Possession and morality in early development

From the moment children say "mine!" by two years of age, objects of possession change progressively from being experienced as primarily unalienable property (i.e., something that is absolute or nonnegotiable), to being alienable (i.e., something that is negotiable in reciprocal exchanges). As possession begins to be experienced as alienable, the child enters "moral space," a socially normative and evaluative space made of perceived values that are either good or less good, and where accountability and reputation begin to play a prominent role. The aim of this chapter is to show the close developmental link between possession and morality.     

Merleau-Ponty on human development and the retrospective realization of potential

In this essay, I propose that human development is the emergence of something significantly new out of a past situation that does not hold that novel achievement as a determinate potential except retrospectively. Development, in other words, might best be understood as a “realization” in the sense of a making-real of some new form of being that had no prior place in reality, that was not programmed in advance, but that once realized can have its roots traced back to determinate conditions and potentials in its own past. This amounts to a rethinking of the nature of developmental potential as retrospectively determined. But it also involves a reconception of the locus of such potential: I argue that developmental potential must be understood as located in the human-organism-in-its-situation, rather than simply in the human organism. I take my bearings from phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and I make my case by elucidating three different forms of human development described by Merleau-Ponty: intellectual realizations of insight; the realization of a new perceptual-motor skill; and a child’s realization of a new lived way of making sense of the interpersonal world.     

Mapping emotions through time: how affective trajectories inform the language of emotion

The words used to describe emotions can provide insight into the basic processes that contribute to emotional experience. We propose that emotions arise partly from interacting evaluations of one's current affective state, previous affective state, predictions for how these may change in the future, and the experienced outcomes following these predictions. These states can be represented and inferred from neural systems that encode shifts in outcomes and make predictions. In two studies, we demonstrate that emotion labels are reliably differentiated from one another using only simple cues about these affective trajectories through time. For example, when a worse-than-expected outcome follows the prediction that something good will happen, that situation is labeled as causing anger, whereas when a worse-than-expected outcome follows the prediction that something bad will happen, that situation is labeled as causing sadness. Emotion categories are more differentiated when participants are required to think categorically than when participants have the option to consider multiple emotions and degrees of emotions. This work indicates that information about affective movement through time and changes in affective trajectory may be a fundamental aspect of emotion categories. Future studies of emotion must account for the dynamic way that we absorb and process information.     

Sampling Development

Research in developmental psychology requires sampling at different time points. Accurate depictions of developmental change provide a foundation for further empirical studies and theories about developmental mechanisms. However, overreliance on widely spaced sampling intervals in cross-sectional and longitudinal designs threatens the validity of the enterprise. This article discusses how to sample development in order to accurately discern the shape of developmental change. The ideal solution is daunting: to summarize behavior over 24-hour intervals and collect daily samples over the critical periods of change. We discuss the magnitude of errors due to undersampling, and the risks associated with oversampling. When daily sampling is not feasible, we offer suggestions for sampling methods that can provide preliminary reference points and provisional sketches of the general shape of a developmental trajectory. Denser sampling then can be applied strategically during periods of enhanced variability, inflections in the rate of developmental change, or in relation to key events or processes that may affect the course of change. Despite the challenges of dense repeated sampling, researchers must take seriously the problem of sampling on a developmental time scale if we are to know the true shape of developmental change.     

发展级联:解释个体纵向发展的新视角

发展级联(developmental cascades)近年来已成为发展心理学追踪研究中一种重要的理论视角。其基本观点是:人的发展过程是一个诸多发展特征不断产生级联效应的过程,某个时间点上个体特征的发展状况会对该特征的后续发展产生影响,并影响其他领域的发展,进而影响到个体的整个发展进程。在发展级联的理论观点基础上形成的相关方法学模型,为探究发展系统中多个因素之间的纵向关联提供了方法学依据与指导。本文介绍了发展级联的相关概念、理论基础、主要观点以及相关的方法学问题,并对其在实证研究中的应用进行了展望。     

Self-Determination and Empowerment: A Feminist Standpoint Analysis of Talk about Disability

