Childhood Psychopathology

Chapter 1

Important features that distinguish child and adolescent disorders:

• When adults seek services for children, it often is not clear whose “problem” it is
• Many child and adolescent problems involve failure to show expected developmental progress
• Many problem behaviors shown by children and youths are not entirely abnormal
• Interventions for children and adolescents often are intended to promote further development, rather than merely to restore a previous level of functioning.

Historical views and breakthroughs

emergence of social conscience

• 1st in 17th century
• John Locke
  • believed in individual rights & raising kids with thought and care
  • saw kids as emotionally sensitive ppl who should be treated with kindness, understanding, & given proper education
• Jean Marc Itard
  • turn of 19th century first to work with special needs kids (victor)
• Leta HollingWorth
  • believed special needs kids suffered from emotional & behavioral problems because of inept treatment by adults and lack of appropriate intellectual challenge
  • led to distinction between ppl with intellectual disability and ppl with psychiatric or mental disorders
• Benjamin rush
  • argued children incapable of true adult like insanity bc immaturity of brain kept them from retaining mental events that caused insanity
  • led to term moral insanity - nonintellectual forms of abnormal child behavior
• Dorothea Dix - mid-nineteenth century established 32 humane mental hospitals for the treatment of troubled youths
• Important influences in rise of concern about children:
  • advances in
  • general medicine
  • physiology
  • neurology
  • moral insanity view replaced by organic disease model
  • organic disease model - emphasized more humane forms of treatment.
  • growing influence of Lockes philosophies & others led to view that kids need moral guidance and support
  • led to increased concern for moral education, compulsory education and improved health practices

early biological attributions

• successful treatment of infectious diseases during the latter part of the nineteenth century strengthened the emerging belief that illness and disease, including mental illness, were biological problems
  • biased in favor of the cause being the person’s fault
• masturbatory insanity
  • believed to be insanity caused by masturbating
• Clifford Beers
  • Believing that mental disorders were a form of disease, he criticized society’s ignorance and indifference and sought to prevent mental disease by raising the standards of care and disseminating reliable information
  • As a result, detection and intervention methods began to flourish
• development of the disease was considered progressive and irreversible
• early educational and humane model for assisting persons with mental disorders soon reverted to a custodial model

early psychological attributions

• recognition of psychological influences emerged early in the twentieth century
• Two major theoretical paradigms
  • psychoanalytic theory (mainly freud, also klein)
  • development is primarily unconscious and behavior is motivated by unconscious/inner forces, memories, and conflicts over which a person has little control or awareness
  • behaviorism (watson)
  • focuses on the idea that all behaviors are learned through interaction with the environment
• nosologies
  • efforts to classify psychiatric disorders into descriptive categories

evolving forms of treatment

• 1930-1950 psychodynamic approaches were the dominant form of treatment
  • most children institutionalized
• 1945-1965
  • rapid decline in number of children in institutions
  • rapid incline of children in foster family homes and group homes
• 1950-1960
  • behavior therapy emerged as a systematic approach to the treatment of child and family disorders.
  • originally based on operant and classical conditioning principles established through laboratory work with animals.
  • emerged as prominent form of therapy

progressive legislation

• United States the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; Public Law 94-142) mandates:
  • free and appropriate public education for any child with special needs in the least restrictive environment for that child;
  • each child with special needs, regardless of age, must be assessed with culturally appropriate tests;
  • ach of these children must have an individualized education program (IEP) tailored to his or her needs, and must be re-assessed.
• UN Convention on the Rights  of Persons with Disabilities (2007)
  • States Parties shall take all necessary measures to ensure the full enjoyment by children with disabilities of all human rights and fundamental freedoms on an equal basis with other children.
  • In all actions concerning children with disabilities, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.
  • States Parties shall ensure that children with disabilities have the right to express their views freely on all matters affecting them, their views being given due weight in accordance with their age and maturity, on an equal basis with other children, and to be provided with disability and age-appropriate assistance to realize that right.

