Identifying atypical development

Question 1

What is the textbook definition of atypical development?

Answer 1

• the extremes of individual differences in development
• generally associated with neurodevelopmental conditions (high or low extreme)

Question 2

What are the different ways that development can be atypical?

Answer 2

• Delay with catch up- start at same ability and gap starts to develop but then can start to catch up again. Shows importance to keep testing because they can get back to typical development
• Lower starting point- begin at a lower level in the first place, hit milestones because they’re developing at the same rate but theres always a gap because they start lower
• Also advanced type (hit all quicker but same rate)
• delay- start same point but develop at much slower rate that plateaus

Question 3

What is developmental regression?

Answer 3

• typically seen in ASD/intellectual disability
• period where a particular skill is developing along a typical trajectory but then a child loses aspects of this skill

Question 4

What is the difference between ASD early onset and ASD late onset?

Answer 4

• ASD early onset- progress but at a slower rate
• ASD late onset- develop at the same rate at the start and then plateaus (anti-vaxers use this as evidence but no link whatsoever)

Question 5

What 5 domains does development occur across?

Answer 5

• adaptive behaviour
• social
• cognitive
• physical
• motor skills

Question 6

What are some examples of adaptive behaviours of development?

Answer 6

• ability to work
• functional decision making
• personal safety
• managing money
• personal responsibility
• independence
• daily living skills

Question 7

What are examples of behaviours development affects in social domain?

Answer 7

• gestures
• eye-contact
• empathy
• verbal communication
• social interactions
• non-verbal communication
• turn-taking
• emotional IQ

Question 8

What is an example of behaviours development affects in the cognitive domain?

Answer 8

• IQ
• attention
• language
• executive functions
• numerical abilities
• Memory

Question 9

What are examples of physical and motor skills it may affect?

Answer 9

Physical
- facial dysmorphism
- microcephaly (smaller head size)
- macrocephaly (larger head size)
- physical features (eg. heart)

Motor:
- fine motor skills
- balance
- coordination
- activity level
- gross motor skills
- activity levels

Question 10

How can we identify atypical development?

Answer 10

• paranormal distribution (above or below average)
• important to use an appropriate control group
• testing them against their age group but also their mental age group

Question 11

What is meant by strengths and weaknesses in terms of atypical development?

Answer 11

• strengths can be subjective or relative to their other skills/areas
• might not be a strength compared to other people but could still be significantly stronger than their other skills

Question 12

What are specific experimental design measuring development for cognition?

Answer 12

• designed to investigate a specific research question or hypothesis; target specific behaviour
• format can vary
• can compare ppts results with matched control
• examples inc. face recognition tasks, theory of mind tasks & executive function tasks

Question 13

What are standardised tests?

Answer 13

• designed to measure knowledge or skills in a consistent and comparable way across populations
• follow a fixed format with specific instructions, questions and scoring procedures
• ppts scores can be standardised
• examples inc. Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), Weschler Intelligence Scales for children (WISC), British ability scales

Question 14

What are the differences between specific and standardised tasks?

Answer 14

• standardised tests aim to measure broader knowledge or skills, while experiments aim to test a specific skill or test hypotheses
• Standardised tests are broad in scope, covering a range of topics or skills, while experiments are focused on a specific research question
• Standardised tests aim to generalise results to a larger population, while experiments may have limited generalisability depending on the sample and conditions

Question 15

What does the WISC measure?

Answer 15

• working memory index
• processing speed index
• verbal comprehension index
• fluid reasoning index
• visual spatial index

Question 16

Which tasks in the WISC are performance IQ based and which are verbal IQ based?

Answer 16

Verbal IQ- verbal comprehension
Performance IQ-
- working memory index
- processing speed index
- fluid reasoning index
- visual spatial index

Question 17

What are some example tasks of the WISC?

Answer 17

• Figure weights
• Visual puzzles
• Matrix reasoning
• Vocabulary
• Similarities
• Digit span