In this paper we offer a feminist analysis of talk about self-determination and empowerment in the context of disability, focusing on the case of developmental disabilities. We find strains of the same patterns feminist epistemologists have argued shape the organization of formal knowledge from the standpoint of the privileged. At the extreme, people with developmental disabilities appear as objects without selves, outside of the context of interpersonal and social structural relationships that constrain who they can be by defining them as other, often in multiple and interacting ways. Empowerment, from the dominant standpoint, becomes an abstract attribute or condition; something a person has or does not have. Taking the standpoint of women and other marginalized people offers a view of self-determination as a person's development of his or her self. Empowerment becomes a potential characteristic of a social relationship, one that facilitates the development of someone's self. The most empowering relationships are mutual, recognizing and building on the diverse contributions and needs of participants in ways that seek to minimize inequalities over time. The reason some of us are self-determining is that we are in interpersonal and social structural relationships that empower us. To construct interpersonal and social structural relationships that empower people with developmental disabilities requires challenging the way dominant conceptualizations of independence and productivity also express the standpoint of the privileged. The standpoint of women allows all of us to talk more of how we connect with and facilitate one another's developing selves within communities.     

Critical Psychology: What It Is and What It Is Not

Critical psychology alerts us to the limitations of mainstream research in the discipline, and it promises to put 'social' issues on the agenda in the whole of psychology. A starting point of the stance of critical psychological research is that the claims that psychologists make about human beings often seem to vanish almost as quickly as they are discovered. People, a group or culture do not behave or think like the model would predict, and, more importantly, we find that our awareness, our reflection on a process described by a psychologist changes that process. It is in the nature of human nature to change, to change as different linguistic resources, social practices, and representations of the self become available, and for human nature to change itself as people reflect on who they are and who they may become. That means that any attempt to fix us in place must fail. But it will only fail in such a way that something productive emerges from it if we do something different, and one place to do something different is in psychology. We need to step back and look at the images of the self, mind and behaviour that psychologists have produced, the types of practices they engage in, and the power those practices, those 'technologies of the self' have to set limits on change. When we appreciate this, we can start to look at what psychologists might do instead as part of a genuinely critical approach.     

The Change and Development of Statistical Methods Used in Research Articles in Child Development 1930–2010

The evolution of developmental psychology has been characterized by the use of different quantitative and qualitative methods and procedures. But how does the use of methods and procedures change over time? This study explores the change and development of statistical methods used in articles published in Child Development from 1930 to 2010. The methods used in every article in the first issue of every volume were categorized into four categories. Until 1980 relatively simple statistical methods were used. During the last 30 years there has been an explosive use of more advanced statistical methods employed. The absence of statistical methods or use of simple methods had been eliminated.     

A Developmental Analysis of Performance Ratings

In this study, we examined the performance appraisal process from a developmental perspective. Components of cognitive structure, measured in terms of differentiation and hierarchic integration, were obtained from 45 American students representing three different academic levels at three times during a 15-week semester. These students' performance evaluations (ratings) of their psychology instructors were collected during the first and final sessions. The results indicated that although both differentiation and hierarchic integration seemed to change systematically, even over a short period of time, there was no corresponding change in the halo inherent in the raters' ratings. We present possible explanations for the failure of developmental changes in cognitive structure to be reflected in the halo inherent in the performance ratings, as would be predicted by Schneier's (1977) cognitive compatibility hypothesis. Increased emphasis on developmental aspects of the performance appraisal process is recommended.     

Constraints on representational change: evidence from children's drawing.

This paper uses children's drawing as clues to general constraints on internal representational change and flexibility. Fifty-four children between 4 and 11 years of age each produced six drawings. They were first asked to draw a house, and then to draw a house that does not exist. The same procedure was used for man and animal. The technique forced children into operating on their normal, efficient drawing procedures, and allowed the researcher to ascertain the types of constraint that obtain on representational change and flexibility. Striking developmental differences emerged between the 4- to 6-year-old age group and the 8- to 10-year-old age group. Changes introduced by the younger children involved deletions and changes in size and shape, whereas older children changed position and orientation of elements and added elements from other conceptual categories, resulting in ever-increasing inter-representational flexibility. Development is accounted for in terms of reiterated cycles of change from internal representations specified as a sequentially fixed list, embodying a constraint that was inherent in the earlier procedural representations, to internal representations specified as a structured, yet flexibly ordered set of manipulable features. The constraints are considered to be general and are compared with work on seriation and number in children, and on phonological awareness and musical ability in adults. The results are integrated into a general model of developmental change which is compatible both with initial modularity and with subsequent domain-general constraints.     

Rethinking Collaborative Learning Through Participation in an Interdisciplinary Research Project: Tensions and Negotiations as Key Points in Knowledge Production

As social and cultural psychologists of learning, we are persuaded of the crucial role of interaction in development and learning. But how do we experience this assumption in our own research practices and in our collaboration with colleagues? Taking as our object of study our own participation in a European Research and Development project that aimed to enhance interactive and argumentative skills in learning settings, this study shows how collaboration among project partners is not something that is to be taken for granted, but something that is elaborated and evolves in time, takes diverse forms, and is mediated by multiple tools. The psychological processes—more particularly tensions and negotiation—involved in collaboration are developed and discussed. The study explores the processes of establishing collaboration and, through the analysis of specific zones of tensions, sheds light on the way new knowledge (on how to do research, how to communicate, how to work together) is constructed. It contributes to the understanding of the issues and conditions for the development of a community of practice.     

The development of academic competence among adolescents who bully and who are bullied

Using data from the first three waves (Grades 5, 6, and 7) of the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development, this study assessed if being a bully or being a victim accounts for an adolescent's academic competence, if selected contextual and individual variables impact an adolescent's academic competence, and if such impact differs in relation to an adolescent's bullying status. The results of random coefficient hierarchical regression analyses indicated that being a bully predicted lower grades across time, and that being a bully was more detrimental for girls than for boys. Being a bully and being a victim negatively predicted self-perceived academic competence, but these predictive effects did not change over time or differ by sex. Teacher support positively predicted grades and greater parent support and teacher support independently predicted higher self-perceive academic competence. Greater educational expectations and school engagement independently predicted higher self-reported grades, while these two predictors positively interacted in explaining self-perceived academic competence. Unexpectedly, peer support negatively predicted self-reported grades for victims, and negatively predicted self-perceived academic competence for bullies. We discuss the importance of addressing the issue of academic competence in bullying interventions, as well as the utility of capitalizing on developmental assets in promoting academic competence among adolescents who bully and who are bullied.     

Advancing training and transfer research through the application of nonlinear dynamics

ABSTRACT

The study of training transfer as something that occurs over time with its own underlying process has been very limited in the training literature to date. This paper argues that we can better understand how transfer unfolds over time, and why it unfolds in any particular way, by considering important theoretical and mathematical concepts from nonlinear dynamics. We draw on nonlinear concepts, such as attractors, to describe how and when training interventions are likely to succeed and how subsequent transfer may unfold in relation to those concepts. We then explicate how taking a dynamic view of transfer forces us to change how our field currently studies transfer methodologically, and then give an extended example of how such an advancement may provide for richer theories regarding the process of transfer by focusing on the effects of supervisor support over time. We close with some practical recommendations informed by our view.     

Infants show a facilitation effect for native language phonetic perception between 6 and 12 months

Patterns of developmental change in phonetic perception are critical to theory development. Many previous studies document a decline in nonnative phonetic perception between 6 and 12 months of age. However, much less experimental attention has been paid to developmental change in native-language phonetic perception over the same time period. We hypothesized that language experience in the first year facilitates native-language phonetic performance between 6 and 12 months of age. We tested 6-8- and 10-12-month-old infants in the United States and Japan to examine native and nonnative patterns of developmental change using the American English /r-l/ contrast. The goals of the experiment were to: (a) determine whether facilitation characterizes native-language phonetic change between 6 and 12 months of age, (b) examine the decline previously observed for nonnative contrasts and (c) test directional asymmetries for consonants. The results show a significant increase in performance for the native-language contrast in the first year, a decline in nonnative perception over the same time period, and indicate directional asymmetries that are constant across age and culture. We argue that neural commitment to native-language phonetic properties explains the pattern of developmental change in the first year.     