What is abnormal behavior in children and adolescents

• childhood disorders are accompanied by various layers of abnormal behavior or development ranging from:
  • visible and alarming (such as delinquent acts or physical assault)
  • subtle yet critical (such as teasing and peer rejection)
  • hidden and systemic (such as depression or parental rejection).
• defining psychological disorders
  • pattern of behavioral, cognitive, emotional, or physical symptoms shown by an individual.
  • Such a pattern is associated with one or more of the following three prominent features:
  • The person shows some degree of distress, such as fear or sadness
  • His or her behavior indicates some degree of disability, such as impairment that substantially interferes with or limits activity in one or more important areas of functioning, including physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral areas.
  • Such distress and disability increase the risk of further suffering or harm, such as death, pain, disability, or an important loss of freedom
  • definition of a psychological disorder excludes circumstances in which such reactions are expected and appropriate as defined by one’s cultural background
• competence
  • defined as ability to successfully adapt in the environment
  • Developmental competence is reflected in the child’s ability to use internal and external resources to achieve a successful adaptation
• developmental pathways - sequence and timing of particular behaviors and possible relationships between behaviors over time
  • developmental tasks
  • broad domains of competence such as conduct and academic achievement
  • tells how children typically progress within each domain as they grow
  • multifinality
  • concept that various outcomes may stem from similar beginnings
  • equifinality
  • concept that similar outcomes stem from different early experiences and developmental pathways
  • Because no clear cause and-effect relationship exists for each child and adolescent disorder, the following assumptions need to be kept firmly in mind:
  • There are many contributors to disordered outcomes in each individual.
  • Contributors vary among individuals who have the disorder.
  • Individuals with the same specific disorder express the features of their disturbance in different ways (e.g., some children with a conduct disorder are aggressive, whereas others may be destructive to property or engage in theft or deceit).
  • The pathways leading to any particular disorder are numerous and interactive, as opposed to unidimensional and static.

Risk and resilience

• risk factor - variable that precedes a negative outcome of interest and increases the chances that the outcome will occur
• protective factor - personal or situational variable that reduces the chances for child to develop a disorder
• resilience - ability to show sustained competence while under stress or to rebound to a previously healthy level of competence following traumatic or stressful experiences
  • not a universal, categorical, or fixed attribute of the child; rather, it varies according to the type of stress, its context, and similar factors
  • Individual children may be resilient with respect to some specific stressors but not others, and resilience may vary over time and across situations.
  • Resilience is seen in children across cultures, despite the extraordinary circumstances that some may face
• Characteristics of children and adolescents who display resilience in face of adversity
  • Individual
  • Good intellectual functioning
  • Appealing, sociable, easygoing disposition
  • Self-efficacy, self-confidence, high self-esteem
  • Talents
  • Faith
  • Family
  • Close relationship to caring parent figure
  • Authoritative parenting, warmth, structure, high expectations
  • Socioeconomic advantages
  • Connections to extended supportive family networks
  • school and community
  • Adults outside the family who take an interest in promoting the child’s welfare
  • Connections to social organizations
  • Attendance at effective schools

The significance of Mental Health Problems Among Children and Youths

• by 2020 behavioral health disorders will surpass all physical diseases as a major cause of disability throughout the world
• the changing picture of children’s mental health
  • those disproportionally afflicted with mental health problems are:
  • Children from disadvantaged families and neighborhoods
  • Children from abusive or neglectful families
  • Children receiving inadequate child care or suffering from chronic forms of stress
  • Children born with very low birth weight due to maternal smoking, diet, or abuse of alcohol and drugs
  • Children born to parents with mental illness or substance abuse problems

What affects the rates and expressions of mental disorders?

