Dr. Kat e McLaughlin\, University of Washington
Neurodevelopmen tal Mechanisms linking Environmental Experience with the Onset of Psychopat hology
Children who have experienced environmental a dversity—such as abuse\, neglect\, or poverty—are at markedly elevated risk for developing psychopathology. What is less clear is how and why adverse early experiences exert such a profound influence on children’s mental hea lth. Identifying developmental processes that are disrupted by adverse ear ly environments is the key to developing better intervention strategies for children who have experienced adversity. Yet\, much existing research rel ies on a cumulative risk approach that is unlikely to reveal these mechanis ms. This approach tallies the number of distinct adversities experienced to create a risk score. This risk score fails to distinguish between distinct types of environmental experience\, implicitly assuming that very differen t experiences influence development through the same underlying mechanisms. In this talk\, I will advance an alternative model. This novel approach conceptualizes adversity along distinct dimensions\, emphasizes the central role of learning mechanisms and the neural circuitry that supports these m echanisms\, and distinguishes between different forms of adversity that mig ht influence learning and neural development in distinct ways. A key advan tage of this approach is that learning mechanisms provide clear targets for interventions aimed at preventing psychopathology in children who have exp erienced adversity.
Dr. Kate McLaughlin is a clinical psychologist with interests in how the childhood social environme nt influences brain and behavioral development in children and adolescents. She has a joint Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and in Chronic Disease Epidem iology from Yale University and is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington. Her research examines how environmental expe rience shapes emotional\, cognitive\, and neurobiological development throu ghout childhood and adolescence.
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LOCATION:Room 200\, Leonard S. Klinck Building GEO:49.260657;-123.253408 URL;VALUE=URI:https://psych.ubc.ca/events/event/psychology-colloquium-dr-ka te-mclaughlin-university-of-washington/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Vancouver BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 DTSTART:20171105T090000 TZNAME:PST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR