Studying a moving target in development: The challenge and opportunity of heterotypic continuity

Abstract

Many psychological constructs show heterotypic continuity-their behavioral manifestations change with development but their meaning remains the same (e.g., externalizing problems). However, research has paid little attention to how to account for heterotypic continuity. Conceptual and methodological challenges of heterotypic continuity may prevent researchers from examining lengthy developmental spans. Developmental theory requires that measurement accommodate changes in manifestation of constructs. Simulation and empirical work demonstrate that failure to account for heterotypic continuity when collecting or analyzing longitudinal data results in faulty developmental inferences. Accounting for heterotypic continuity may require using different measures across time with approaches that link measures on a comparable scale. Creating a developmental scale (i.e., developmental scaling) is recommended to link measures across time and account for heterotypic continuity, which is crucial in understanding development across the lifespan. The current synthesized review defines heterotypic continuity, describes how to identify it, and presents solutions to account for it. We note challenges of addressing heterotypic continuity, and propose steps in leveraging opportunities it creates to advance empirical study of development.

Heterotypic continuity of inhibitory control in early childhood: Evidence from four widely used measures.

“…These important theoretical and conceptual arguments are not limited to inhibitory control. Many constructs likely change in manifestation with development, but so far, very few studies of constructs have methodologically and statistically accounted for their heterotypic continuity when examining development (Petersen et al, 2020). Thus, the findings from the present study may help lead the field to more closely align methodological approaches for studying constructs with the field’s theoretical understanding of them.…”

“…Our aim is to more accurately index the developmental construct of inhibitory control in early childhood. Accuracy of indexing can be increased by accounting for heterotypic continuity when studying growth in inhibitory control (Petersen et al, 2020). If inhibitory control changes in manifestation across development and the selected measures in any given study do not align with these changes, the measures will lack construct validity invariance, which may lead to inaccurate inferences about development of inhibitory control.…”

Developmental Stage-Specific Effects of Parenting on Adolescents’ Emotion Regulation: A Longitudinal Study From Infancy to Late Adolescence

“…Interestingly, parental autonomy and intimacy still showed small-to-moderate stability. Thus, we deem it possible that our results reflect heterogeneous continuity in parental autonomy and intimacy, involving some variance in their manifestation but continuity in the underlying latent constructs (Petersen et al, 2020). Fifth, we could not include preschool age in our data collection as a potential sensitive period for parenting effects, although parenting seems to play a crucial role in children's ER during this developmental stage (Hilt et al, 2012;Gee, 2016).…”

Understanding language processing in variable populations on their own terms: towards a functionalist psycholinguistics of individual differences, development and disorders.

“…First, we've argued that a model based on measurement is seriously limited. Given the diversity of language users, it is difficult to identify a single measure that is suitable across all groups (or across all ages, see Petersen et al, 2020). Rather the best-case scenario is that measures can be used as a general marker of how well fit an individual's language skills are to the socio-cultural context in which the measure was developed.…”