• poverty & socioeconomic disadvantage
  • Growing up with poverty has a substantial effect on the well-being of children and adolescents, especially in terms of impairments in learning ability and school achievement.
  • low income is tied to many other forms of disadvantage: less education, low-paying jobs, inadequate health care, single-parent status, limited resources, poor nutrition, and greater exposure to violence
  • suffer more conduct disorders, chronic illness, school problems, emotional disorders, and cognitive/learning problems than children who are not poor
  • youths who live in inner-city areas and witness community violence are most likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder as well as cognitive delays and impairments that affect both learning and mental health
• sex differences
  • hyperactivity, autism, childhood disruptive behavior disorders, and learning and communication disorders are more common in boys
  • anxiety disorders, adolescent depression, and eating disorders are more common in girls
  • Boys show higher rates of early-onset disorders that involve some form of neurodevelopmental impairment, and girls show more emotional disorders
  • depression of the disorder (Martel, 2013). For example, aggressive behavior may be expressed more directly by boys (fighting) and more indirectly by girls (spreading rumors)
  • mental health problems for girls have been understudied
  • Sex differences in problem behaviors are negligible in children under the age of 3 but increase with age
  • internalizing problems
  • include anxiety, depression, somatic symptoms, and withdrawn behavior
  • externalizing problems
  • encompass more acting-out behaviors such as aggression and delinquent behavior
• race and ethnicity
  • very few emotional and behavioral disorders of childhood occur at different rates for different racial groups
  • Children from certain ethnic and racial groups in the United States are overrepresented in rates of some disorders, such as substance abuse, delinquency, and teen suicide
  • once the effects of socioeconomic status (SES), sex, age, and referral status are controlled for few differences in the rate of children’s psychological disorders emerge in relation to race or ethnicity
  • Some minority groups, in fact, show less psychopathology after controlling for SES
  • American Indians, Alaska Natives, African Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Hispanic Americans bear a disproportionately high burden of disability from mental and physical health problem due to lack of access to quality care
  • stigma - cluster of negative attitudes and beliefs that motivates fear, rejection, avoidance, and discrimination with respect to people with mental illnesses
• cultural issues
  • Because the meaning of children’s social behavior is influenced by cultural beliefs and values, it is not surprising that children express their problems somewhat differently across cultures
  • shyness and oversensitivity in children have been found to be associated with peer rejection and social maladjustment in Western cultures, but to be associated with leadership, school competence, and academic achievement in Chinese children
• child maltreatment and non-accidental trauma
  • Each year nearly 1 million verified cases of child abuse and neglect in US and more than 80,000 in canada
  • more than a third of U.S. children between 10 and 16 years report experiencing physical and/or sexual assaults during these ages, not only by family members but also by persons they may know from their communities and schools
  • related forms of non-accidental trauma—being the victim of violence at school or being exposed to violent acts in their homes or neighborhoods—lead to significant mental health problems in children and youths.
  • related forms of non-accidental trauma—being the victim of violence at school or being exposed to violent acts in their homes or neighborhoods—lead to significant mental health problems in children and youths.
• special issues concerning adolescents and sexual minority youth
  • Early to mid-adolescence is a particularly important transitional period for healthy versus problematic adjustment
  • Substance use, risky sexual behavior, violence, accidental injuries, and mental health problems are only a few of the major issues that make adolescence a particularly vulnerable period
  • , mortality rates more than triple between late childhood and early adulthood, primarily as the result of risk-taking behaviors
  • LGBT youths in middle and high schools, they are more likely to be victimized by their peers as well as by family members, and they report more bullying, teasing, harassment, and physical assault than other students
  • 81% report experiencing verbal abuse related to being LGBT, 38% have been threatened with physical attacks, 22% have had objects thrown at them, 15% have been physically assaulted, and 16% have been sexually assaulted
  • LGBT have higher rates of mental health problems, including depression and suicidal behavior, substance abuse, and risky sexual behavior, as compared with their heterosexual counterparts
• lifespan implications
  • the impact of children’s mental health problems is most severe when the problems continue untreated for months or years
  • 20% of the children with the most chronic and serious disorders face sizable difficulties throughout their lives
  • least likely to finish school and most likely to have social problems or psychiatric disorders that affect many aspects of their lives throughout adulthood

Internalizing vs. Externalizing Disorders

• Externalizing examples
  • deviant behavior
  • aggression
  • drugs
  • hyperactivity
  • attention problems
  • school difficulties
• Internalizing examples
  • truancy
  • shyness
  • fears
  • withdrawal
  • depression
  • somatic problems
• I vs. E
  • common terminology used to describe abnormal psychology
  • used more frequently when describing children
  • this I vs E. distinction is NOT seen in DSM
  • classification system - built on empirical work of thomas Achenbach
• internalizing disorder
  • cant be seen as easily
  • defined as problems turned inwards seen as a problem of overcontrol
  • also referred to as “emotional problems” or “personality problems” or “inhibition”
• externalizing disorders
  • very obvious and bothersome to others
  • defined as problems turned outward
  • conduct problems are the hallmark
  • seen as a problem of undercontrol
  • also referred to as “behvaior disorders” or “conduct problems” or “aggression”
• phares & Compas (1990)
  • looked at adolescents distress over their emotional and behavioral problems
  • N=151 young adolescents (7th and 8th graders)
  • finding I: made a distinction between what behaviors and emotions they found personally distressing vs. what parents found distressing
    • emotional = internalizing
    • behavioral = externalizing
  • Finding 2: Adolescents reported more personal distress over Internalizing problems while they perceived their parents to be more distressed over externalizing problems
• externalizing disorders often rated as more serious and worrisome than internalizing disorders
• concerning since children rarely refer themselves to help normally the parents do
• Brief history
  • earliest child psychopathological research
  • involved externalizing disorders and were recognized earlier and given more attention than internalizing disorders
  • advent of cognitive psychology and cognitive behavioral therapy
  • improved recognition and treatment of internalizing disorders
• dsm defined disorders
  • internalizing
  • anxiety disorders, including ocd, depression disorders, including bipolar disorder, somatic disorders, including eating disorders and schizophrenia
  • externalizing
  • conduct disorder, adhd. oppositional defiant disorder, and antisocial personality disorder (aspd)
• perhaps more overlap?
  • not all fit into one category or other (ext vs int)
  • ocd both int (ruminative thought) and ext (ritual washing)
• comorbidity
  • children with externalizing disorders
  • have poorer cognitive, academic and social functioning than those children with internalizing disorders
  • often children display combo of disorders either within 1 category or between categories
  • within externalizing
  • 55% of those with primary conduct disorder also diagnosed with adhd
  • 23% of those with primary adhd diagnosed with odd
  • high degree of overlap between conduct disorder, odd, and adhd

Diathesis-Stress Model

• way to conceptualize mental illness and abnormal psych
• incorporates bio, psych ,& environment
• suggests that biological vulnerability in combo with psychosocial or environmental stress creates the necessary conditions for illness to occur
• 2x2 model

Chapter 2

What is causing Jorge’s problems

• possible interrelated causes of jorges behavior:
  • Biological influences
  • ask about prenatal history
    • major illnesses
    • injuries
    • marital problems
    • undue stresses
  • children with fears and anxiety
    • affected by levels of stress hormones circulating in the body
    • more likely to have parents who had similar problems during childhood
    • may have inherited a tendency to respond to his environment with heightened arousal or sensitivity
  • early neurological development and the patterns of connections established within the brain can be influenced by the child-rearing styles parents use when one is an infant
    • this can affect how one approaches new tasks, reacts to criticism, or relates to others
  • people can inherit one or more genes that influence their phonological awareness
    • phonological awareness - the ability to recognize and process all the English language phonemes
  • emotional influences
  • Emotional reactivity and expression are the ways infants and young children first communicate with the world around them, and their ability to regulate these emotions as they adapt is a critical aspect of their early relationships with caregivers
    • most adaptive way to deal with is to seek comfort from a caregiver, which gradually helps the child learn ways to self-regulate
  • behavioral and cognitive influences
  • behavioral approach may try to change aspects of one's environment
    • such as the attention they receive from their teacher or parents to see what effect this approach has on their problem
  • person’s interpretation of events, are also important to consider
    • Children with fears and worries sometimes develop a belief system that can be self-defeating, leading them to believe that they will fail at everything
  • family, cultural, and ethnic influences
  • early relationship with parents may contribute to a lessened ability to regulate emotions adaptively
    • current relationships with teachers, peers, and family members offer further clues
  • important to consider how behavior might be affected by culturally specific norms and standards.
    • Children from cultural minority groups face challenges in adapting to their receiving culture—a process known as “acculturation”
    • There is growing evidence that biculturalism, in which the child or adolescent strives to adapt to both their heritage and their receiving cultures, is the most adaptive approach to acculturation
  • for proper development, children require a basic quality of life that includes a safe community, good schools, proper health and nutrition, access to friends their own age, and opportunities to develop close relationships with extended family and members of their community. These opportunities and necessities are in the background of every child’s developmental profile and can emerge as very significant issues for children undergoing parental divorce or living in poverty

