 |
Back to Research
Student Interest
Faculty
Courses
Collegues
Developmental Psychopathology Faculty
More Information
Developmental Psychopathology is an exciting new sub-discipline that has
emerged as the offspring of its two well-known parents: psychopathology
and developmental psychology. The focus of this approach is to understand
mechanisms of development and change. Central to the developmental
psychopathology approach is the belief that the study of atypical development
can inform our understanding of normal development and, conversely, the methods
and approaches used in normative developmental science may shed light on the
etiology and course of mental illness. By definition, developmental psychopathology
requires broad, interdisciplinary training.
Many faculty in the psychology department and related departments share interests in the
mechanisms of atypical development. There are a number of factors that make our program
a particularly exciting place to study developmental psychopathology.
Student Interests
Students may pursue their interest in developmental psychopathology by entering
the department through any
area group (clinical,
developmental,
biological,
social,
or cognitive
and perceptual sciences).
Developmental psychopathology
is construed very broadly in our department.
Rather than limiting related
research projects to clinical populations of children,
we take a life-span approach
that includes infants, children, adults, and the elderly.
In addition, students have
opportunities to conduct research with
community/epidemiological
samples, non-human primates, and other animals.
Thus, a strength of our
department is the wide variety of populations and research
approaches available.
Faculty
Many psychology faculty have
appointments and collaborative relationships with
organizations, research
units, and departments across the university. For example,
Pollak
and Goldsmith maintain
laboratories at the Waisman Research Center,
a large regional research center devoted to developmental disabilities.
Caspi
and Moffitt
maintain research collaborations with the Department
of Sociology, the
Institute
on Poverty, and research centers in New Zealand, Pittsburgh, and London,
England. Coe
is the director of the Harlow Primate
Laboratory and Ryff is
acting
Director of the UW-Madison Institute
on Aging. Davidson
directs the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience
and the new Waisman Laboratory
for Brain Imaging and Behavior.
Gooding
collaborates with the Mental Health Center of Dane County and the
Mendota Mental Health Institute
and Pollak collaborates
with public health agencies
such as the Department of
Human Services and Child Protective Services.
Courses
The department provides
a rich and broad array of courses of interest
to developmental
psychopathologists.
Seth
Pollak offers a seminar on
Developmental Psychopathology that
focuses on the theoretical
and empirical underpinnings of the field. Core courses offered by
the clinical faculty provide
cutting-edge education in psychopathology. Faculty whose expertise
includes typically developing
children provide foundations in developmental psychology,
developmental research methods,
statistics, and psychological assessment throughout the
lifespan. Current
theories in developmental psychopathology rely heavily upon concepts such
as the role of stress and
the interplay of nature and nurture. Faculty expertise in research
with
non-human animals provides
students with opportunities to study stress experimentally in ways
that would not be ethical
or feasible with humans. Among our diverse faculty interested in
developmental psychopathology,
students can gain experience with a variety of experimental
research methods including:
longitudinal studies and natural history, behavioral methods,
computational modeling,
behavioral genetics, psychoneuroimmunology, cognition and
information processing,
temperament, neuropsychology, psychophysiology, and survey methods.
Colleagues
Students with a
focus in developmental psychopathology will find many colleagues among
faculty
in our companion departments.
For instance, Roseanne Clark in the Department
of Psychiatry studies parent-infant attachment.
Ned Kalin,
Chair of the Psychiatry
Department, studies anxiety disorders using infant monkeys as a model.
Mary Schneider in
the Department
of Kinesiology studies the effects of fetal alcohol exposure
and stress during pregnancy,
and Deborah Vandell in the School of Education, studies the effects
of day-care. In the
Department
of Communication Disorders,
Robin
Chapman studies language
development in children
with developmental disorders and Ray Kent studies speech production
in atypically developing
infants. In many cases, collaborative research arrangements link
Psychologyfaculty and graduate to these other campus resources.
Developmental Psychopathology Faculty:
Lyn Abramson
Avshalom Caspi
Christopher Coe
Richard Davidson
Hill Goldsmith
Diane Gooding
Terrie Moffitt
Seth Pollak
Carol Ryff
More Information on Developmental Psychopathology at UW-Madison:
faculty
population studied
research approaches
related graduate courses
|
|
|
|
