Jean-Pascal Assailly - Child Psychology

Although this approach is recent, it is already 40 years old and aims to integrate models from various fields (such as genetics, neuroscience, developmental psychology and systems theory) to inform research on the relevant processes of normal and atypical development. These developmental processes are reciprocal and transactional.

Major questions structure this approach.

We need to understand the steps and mechanisms that lead to the final state. There is an “arborescence” of paths or trajectories that start from birth and can then schematically intersect with a four-entry table of cases:

– continuity of positive factors leading to adaptation (fulfillment);

– continuity of negative factors leading to problems (chronicity);

– initially positive situation which then deteriorates (trouble);

– initially negative situation which then improves (resilience).

The same point of arrival can thus be reached by two different paths, two different developmental processes, which is expressed as the “equifinality” concept. For example, when two children become delinquent, it may be for completely different reasons and not for the same cause.

Conversely, two different futures (or associated futures, as in comorbidity) can have the same starting point, which we will express as the “multiple purposes” concept . Such mechanisms are not specific to child psychology; they can be seen at work in neurobiology, genetics, etc.

Risk factors are those variables that increase the likelihood of the onset, exacerbation or maintenance of a condition.

There are three types of protective factors, those internal or external resources that modify or mitigate the impact of risk factors: dispositional protective factors (temperament, social orientation, cognitive skills and coping skills); protective factors from the family environment (such as relationships and supervision) and protective factors from the extra-familial environment (such as social support).

Of course, these factors work in combination. Two powerful and classically observed protective factors are: having a good relationship with at least one adult caregiver and having good intellectual abilities.

Risk and protective factors operate either in an “additive” (simple, direct effect of a risk factor) or an “interactive” (protective factors play only in interaction with risk factors: they come into play less when stress is low, much more when stress is high) model.

In an additive model, what is important is the notion of cumulative risk factors. It is often observed that it is the accumulation of several stresses rather than a single family stress that causes serious consequences. There is therefore a threshold effect beyond which the child’s resistance gives way.

In an interactive model, certain risk factors only come into play in the presence or absence of another risk factor, as do protective factors: for example, a child’s difficult temperament only produces harmful effects if it is combined with a mother’s rejection. Another example: poverty and exclusion have a more negative impact on native-born children than on immigrants, because the latter develop more solidarity strategies.

These are effects of a characteristic of the family environment. In the case of mediation, two variables interact to affect the child’s development. For example, parental discord and the child’s tendency to assume guilt each have negative interacting effects; in the case of moderation, two variables are not causally related, but one (the parent’s ability to maintain good parenting) moderates the negative effects of the other (parental discord).

This is a form of environmental transaction that allows the subject to overcome traumas and strongly limit their effects. The resilience of the ego (personality trait) is now a well-studied phenomenon, as well as the variations in resilience according to the sociocultural environment, or according to the field of development (academic, social, psychological), since a child can be resilient on the academic level, but not on the psychological level.

A confounding factor is one that explains the causal relationship that we assume at first glance between two variables. For example, when we take 100 children of divorced parents and 100 children of married parents, we generally find more academic failure in the first group. However, academic failure is closely linked to the child’s sociocultural background and divorce is more frequent in disadvantaged environments, so sociocultural background is a confounding factor in the link between divorce and academic failure.

Thus, if we control this confounding factor, if we compare 100 children of divorced parents from privileged backgrounds and 100 children of married parents from privileged backgrounds, say, we no longer observe differences between the two groups with respect to academic failure.

For a long time, the influence of parents was conceived as a cause and the adaptation of their children as an effect. The two main theoretical schools, behaviorism and psychoanalysis, although so traditionally opposed, come together to conclude that the way parents educate the child, and what parents do to the child, is extremely important. The spectacular improvements brought about by adoption, or the effects of educational intervention, have shown the crucial effect of the family environment.

At the end of the 1960s, a complementary hypothesis was put forward: children are not only receptors, but they also influence the behavior of their parents. A child’s behavior is partly influenced by genetic factors; it is therefore possible to maintain the idea that the parents’ behaviors play a crucial role in the adaptation of their children, but with the addition that these behaviors are caused by characteristics of the child under genetic influence.

Behavioral genetics has had a profound influence on how developmental psychologists view how family influences affect children in different ways.

Today, the influence of the family environment on the child can be defined by three main components:

– the influences of genetic factors: genes that parents pass on to each child;

– shared environmental influences: a family environmental characteristic is so massive that it has effects on all children in the family, for example, abject poverty, religious orientation or strong conflict between parents;

– the influences of the non-shared environment: each child is not subject to the same effects due to various causes. For example, girls are not raised in the same way as boys (even today), the mother has a stronger attachment to a particular child, the socioeconomic situation of the family has changed or a particular characteristic of the child under genetic influence causes different reactions in the parents.

Over the past 20 years, research has highlighted the importance of the non-shared environment. Parents are always surprised by this phenomenon: “how and why are my two children so different when they have had the same education?” Well, no! Also, there are two types of effects of the non-shared environment: “differential positivity” (one child receives significantly more of something than the others) and “differential negativity” (one child receives significantly less of something than the others).

Shared and non-shared environments are also related. For example, a common characteristic of the family context (stress, marital discord, lack of money, too many siblings, composition of the siblings) will exacerbate the difference in treatment between children. This is because parents will have limited resources to devote to each child. When stress occurs, it will diminish the resources available and they will be forced to concentrate them on one child.