{"doi":"10.1002/mpr.1996","title":"Commentary on the special issue: Leveraging measurement to refine developmental perspectives on psychopathology","abstract":"This Special Issue of International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research highlights developmental perspectives on irritability and related dimensions of psychopathology. The issue's papers (Alam et al., 2023; Hirsch et al., 2023; Kirk et al., 2023; Wakschlag et al., 2023; Wigg et al., 2023; Wiggins et al., 2023a, 2023b) extend a solid foundation of research to target questions on pediatric emotional problems and applications of dimensional methods. As such, the papers are fresh and novel while steeped in an important prior history. Papers demonstrate improvements in measurement during the first 5 years of life (Hirsch et al., 2023; Wakschlag et al., 2023; Wiggins et al., 2023a, 2023b) through adolescence (Alam et al., 2023; Kirk et al., 2023; Wakschlag et al., 2023), important areas in need of advancement. Infancy and preschool are particularly important years in the life of a child. This reflects, at least partly, research findings suggesting that the seeds of later psychopathology germinate during this developmental period. The Special Issue highlights how some forms of psychopathology first manifest with symptoms of irritability, representing expressions of excessive anger and frustration during blocked goal attainment (Alam et al., 2023; Hirsch et al., 2023; Wiggins, Ureña Rosario, Zhang, et al., 2023). However, irritability can represent normative expressions of emotions. Given the breadth of normative behavior that rapidly changes in the first 5 years, clinicians face difficulty in young children separating extreme but normal variation in irritability from clinically significant symptoms in this domain. The first Special Issue paper (Wigg et al., 2023) reviews themes targeted in the other papers, and this Commentary broadly highlights three related major issues: (i) the nature of developmental risk; (ii) measurement challenges in young children, and (iii) relations between early irritability and later psychopathology. Special Issue papers focus heavily on the Multidimensional Assessment Profile Scales, Temper Loss scale (MAPS-Temper Loss) (Kirk et al., 2023; Wakschlag et al., 2023; Wiggins, Ureña Rosario, MacNeill, et al., 2023). This measure quantifies levels of irritability expressed by children, now extended from age 1 year through adolescence. However, the MAPS-Temper Loss measure arises from a broader series of assessment tools that quantify other aspects of early life psychopathology. This includes low concern for others and aggression. Moreover, other measures in young children quantify aspects of neurodevelopment and learning, based on children's performance on standardized tests. Thus, multiple domains of psychopathology can be quantified in young children, often using unique measurement approaches for each domain. The contribution from papers in the Special Issue can be more fully appreciated by recognizing the distinct nature of risk associated with specific domains of early-life psychopathology. The Special Issue focuses on irritability (Alam et al., 2023; Hirsch et al., 2023; Kirk et al., 2023; Wiggins, Ureña Rosario, MacNeill, et al., 2023); in this symptom domain, pathology represents extreme expressions of behavior that many children manifest. Thus, most young children manifest irritability at various times during their lives; irritability in this age group only is pathological when it exceeds these normative expressions. Similar patterns manifest for anxiety, which also is common in young children. Pathological anxiety involves excessive levels of a behavior that can be considered normative in many contexts. The Special Issue reports on an extension of past methods to characterize the dimensional spectra of anxious and depressive behaviors within the developmental context of early childhood (Alam et al., 2023; Kirk et al., 2023; Wakschlag et al., 2023). As authors of Special Issue papers note in other research, this pattern for irritability and anxiety differs from patterns for other domains. 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