theoretical foundations

• etiology - study of the causes of childhood disorders
  • considers how biological, psychological, and environmental processes interact to produce the outcomes that are observed over time

developmental psychopathology perspective

• Developmental psychopathology is an approach to describing and studying disorders of childhood, adolescence, and beyond in a manner that emphasizes the importance of developmental processes and tasks
  • emphasizes the role of developmental processes, the importance of context, and the influence of multiple and interacting events in shaping adaptive and maladaptive development
  • draws on knowledge from several disciplines, including psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and neuroscience, and integrates this knowledge within a developmental framework

Abnormal Development is Multiply Determined

• must look beyond child current symptoms and consider developmental pathways and interacting events that, over time, contribute to the expression of a particular disorder
• focusing on one primary explanation rather than identifying and allowing for several possible explanations (e.g., genetic factors, reinforcement history, and peer problems) fails to consider the concept of developmental pathways

Child and Environment are Interdependent

• interdependent - influence each other
  • child and environment are interdependent
  • environment influences children and children also influence their own environment
  • nature and nuture work together and are interconnected
  • children elicit different reactions from the same environment;different environments elicit different reactions from the same child
• transaction - dynamic interaction of child and environment
  • child and environment both contribute to expression of a disorder, one cant be separated from the other
  • this view regards both children and the environment as active contributors to adaptive and maladaptive behavior
  • most agreed on by those who know children best (teachers, parents, child-care workers, and others)

Abnormal development involves continuities and discontinuities

• Few psychological disorders or impairments suddenly emerge without at least some warning signs or connections to earlier developmental issues
  • early-onset and persistent conduct disorders, with which parents and other adults often see troublesome behaviors at a young age that continue in some form into adolescence and adulthood
  • some forms of abnormal child development may be continuous or discontinuous across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, in either a consistent or a transformed manner
• continuity - implies that developmental changes are gradual and quantitative and that future behavior patterns can be predicted from earlier patterns
  • well supported for early-onset and persistent conduct disorders, which have a significant likelihood of later evolving into serious antisocial acts
• discontinuity - implies that developmental changes are abrupt and qualitative and that future behavior is poorly predicted by earlier patterns
  • can refer to an unexpected or atypical outcome
  • eating disorders, seem to follow a more discontinuous pattern; they occur more suddenly and without much prior warning

Changes, typical and atypical

• developmental cascades
  • refer to process by which a child previous interactions and experiences may spread across other systems and alter his or her course of development, somewhat like a chain reaction
  • helps explain how processes that function at one level or domain of behavior can affect how the child adapts to other challenges later on

Developmental considerations

organization of development

• adaptational failure
  • failure to master or progress in accomplishing developmental milestones.
• organization of development
  • perspective that early patterns of adaptation, such as infant eye contact and speech sounds, evolve with structure over time and transform into higher-order functions such as speech and language
  • suggests active. dynamic process of continual change and transformation
• sensitive periods
  • windows of time during which environmental influences on development, both good and bad are enhanced.

