Special Populations

Abnormal

• anything that deviates from the norm

  • tall or short

  • could be a talent

    • whether deviating negatively or excelling

• people are not abnormal

  • it’s not that it’s a bad word in nature

  • but there is a lot of stigma

  • but we don’t want to call people abnormal

    • there’s a lot of differences across people

• the purpose of studying

  • not to put apart the differences

  • but rather to describe or identify patterns that are seen as atypical that are causing distress to the individual and provide resources

psychopathology

• the scientific study of mental disorders

• doesn’t mean the same thing as abnormal — abnormal being more broad

psychopathology — important to consider it within the psychological triad

• emotion

• behaviour

• cognition

when looking at a child we have to consider that emotion and cognition are private and internal

• if the child is young it’s even more difficult to observe the internal things

• behaviour is the only thing we can objectively observe

  • directly observable

• when we consider behaviour

  • have to consider that not all behaviour that is abnormal is necessarily indicative of a mental health problem

atypical behaviour should reflect deviations in underlying processes

• self-harm

• bed-rotting

• lethargy

• shaking and pacing

  • anxiety

• avoiding eating

  • depression

• We also need to consider age and developmental level

Developmental norms

• typical rates of growth, sequences of growth and forms of physical skills, language, cognition, emotion, and social behaviour

• generally a pattern of behaviours that are typical

  • a pattern of growth that we typically see

  • generally there are average ages we associate with these mile stones

• must consider

  • behaviour frequency

  • behaviour intensity

  • duration of behaviour

  • situational context

    • ex: if someone is screaming in a situation, we might think it’s abnormal if we don’t think about the situation they’re in, but it can be normal if they are in pain, roller coaster etc

Normal Distribution or bell curve

• usually when looking at behaviour or cog or emo people fall into an average — a bell curve

• think about how many people are represented under the curve

  • bigger area is more people

  • small area less people

  • most people fall into the middle/average

• ex: IQ

  • most people fall on average middle of bell curve (100)

  • consider variability or deviations

    • look at anyone who falls under 1 standard deviation of the mean it ends of 68% of people

      • basically most people are falling around average

    • 2 standard deviations

      • 95% of people fall around average

  • we only really care about the bottom 2.5% in this context

    • because it could be distressing, dysfunction

  • deviations cause either: distress or dysfunction

not all normal distributions will behave the same way

• ex: sleeping hours

  • focus on both top and bottom here

  • bottom because not enough sleep

  • top because too much could be an indicative of other issues

Deviations interfere with adaptation

• adaptation: fitting into the circumstances of your life

• 3 main things that make up circumstances of you life

  • school, work or both occupational or academic

  • connect socially

    • being able to communicate

    • taking care of yourself

      • cleaning up after yourself

      • bills

      • cleaning home

      • things you need to do

• we need to be able to do all these things with minimal distress

• adaptation will look different for everyone

  • everyone’s life circumstances look different

  • the degree to which we adapt will look different for everyone

• ex: two girls

  • first is in a society in which everything she wears is made with buttons

    • she needs to learn how to do buttons to adapt

  • another girl where everything she wears is made with zippers

    • she needs to know how to use zippers to adapt

    • she wouldn’t need to know how to use buttons so it wouldn’t be a maladaptation

adaptation

fitting into the circumstances of your life

abnormality isn’t all or nothing

• there’s a spectrum

• normal

  • able to do all of the things you need to do in your everyday life

  • and able to do these things with little to no stress at all

• abnormal

  • a lot of issues with distress

• middle area

  • experience a little dysfunction and or distress and not be considered abnormal

  • think about people dealing with mental health struggles that don’t meet criteria for a disorder

mental disorder:

• syndrome of clinically significant behavioural cognitive or emotional disturbances that reflect dysfunction in underlying mental processes, and that is associated with distress or disability in important areas of functioning

• doesn’t have to be all three at once

• has to be clinically significant

  • are we concerned about this person

• should be diagnosed by an expert

Difference between mental illness and mental health

• just because you have no mental illness does not mean you have good mental health and vice versa

• ex: maybe you have schizophrenia that is a mental disorder, but maybe they are on top of treatment

  • they feel great even

  • that would be good mental health despite have a mental illness

• intersecting spectrums of mental illness and mental health

neurodivergent

non-medical term used to describe people whose brains function differently than the ‘typical’ population

Neurodiversity

• things like ADHD autism, fetal alcohol

• people arguing it’s not a disorder just a natural divergent from typical function

• evidence that suggests that people who have neurodivergent things they have some strengths too

• people argue if proper accommodations or society was different they would function just fine

• people starting to call for change of language

  • call it things like neurodiversity instead of disorder

Cultural Relativism Theory

• there are no universal standards or rules by which we can judge behaviour cognitions and emotions to be atypical or abnormal

• these can only be considered atypical when compared to relevant cultural norms

Shyness - Canada and US

• shyness considered quite concerning

• worry about psychosocial adjustment, social skills

Shyness - China

• collectivist cultures see it as a sign of maturity, self-control, and obedience

• tend to emerge with more adaptive outcomes

• have positive peer relationships, social competence, positive psychosocial adjustment

• less likely to exhibit social gaze

• less likely to speak or smile

• more concern spreading in China recently

  • study in 2014 reported childrens shyness associated with peer dislike

  • another study showing parents not liking

• could be globalization

• need to consider heterogeneity

Kong et al. 2023

• anxious shyness: fear or anxiety in social situations

• regulated shyness: self-conscious avoidance of public attention and social restraint in behaviour

  • preoccupied with ourselves and how we come across to people

  • can be looked as a good think in moderation

• Canada vs China

  • which children are more likely to experience social anxiety as a result of these shyness's

