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Can the connection between psychology and neuroscience provide a sufficient framework to support the study of the development of maladaptation and psychopathology? This Special Issue is devoted to papers that address this general issue within their specific domains. If we hope to provide a definitive answer to the question posed above, then it is important to know how cognitive and affective neuroscience arose, what are their distinctive findings to date, and, to the extent possible, predict what future developments can be expected. Before proceeding, we first examine the basic principles inherent to a developmental psychopathology perspective, as well as the multiple disciplines that played a critical role in its evolution as an interdisciplinary science.
Principles of Developmental Psychopathology
Historically, scientists in a variety of disciplines, including genetics, biology, neuroscience, embryology, psychology, and psychiatry, have stressed the importance of examining the interrelation between normal and abnormal patterns of development (see Cicchetti, 1990, for a historical review). Implicit in this perspective is an underlying commitment to understanding normal developmental processes so that we can begin to investigate the ways in which deviant development may eventuate. Furthermore, the examination of abnormal developmental processes and of the deviations from normal pathways of development may illuminate the range of individual variation inherent in the human organism with respect to neurobiological, cognitive, and affective functioning.
In part, as an outgrowth of these historical influences, over the course of the past several decades, developmental psychopathology has emerged as an integrative scientific discipline that strives to unify, within a lifespan framework, contributions from multiple fields of inquiry with the goal of understanding the relation between psychopathology and normative adaptation (Cicchetti, 1984; Cicchetti & Cohen, in press-a, in press-b, in press-c; Rutter & Garmezy, 1983; Sroufe & Rutter, 1984). Since its inception, work conducted within a developmental psychopathology perspective has incorporated theory and research from the fields of normal and abnormal development and advocated multidisciplinary approaches in its emphasis on examining the mutual interplay between normality and psychopathology with the ultimate goal of understanding individual patterns of adaptation and maladaptation (Cicchetti, 1984, 1990; Cicchetti & Toth, 1991; Sroufe & Rutter, 1984).
In recent years, developmental psychopathologists have increasingly acknowledged that the investigation of developmental processes, both normal and atypical, is an inherently interdisciplinary enterprise....