Knowledge of Developmental Psychology

Class: Abnormal Psychology (PSYC 230)

Professor: Dr. Angela Allen

Semester: Fall 2014

Assignment Description: Students wrote literature reviews on a particular topic related to abnormal psychology.

Excerpt: (Taken from "Connections Between Biological and Environmental Risk" section.) "Walder, Faraone, Glatt, Tsuang, and Seidman (2014) investigated whether the biological and environmental risk factors of schizophrenia are linked. They studied the relationships between four precursors to the development of schizophrenia: genetic predisposition, prenatal health issues (PHIs), family environment, and stressful life events (SLEs). In their findings, familial high-risk (FHR) was associated with greater PHIs as well as less family cohesion and expressiveness. Conflict was also higher among FHRs as compared to the community control (CC) but not significantly so. The researchers originally hypothesized a link with the amount of SLEs in a family, but the number of SLEs did not vary significantly with genetic risk, although on average FHRs did have slightly more SLEs than CCs did. This suggests that although having family members with schizophrenia or possessing individual differences that make one more likely to develop schizophrenia may result in more SLEs for some, the association between familial risk and SLEs is not strong enough to suggest that susceptible families are at even greater risk due to an increased occurrence of SLEs. Overall, the results support the polygenic neurodevelopmental diathesis-stress model that the investigators postulated, which proposed that psychosis susceptibility and resilience is connected to the “independent and synergistic incremental confluence of biological and environmental factors, in a temporally sensitive (and potentially dependent) manner across important developmental periods” (Walder, et al., 2014, p. 146). This suggests that there are multiple factors contributing to the heritability of schizophrenia, aside from simple genetic liability. If there is a relationship between genetic susceptibility and environmental stress, knowing more about it could alert anyone who knows an at-risk family to the issue, making them more cognizant of curtailing stress in such families and thereby limiting these families’ risk. Further information about connections between biology and environment could also make assessing the risk of a particular individual easier, which could be helpful in preventing the onset of schizophrenia."

Reflection: For this literature review, I wrote about the genetic basis of schizophrenia. As part of my research on this topic, I looked into some of the environmental factors that have been implicated such as prenatal health issues, family environment, and stressful life events. I was able to learn more about the impact of these factors on individuals and how they related to potential later development of schizophrenia. This taught me about developmental psychology because it gave me insight into how experiences contribute to individuals' development over time.