biological perspectives

neural plasticity and the role of experience

• neurobiological perspective
  • considers brain and nervous system functions as underlying causes of psychological disorders in children and adults
• Biological influences on young childs brain development:
  • genetic and constitutional factors
  • neuroanatomy
  • rates of maturation
• pruning
  • selective reduction of number of connections in brain
• neural plasticity (malleability) - brains anatomical differentiation is use dependent
  • nature provides basic processes
  • nurture provides experiences needed to select most adaptive network of connections
• Children’s early caregiving experiences play an especially important role in designing the parts of the brain involved in emotion, personality, and behavior
  • Normal, healthy methods of child rearing, for instance, may increase children’s ability to learn and cope with stress
  • In contrast, abuse and neglect can prime the brain for a lifetime of struggle with handling stress or forming healthy relationships
• brain maturation
  • organized, hierarchical process that builds on earlier function, with brain structures restructuring and growing throughout the life span
  • primitive areas of brain mature first
  • governs basic sensory and motor skills
  • undergo most dramatic restructuring during 1st three years of life
  • strongly affected by early childhood experiences and set foundation for further development
  • prefrontal cortex & cerebellum rewired 5-7 yrs
  • prefrontal cortex - governs planning and decision making
  • cerebellum - center for motor skills
  • major restructuring of brain 9-11yrs
  • puberty

genetic contributions

• virtually any trait results from the interaction of environmental and genetic factors
• everyone has unique genome of aprox. 20,000 to 25,000 genes.
  • genes contain genetic info from each parent
  • distributed on 22 matched pairs of chromosomes
• expression of genetic influences is malleable and responsive to social environment
• nature of genes
  • gene is stretch of DNA
  • does not produce behavior, emotion or passing thought
  • produces protein
    • produce tendencies to respond to environment in certain ways
  • everyone has genetic vulnerabilities, tendencies, and predispositions, but rarely are the outcomes inevitable
  • gene-environement interaction (GxE) - genes influence how we respond to the environment, and the environment influences our genes
  • epigenetic mechanisms - changes in gene activity resulting from a variety of environmental factors such as toxins, diet, stress, and and many others
  • environment can turn genes on and off
• Behavioral Genetics
  • behavioral genetics - branch of genetics that investigates possible connections between a genetic predisposition and observed behavior, taking into account environmental and genetic influences
  • family aggregation study - looks for nonrandom clustering of disorders or characteristics within a given family and compare these results with the random distribution of the disorders or charecteristics in the general population
  • cant control for environmental variables
• molecular genetics
  • research methods directly assess the association between variations in DNA sequences and variations in a particular trait or traits.

neurobiological contributions

• brain structure and function
  • brain divided into
  • brain stem
    • at base of brain
    • handles most of autonomic functions necessary to stay alive
    • top part of brain stem
    • diencephalon
      • just below forebrain
      • functions primarily as a relay between forebrain and lower areas of the brain stem
      • contains
      • thalamus
      • hypothalamus
      • both essential to regulation of behavior and emotion
    • lowest part
    • hindbrain
      • provides essential regulation of autonomic activities such as breathing, heartbeat, and digestion
      • contains
      • medulla
      • pons
      • cerebellum
        • controls motor coordination
    • midbrain
    • coordinates movement with sensory input
    • houses reticular activating system (RAS)
      • contributes to processes of arousal and tension
  • frontal lobes
    • contain functions underlying most of our thinking and reasoning abilities including memory
  • forebrain
    • evolved in humans into highly specialized functions
    • cerebral cortex
    • largest part of forebrain
    • gives us distinctly human qualities
    • allows us to plan,reason,and create
    • divided into 2 hemispheres that look a lot alike but have different functions
      • left hemisphere
      • chief role in verbal and other cognitive processes
      • right hemisphere
      • better at social perception and creativity
      • each hemisphere plays different role in certain psychological disorders such as communication an learning disorders
    • base of forebrain is limbic or border system and basal ganglia
    • limbic system regulates the basic drives of sex. aggression, hunger, and thirst
    • basal ganglia includes caudate nucleus
      • regulates, organizes, and filters info related to cognition, emotions, mood, and motor function
      • implicated in ADHD, disorders affecting motor behaviors (such as tics and tremors), and OCD
    • contains number of structures that are suspected causes of psychopathology such as the
    • hippocampus
    • cingulate gyrus
    • septum
    • amygdala
    • all regulate emotional experiences and expressions and play significant role in learning and impulse control

psychological perspectives

emotional influences

behavioral and cognitive influences

applied behavior analysis (ABA)

family, social, and cultural perspectives

infant-caregiver attachment

the family and peer context

Theories of psychopathology

• Personality psychology
  • 1st force
  • psychoanalysis from europe-freud and jung
  • 2nd force
  • radical behaviorists from USA - Skinner & watson
  • 3rd force
  • humanistic from Europe & USA m- Rogers and Maslow
    • intermediate forces
    • Neo-freudians (honey,from,erikson)
    • trait theorists (cattell,eysenck)
    • social learning theoyr/CBT (beck, michenbaum)
  • VISUAL
  • 

