Manifesto for new directions in developmental science.

Although developmental science has always been evolving, these times of fast-paced and profound social and scientific changes easily lead to disorienting fragmentation rather than coherent scientific advances. What directions should developmental science pursue to meaningfully address real-world problems that impact human development throughout the lifespan? What conceptual or policy shifts are needed to steer the field in these directions? The present manifesto is proposed by a group of scholars from various disciplines and perspectives within developmental science to spark conversations and action plans in response to these questions. After highlighting four critical content domains that merit concentrated and often urgent research efforts, two issues regarding "how" we do developmental science and "what for" are outlined. This manifesto concludes with five proposals, calling for integrative, inclusive, transdisciplinary, transparent, and actionable developmental science. Specific recommendations, prospects, pitfalls, and challenges to reach this goal are discussed.

Disruptive Behavior Disorders: The Challenge of Delineating Mechanisms in the Face of Heterogeneity.

Causal pathways to disruptive behavior disorders, even within the same diagnostic category, are varied. Both equifinality and multifinality pose considerable challenges to uncovering underlying mechanisms and understanding varied developmental trajectories associated with disruptive behavior disorders. Uncovering genetic causes requires improved granularity in how we operationalize presentation and developmental trajectories associated with disruptive behavior disorders. If we want to integrate the study of genetic, environmental, and neurocognitive factors within a longitudinal framework, we need to improve measurement. Furthermore, brain changes associated with disruptive behavior disorders should not simply be understood as outcomes of genetic and environmental influences, but also as factors that reciprocally influence future social environments over time in ways that are important in contributing to risk and resilience. Advancing the field with regard to these challenges will result in more truly integrated investigation of disruptive behavior disorders, which holds the promise of improving our ability to develop more effective preventive and intervention approaches.

Longitudinal Research at the Interface of Affective Neuroscience, Developmental Psychopathology, Health and Behavioral Genetics: Findings from the Wisconsin Twin Project.

The Wisconsin Twin Project comprises multiple longitudinal studies that span infancy to early adulthood. We summarize recent papers that show how twin designs with deep phenotyping, including biological measures, can inform questions about phenotypic structure, etiology, comorbidity, heterogeneity, and gene-environment interplay of temperamental constructs and mental and physical health conditions of children and adolescents. The general framework for investigations begins with rich characterization of early temperament and follows with study of experiences and exposures across childhood and adolescence. Many studies incorporate neuroimaging and hormone assays.

Genetic and environmental influences on developmental trajectories of adolescent alcohol use.

Adolescent alcohol use demonstrates distinct developmental trajectories with different times of onset, levels, and rates of growth. Twin research on adolescent alcohol use has shown that genetic influences are consistent with a gradual growth of risks, whereas non-shared environmental influences are more consistent with an accumulation of risks over time. The current study investigated the relative contributions of genetic and environmental influences on shaping different developmental trajectories of alcohol use through adolescence. Self-reported past year alcohol use was collected from 877 Canadian twins (47.1% males) at age 13, 14, 15, and 17 years. Growth mixture models were fit to examine different developmental trajectories of alcohol use, and biometric liability threshold models were fit to investigate genetic and environmental influences on the liability of belonging to identified trajectories. Three trajectories were identified: low (15.1%), early onset (8.2%), and normative increasing (76.7%). Memberships in the low and early-onset group were under genetic (27.6% and 34.7%), shared (42.4% and 21.5%), and non-shared environment influences (30.0% and 43.8%). Membership in the normative increasing group was under genetic (37.7%) and non-shared environment influences (62.3%). Non-shared environmental influences were significantly larger for the normative increasing trajectory than for the low trajectory. These findings provide a more refined picture of genetic and environmental influences in the development of alcohol use in subgroups of adolescents. Genetic and environmental influences both matter, but to different degrees in different trajectories. Future research should identify specific shared and non-shared environmental experiences that distinguish different trajectories.

Future Directions in Sleep and Developmental Psychopathology.

It is critical for psychologists to gain a better understanding about the intersection between sleep and developmental psychopathology. However, while many strive to answer the question of whether sleep causes developmental psychopathology, or vice versa, ultimately the relationship between sleep and developmental psychopathology is complex and dynamic. This article considers future directions in the field of clinical child and adolescent psychology that go beyond this mechanistic question, highlighting areas important to address for clinicians and researchers who strive to better understand how best to serve children and adolescents with developmental psychopathology. Questions are presented about what is normal in terms of sleep across development, the role of individual variability in terms of sleep needs and vulnerability to sleep loss, and how sleep may serve as a risk or resilience factor for developmental psychopathology, concluding with considerations for interventions.

