Longitudinal transactional models of development and psychopathology

Development is necessarily the result of the interdependence, coaction, and/or codetermination among multiple levels of influence over time (Gottlieb, 2001). In 1975, Sameroff and Chandler proposed a transactional model of development that recognized the importance of the transacting genetic, constitutional, neurobiological, biochemical, psychological, and sociological factors in the determination of behavior, and that stated that those factors change through their dynamic transaction. Sameroff and Chandler’s (1975) model takes into account the interrelationships among dynamic systems and the processes by which compensatory, self-regulating tendencies are initiated whenever higher level monitors detect deviances in a system (Sameroff, 2000; Waddington, 1966). An implication of the transactional model is that the continued manifestation of maladaptation depends on environmental support, whereas the child’s reciprocal characteristics partially determine the nature of the environment. Thus, an all-encompassing and theoretically meaningful model of development must yield a formulation of the developmental process that can embrace both stabilityand change. It must transcend the multifaceted ways in which constitutional, organismic, and environmental factors transact to affect development. By focusing on longitudinal transactional models of development and psychopathology, this Special Issue extends the rich history in Development and Psychopathology of understanding the multiple mechanisms and processes whereby children develop psychopathology or are protected from its development (Cicchetti & Dawson, 2002). In 2010, a two-part special issue on developmental cascades examined the cumulative effects of influences across levels and areas of functioning, while testing developmental cascade models of change (Masten & Cicchetti, 2010). The articles in that special issue provided new insights into how problems in one domain of functioning might cascade into other domains of functioning. A more recent special issue devoted to multilevel approaches for understanding the development of antisocial behavior (Burnette & Cicchetti, 2012) included articles describing multiple method, multiple level, longitudinal designs focused specifically on understanding the complex influences on antisocial behavior. These special issues helped answer critical questions in the field regarding the multiple transactional influences on the development of psychopathology. The current Special Issue builds on these advances and focuses specifically on longitudinal models that cut across multiple developmental periods and include three or more time points of data collection, to expand the understanding of transactional models across infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood and examine a larger window of development within each study. The call for longitudinal models of development, such as those included in this Special Issue, has taken on a global profile, with two recent initiatives led by the National Institutes of Health. Funded in 2015, the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development is recruiting 10,000 healthy children age 9–10 and is following them over 10 years into early adulthood, to measure brain maturation in the context of social, emotional, and cognitive development. Similarly, the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes Program at the National Institutes of Health will support multiple longitudinal studies using existing study populations to investigate environmental exposures, including physical, chemical, biological, social, behavioral, natural, and built environments, on child health and development. These two national initiatives will yield rich longitudinal data sets that are ripe for the incorporation of longitudinal transactional models that examine the development of psychopathology across multiple developmental periods and use multilevel sources of data. However, it will be a decade before these large-scale national initiatives are completed and their findings shared with academic and professional audiences. The articles in this Special Issue lay the groundwork for this national work by testing novel hypotheses about the transactional nature of development across time and across Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Leslie D. Leve, Prevention Science Institute, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-6217; E-mail: leve@uoregon.edu; or Dante Cicchetti, Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, 51 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455; E-mail: cicchett@umn.edu. Development and Psychopathology 28 (2016), 621–622 # Cambridge University Press 2016 doi:10.1017/S0954579416000201