Historical uses and abuses of intelligence testing

• Definitions of intelligence
  • ability to learn
  • ability to adapt to new environments
  • abstract reasoning
  • ability to solve problems quickly and accurately
  • Weschler (1935)
  • intelligence is the ability to act purposefully, think rationally, and deal effectively with the environment
• henry H. Goddard (1866-1957)
  • one of two men responsible for introducing the Binet-Simon scales to the US.
  • terman was the other
  • responsible for the creation of the vineland adaptive behavior scales
  • conducted the famous/infamous investigation of the heritability of intelligence after being influenced by grergor mendel’s work
  • 1912: the kallikak family: a study in the heredity of feeble-mindedness
• background: gregor mendel
  • mendel worked with honeybees and plants
  • performed numerous breeding experiments on the inheritance of certain characteristics
  • the results of his experiments established for the first time a valid set of principles of genetic inheritance
  • offspring would be a blend of the parental characteristics
• eugenics
  • study and practice of selective breeding applied to humans with the aim of improving the species
  • racism
  • nazism
• how it all began
  • in 1897, young girl deborah kallikak admitted to vineland institute at age 8. 14 years later (22) shes tested with binet-simon scale and found to have mental age of 9 leading goddard to classify jer as a moron.
  • goddards description of deborah 1912
  • typical illustration of the mentality of a high grade feeble-minded person, the moron, the delinquent, the kind of girl or woman that fills our reformatories. they are wayward, get into all sorts of trouble and difficulties, sexually and otherwise, and yet have been accustomed to account for their defects on the basis of viciousness, environment, or ignorance.
  • goddards investigation
  • traced her ancestry back to American revolution, when soldier of “good family” Martin Kallikak sr. had “casual intimacy” with feebleminded barmaid which led to birth of boy, martin kallikak, jr.
  • after war martin sr. married “worthy girl” from qaker family and had seven children (good side0. martin jr. also married and had 10 children (bad side)
  • goddard investigated the children of both marriages and concluded that none of the children of the quaker woman were subnormal, while five of the children of Martin Jr. were unintelligent
  • in later gens, the difference between the two sides of the families became apparently more striking
  • descendants of martin jr.
    • 46 normal; 143 feebleminded; 36 illegitimate births;33 sexually immoral; 3 epileptic; 24 alcoholics
    • further described as horse thieves, paupers, convicts, prostitutes, criminals, and keepers of ill repute
    • riffraff of society
  • descendants of martin sr.
    • of 495 descendants of the marriage to the quaker woman, only three were “somewhat mentally degenerate people”, two alcoholics, one sexally loose person, and no illegitimate births or eplieptics
    • pillars of society
• methodological and procedural weaknesses
  • study took just two years - very short period of time for a study of this magnitude and detail.
  • research assistants had little to no training in genealogical research or interviewing. additionally, they knew the aims of the study and may have been biased
  • there was little objective testing of the family members, and conclusions about a persons intelligence were often inferences from passing observations (eg. physical appearance, occupation, standing in the community).
  • criminal behavior and feeblemindedness often equated
  • influence of environment was ignored and goddard described environments as “practically the same” (not true)
  • in 1981, stephen jay gould, criticized godddard for tampering with at least five of the photographs. he reportedly added crude dark lines to accentuate the unfavorable facial features of members of the bad side of the family
  • Goddard eventually served on the committee for the heredity of the feeble-minded which recommended that mentally defective people be sterilized
  • goddard described sterilization of males as being almost as simple as having a tooth pulled
  • later, goddard was stationed at ellis island to pick out mentally defective individuals - these ppl were eventually denied entry into the US