El desafío de construir una Psicología del desarrollo crítica en sociedades inhóspitas / The Challenge of Constructing a Critical Developmental Psychology in Inhospitable Societies

Resumen La Psicología del desarrollo constituye un campo de conocimiento cuya existencia se da por descontada en el imaginario académico de la psicología salvadoreña. No obstante, existe una Psicología del desarrollo dominante que se ve reproducida en textos, clases y discursos, mientras que otra distinta, consecuente con la realidad histórica donde su estudio tiene lugar, aún es una tarea pendiente. Al considerar la descontextualización como uno de los presupuestos fundamentales de la Psicología del desarrollo dominante al uso, en este artículo de carácter teórico se reflexiona sobre esta desde la perspectiva del caso salvadoreño en tanto sociedad inhóspita: aquella que compromete el avance del ciclo vital de la mayoría de la población por, entre otras características, ser violenta y desigual. Son sometidas a escrutinio las conocidas categorías analíticas de la Psicología del desarrollo definidas como influencias normativas y no normativas para mostrar la relatividad y los sesgos de su aplicación usual. Se sostiene que, en el marco de una sociedad inhóspita, una Psicología del desarrollo debe considerar, al menos, procesos de adultización prematura en la niñez y la juventud, la improbabilidad de biografías estables, la vejez precaria así como las características típicas que muestran los miembros del contexto de interés. Se propone avanzar a una Psicología del desarrollo crítica: la necesidad de reacomodar su quehacer y reinventarse epistemológicamente para construir un conocimiento situado, propio y multidisciplinario que supere cegueras, provincianismos y reduccionismos académicos.

Abstract Developmental Psychology is a field of knowledge whose existence is taken for granted in the academic imagination of Salvadoran psychology. However, there is a mainstream Developmental Psychology that is reproduced in texts, lectures and discourses, while a different one, consistent with the historical reality where its study takes place, and is still a pending task. Considering de-contextualization as one of its fundamental assumptions, this theoretical article deals with the situation of Developmental Psychology from the perspective of the Salvadoran case as an Inhospitable Society: one that distorts the progress of most of its people´s life cycle, due to, among other features, its violence and social inequality. Very well known analytical categories such as normative and non-normative developmental trends are subjected to scrutiny to show the relativity and biases of their usual applications. It is argued that, in the context of an inhospitable society, Developmental Psychology should consider at least: Early Childhood and Youth Adultisation Processes, the improbability of stable biographies, Precarious Old Age and the typical features of individuals living in the context of interest. It aims to advance a Critical Developmental Psychology: the need to rearrange the work and to reinvent itself epistemologically in order to construct a situated, appropriated and multidisciplinary knowledge that overcomes blindness, provincialism and academic reductionism.

Some ideas on the emerging future of developmental research.

We are somewhat critical of the concept of emerging adulthood as a new developmental stage in modern industrial societies, and prefer the idea of systemic mechanisms and processes as the forces and factors that influence the transitions and transformations of human change across the life course. For this reason, we are pleased to see this volume is entirely dedicated to the life-phase of emerging adulthood in Mediterranean countries, suggesting that researchers are not convinced that the characteristics of emerging adulthood would be the same for young people from different cultures. While we are very positive towards this series of articles showing that emerging adulthood in Mediterranean countries has similarities, and, yet differences to other cultures, and appreciate the diverse findings of these research projects, we would want to suggest some new and more radical strategies for future developmental research. Concretely, a move away from age-bound, stage models towards a more dynamic and systemic approach to lifespan research, simply because we cannot ignore both the past and the future, whilst contemplating the present.

From Cicero to Cohen: developmental theories of aging, from antiquity to the present.

Cicero's famous essay "On Old Age," written in ancient Rome, was one of the first detailed depictions of the challenges and opportunities posed by the aging process. Several modern developmental theories of the life cycle have echoed many of the themes of Cicero, including the existence of unfolding life stages with specific tasks and transitions. Freud's psychoanalytic theory of infantile sexuality provided a limited starting point, as well as a theoretical base for Erik Erikson's proposed eight stages of the life cycle. Unlike Freud, however, Erikson and others including Daniel Levinson, George Vaillant, and Carol Gilligan elaborated on forces in adult development that were distinct from early life experiences. Gene Cohen's theory of human potential phases took middle age as a starting point and proposed an extensive structure for late-life development based on emergent strengths including wisdom and creativity.