ABSTRACT
The study of posttraumatic stress over the past decade reflects an important paradigm shift in the field of psychiatry. Moving away from a simple nature-nurture dichotomy, the field can now attend to a far more complex mutual interaction of the environment and biology as these forces impact on the developing human brain. The study of posttraumatic stress has supported that autonomic nervous system responsivity and one's expectations of the world are fundamentally related. This chapter will review the literature on posttraumatic stress from infancy through adolescence, which by definition will cover some of the most exciting and influential research in the domain of developmental psychopathology.
