Evolutionary developmental psychopathology
Encyclopedia
Evolutionary developmental psychopathology is an approach to the understanding of psychiatric disorders based on the following:
- human adaptationAdaptationAn adaptation in biology is a trait with a current functional role in the life history of an organism that is maintained and evolved by means of natural selection. An adaptation refers to both the current state of being adapted and to the dynamic evolutionary process that leads to the adaptation....
s were forged to function in past environments rather than the current environment; - investigations of brain-damaged patients should be included in the modeling of disorders to facilitate the mapping of psychological functions on to brain systems;
- investigations of behavioural abnormalities should be combined with those on information-processing abnormalities in a scheme that acknowledges both cognitionCognitionIn science, cognition refers to mental processes. These processes include attention, remembering, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science...
and affect as components of information processing; - investigation of specific signs and symptoms, rather than syndromes, as symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations, for example, are observed in patients who currently fall into a number of diagnostic categories, including schizophreniaSchizophreniaSchizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
and affective psychosisPsychosisPsychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"...
; - the expectation that complex psychological processes will be broken down into simpler tasks that can be performed by mindless agents;
- research should be particularly attentive to any data showing sexual dimorphismSexual dimorphismSexual dimorphism is a phenotypic difference between males and females of the same species. Examples of such differences include differences in morphology, ornamentation, and behavior.-Examples:-Ornamentation / coloration:...
and changes in psychological functioning and neural architecture across the lifespan, and therefore to comparisons between adults, adolescents, and children.
See also
- Evolutionary psychologyEvolutionary psychologyEvolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...
- Evolutionary developmental psychologyEvolutionary developmental psychologyEvolutionary developmental psychology, , is the application of the basic principles of Darwinian evolution, particularly natural selection, to explain contemporary human development...
- Evolutionary educational psychologyEvolutionary educational psychologyEvolutionary educational psychology is the study of the relation between inherent folk knowledge and abilities and accompanying inferential and attributional biases as these influence academic learning in evolutionarily novel cultural contexts, such as schools and the industrial workplace...
- Evolutionary developmental psychology
- Evolutionary medicineEvolutionary medicineEvolutionary medicine or Darwinian medicine is the application of modern evolutionary theory to understanding health and disease. It provides a complementary scientific approach to the present mechanistic explanations that dominate medical science, and particularly modern medical education...
- Developmental psychologyDevelopmental psychologyDevelopmental psychology, also known as human development, is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes, emotional changes, and perception changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to...
- Life history theoryLife history theoryLife history theory posits that the schedule and duration of key events in an organism's lifetime are shaped by natural selection to produce the largest possible number of surviving offspring...
- PsychopathologyPsychopathologyPsychopathology is the study of mental illness, mental distress, and abnormal/maladaptive behavior. The term is most commonly used within psychiatry where pathology refers to disease processes...