributions.

In this paper we describe current difficulties in the diagnosis of infant psychopathology and two recent contributions to the assessment of infant psychopathology, "KIDDIES," and "Zero to Three." In order to accomplish this a literature review was completed regarding infant psychopathology and current diagnostic instruments. The literature supports the notion that there is a need for more empirical research in the area of infant psychopathologies and for more reliable and valid scales of infant psychopathology. Zero to Three and KIDDIES are useful tools in the assessment of psychopathology, and have complementary strengths.

Introduction to the special section young children at risk for psychopathology: Developmental and family perspectives

Discusses the importance of research on the emergence of psychopathology in young children. As an introduction to a special section on the development of psychopathology in infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, this article highlights the importance of a developmental perspective and a focus on the child in family, social, and cultural contexts. Issues addressed include distinctions between early symptoms of disorder and transient, age-related difficulties; the nature and specificity of family risk factors; the central role played by parenting in predicting which vulnerable children will fare well or poorly; and the potential of early intervention programs to address aspects of the parent-child relationship.

Behavioral psychopathology in infants of disaster

Behavioral psychopathology in infants of disaster

A guide to the literature on aggressive behavior

A guide to the literature on aggressive behavior

Psychopathology in Infancy and Early Childhood: Clinical Perspectives on the Organization of Sensory and Affective-Thematic Experience

The developmental-structuralist approach to psychopathology in infants and young children involves studying adaptive and maladaptive patterns at each level of "experimental organization" from the early sensory, motor, and affective-thematic organizations to the later representational ones. Psychopathology may be related to defects or constrictions at each organizational level, including the representational or symbolic realm, without underlying vulnerabilities in earlier levels of organization, and may also involve the presumed "underbelly" of the personality, those central nervous system organizations that have to do with filtering and processing of perceptions and experience (the early sensory and affective-thematic organizations). The most severe psychopathologies, it will be suggested, occur where there are compromises in both the early sensory and affective-thematic and later representational organizations. Early limitations in "processing" animate or inanimate experiences may, in many instances, be highly specific and reversible rather than global. The early detection of sensory and affective-thematic organizational compromises, followed by approaches that facilitate phase-specific "essential experiences" through intact sensory pathways and the remediation of compromised ones, may provide a systematic base for possible preventive intervention approaches.