Is the child ‘father of the Man’? Evaluating the stability of genetic influences across development

This selective review considers findings in genetic research that have shed light on how genes operate across development. We will address the question of whether the child is ‘father of the Man’ from a genetic perspective. In other words, do the same genetic influences affect the same traits across development? Using a ‘taster menu’ approach and prioritizing newer findings on cognitive and behavioral traits, examples from the following genetic disciplines will be discussed: (a) developmental quantitative genetics (such as longitudinal twin studies), (b) neurodevelopmental genetic syndromes with known genetic causes (such as Williams syndrome), (c) developmental candidate gene studies (such as those that link infant and adult populations), (d) developmental genome‐wide association studies (GWAS), and (e) DNA resequencing. Evidence presented here suggests that there is considerable genetic stability of cognitive and behavioral traits across development, but there is also evidence for genetic change. Quantitative genetic studies have a long history of assessing genetic continuity and change across development. It is now time for the newer, more technology‐enabled fields such as GWAS and DNA resequencing also to take on board the dynamic nature of human behavior.     

Between two intimacies: The formative contexts of individual experience

While it is essential that we live as self-defined individuals, independently negotiating with an independent reality, this experience is not exhaustive of our reality. Such experience is importantly contextualized by two other kinds of experience, each an experience of intimacy. First, independent individuality depends upon a process of childhood development in which identity is formed through a familial intimacy in which the child lives from a non-reflective, bodily sense of a sharedness of identity with another (typically, but not necessarily, the mother). Second, independent individuality finds its healthy development in the establishment of new intimate bonds; these adult intimacies, unlike childhood intimacy, are bonds between persons who themselves have developed the sense of independent individuality and thus have experiential characteristics significantly different from those of childhood intimacy. From a developmental perspective, each of these two forms of intimacy is something good in itself but also something whose good resides in its enabling of something else, childhood intimacy facilitating the transformation into independent individuality and adult intimacy facilitating a transformative engagement with one's own limitations.     

Social class transitions: Three guiding questions for moving the study of class to a dynamic perspective

We argue that social psychological theories of social class should move toward a more dynamic view that considers class change experiences to supplement more static perspectives focused on backgrounds or current positions. Indeed, social class is a unique demographic form of hierarchy because of its dynamism: social class is relatively malleable compared to race and gender; it can change multiple times in one's lifespan; and unlike age, it is something individuals can strive to change and that they often believe is possible to change. We review work from a variety of fields, including sociology, psychology, and organizational behavior, that begins to tackle the question of social class change experiences. Drawing on theories of social class transitions, acculturation, and identity change, we present an organizing framework suggesting three objective, structural features of social class change that should inform individuals' experience of changing class: What direction am I going (resource expectations)? How did I get here (predictability)? Where should I be (social comparisons)? We review emerging work as well as gaps in existing theory and suggest avenues for future research.     

Studying the Dynamics of Problem Behavior Across Multiple Time Scales: Prospects and Challenges

As a commentary on the Special Issue, this paper discusses recent advances in the study of change across several time scales. It points out the importance of specifying time scales and putative patterns of change when characterizing problem behavior over developmental time scales. Methods for studying risk and protective mechanisms through observation of social interaction are also discussed as a way to study influences that operate in real time. Methods for studying episode-level interaction patterns that result from such real-time influences are also discussed, along with ways to integrate these with longitudinal assessments to study the effects of social interaction on problem behavior across developmental time scales.     

Implicit relational knowing: Its role in development and psychoanalytic treatment

It is increasingly apparent that “something more” than interpretation is needed to bring about change in psychoanalytic treatment. Drawing on clinical and developmental observations, we propose that interactional processes from birth onward give rise to a form of procedural knowledge regarding how to do things with intimate others, knowledge we call implicit relational knowing. This knowing is distinct from conscious verbalizable knowledge and from the dynamic unconscious. The implicit relational knowing of patient and therapist intersect to create an intersubjective field that includes reasonably accurate sensings of each person's ways of being with others, sensings we call the “real relationship.” This intersubjective field becomes more complex and articulated with repeated patient–therapist encounters, giving rise to emergent new possibilities for more coherent and adaptive forms of interaction. During a transactional event that we term a “moment of meeting,” a new dyadic possibility crystallizes when the two persons achieve the dual goals of complementary fitted actions and joint intersubjective recognition in a new form. We argue that such moments of meeting shift the relational anticipations of each partner and allow for new forms of agency and shared experience to be expressed and elaborated. © 1998 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health