• anxious shyness

  • social anxiety arose in both Canada and China

  • mean age of around 4 years old

• regulated shyness

  • social anxiety arose in Canadian children

  • not in Chinese children

    • appears to be a good shyness

    • appears to go along with what is valued and expected in that culture

• can see that shyness can be adaptive in china

Eye Contact

• nonverbal communication that can impact social behaviour

• western cultures

  • expected

  • signals honesty and attention

• some Latin, Asian, and African cultures

  • can seen as not positive

  • rude confrontational and aggressive

  • not as common

Externalizing Problems

• examples include aggression, rule breaking, other conduct problems

• North America

  • more patience around rule breaking and aggression

  • more accepting and typical in young children

  • as a result we have lower expectations for young children

• Thailand

  • do not accept these behaviours

  • teachers report many more conduct problems

• when actually comparing

  • American actually presenting more problems but Thailand reporting more

  • cultural expectations different

The Changing Nature of Culture

• western societies

  • look at eating disorders

  • used to be that they were only in western societies and at lower rates

    • because they focused more on a slim figure

• now that globalization happens

  • the standards are present everywhere

  • now see the prevalence rates similar all around the world

Opposing Cultural Relativism

• should cultural norms always be able to dictate what is normal and abnormal

• Thomas Szasz (1961,2011) → societies label groups as abnormal to justify controlling or silencing them

  • ex: WW2 the Nazis viewed Jews as abnormal

  • ex: Soviet Union labelling people as mentally ill and arresting those who are not

however, culture can influence

• the way in which symptoms are expressed

  • ex: some Asian and Latin cultures experience more bodily symptoms while white individuals experience more cognitive symptoms

  • ex: some people in some cultures go through rituals

  • ex: think about symptoms of psychosis

    • common symptoms is feeling that you are on top of the world and having superpowers

    • what those powers look like might be based on your religious background

• people’s willingness to admit to certain behaviour, thoughts, and feelings

  • Hattian or indigenous people less likely to admit to anger

  • depending on culture anger is either valued or suppressed

• treatments deemed acceptable or helpful

Scientific Method

• observation/question

• research topic

• hypothesis

• test

• analyze

• report

• start again

• psychology is different in how we analyze

operationalizing constructs

• psychological constructs are intangible aspects of one’s psychology, which can’t be measured directly

  • behaviour is the only directly observable measure

  • but even that has underlying cognitions

• victimization, shyness, well-being

  • when it comes to measuring not possible directly

• researchers rely on operationalization, or translation of the construct concrete, measurable terms

  • making sure the thing were interested in is defined in a very specific way

  • and in a very measurable way

• operationalization

  • important in our own research

  • need a consistent definition

Systematic Observation

• watching children and recording what they say or do

• naturalistic observation

  • behaviour observed in real-life situation

  • not too far out of their routine

Naturalistic Observation

• time sampling

• event sampling

time sampling

• when we are assessing whether a behaviour occurred or not in a specific time frame

• did the behaviour occur within the epoch

• good at sequentially understanding children’s behaviour

• this ex we have 5 second epoch’s

  • is the child smiling within the first 5 sec yes or no

  • are they active yes or no

• really important to have a video of the behaviour

  • maybe we are interested in multiple children

  • able to validly observe the behaviour

  • need to consider the operational definition of each behaviour

  • what is a smile

  • what is active

• doesn’t need to binary either

  • could say intensity

  • depends on the experiment and the goal

event sampling

• how many times did the child engage in the behaviour the whole time

  • like the big chunk of time

• count how many times they engaged in the behaviour of interest

• not the intensity

• how many times they smiled in the 20 minutes

• usually for longer periods of time

• and also interested in less behaviours

• interested in fewer things than time sampling

• challenge

  • knowing when a behaviour begins and when it starts

Systemic Observations

• watching and recording what they say or do

• naturalistic observations: behaviours observed in real life-life situation

  • might not always engaged in desired behaviour

• structured observation: researcher creates setting likely to elicit behaviour of interest

  • can also use either time sampling or event sampling

Structured Observation

• ex: is a child likely to help an adult in need

  • adult purposely drops something

  • observing whether they help or not

  • we could be interested in

    • what strategy they used to help

    • using words

    • actually picking it up

    • positive affect

    • do they care

    • how long does it take to start helping

• ex: child did a lab and warmed up then experimenter leaves then a stranger leaves and they start talking to the child,

  • called the stranger approach

  • the stranger uses a script and waits a certain amount of time between each line

  • slowly approaches the child

  • interested in

    • are they going to respond fearfully

      • what is an indictor of fear

        • facial expression

        • what they say

        • the degree to which they are close or far

        • body language

        • runs away?

Behavioural coding

• operational definition: what exactly does the behaviour look like?

• definitions will be outlined in a coding scheme: a document that contains all the rules for coding a set of behaviour for a given task or set up

  • ex: includes

    • is a child really showing shyness if they’re saying they’re scared of something else

    • if they do something weird or funny do we still code?

  • used so multiple people look at them and they all agree or come up with the same conclusions

  • not easy

    • everyone comes with biases

    • everyone has different perceptions

• fidgeting arms:

  • children told they are going to give a public speech with no preparation

  • 0 = arms remain at sides

  • 1 = arms hinge at the elbows, upper arms remain at side

  • 2 = upper arms move away from sides

  • 3 = arms life above shoulders

  • fidgeting is not coded if child’s arms are moving for the purpose of expression

Systematic Observation Limitations

• observer influence (Hawthorne Effect): participant changes their behaviour because they are being observed

  • younger children are easier to avoid this

• habituation: allows participant to get used to researcher’s presence

• Observer bias: expectations influence decisions

  • may notice behaviours that support the hypothesis and discount those that do not

  • may interpret behaviour in such a way that they support the hypothesis

Inter-Rater Reliability