Steps toward integrative theory of psychological development

We outline four major “steps” that need to be taken in constructing integrative theories of development: clarifying philosophical presuppositions, identifying integrative units of analys

Mascolo, M F., & Bidell, T (2020) Steps to an integrative conception of psychological development In M F

Mascolo & T Bidell (Eds.) Handbook of Integrative Psychological Development (pp 466-491)

Routledge/Taylor & Francis

STEPS TOWARD AN INTEGRATIVE THEORY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

Michael F Mascolo Thomas R Bidell

The chapters in this volume have provided both philosophical and historical contexts for integrative theories of development, as well as many “exemplars,” in the Kuhnian sense, of developmental research conducted from an integrative point of view In this chapter, drawing

on the themes and content discussed in this volume, we examine the process of theory

construction from an integrative perspective on development How can we construct

integrative theories of psychological development? What issues must be addressed in the formulation of integrative psychological theory? This paper sets out a kind of “road map” for the construction of integrative theories of development We outline four major “steps” that need to be taken in constructing integrative theories of development: clarifying philosophical presuppositions, identifying integrative units of analysis, conceptualizing development from an integrative perspective, and constructing research methodologies adequate to the study of developmental as an integrative phenomenon

Clarifying Philosophical Presuppositions

Scientific psychology is said to have had its birth in 1879 with the founding of Wundt’s experimental laboratory in Leipzig (Cole, 1996) Its founding marked the beginning of the formal severing of psychology from philosophy (Benjamin, 2000) While the comingling of psychology and philosophy would continue for several decades, over time, scientific psychology would come to be defined largely in contradistinction to philosophy While philosophy produced armchair speculation, the methods of science allowed psychologists to produce verifiable knowledge Through the use of scientific methodology, the new science of psychology would be able to put ideas to the test on route to producing increasingly verifiable knowledge With its severing from philosophy, scientific psychology defined itself in terms of the practice of using empirical data to support theoretical claims As a result, psychology became increasingly

concerned with matters of method (Bornstein, 1999; Danzinger, 2000) As an empirical science, the quest for method was founded upon the idea that scientific knowledge of the world comes from observation This led early psychologists to seek methods that they believed would allow

researchers to describe psychological states objectively – that is, as they “really are” – free from

the bias of prior beliefs, values or pre-conceptions (Diserens, 1925) Although the traditional scientific world-view’s quest for “value-neutral” theories remains an underlying current in modern science, increasingly psychologists and other social scientists recognize the quixotic nature of such an endeavor Contemporary social scientists embrace approaches to theory that

recognize the social embeddedness of any scientific research and the inescapable human

emotions and values that scientists bring to theorizing (L’Abate, 2012; Vonèche, 2006)

The traditional scientific worldview is based on what Husserl (1970) called the

“naturalistic attitude” – the view that our perceptions correspond to the natural world as it actually is Husserl (1970) suggested that laypersons and scientists alike spontaneously tend to adopt a “naturalistic attitude” toward the world The naturalistic attitude gives the impression that our observations of the world reflect their objective, pre-interpreted nature However, for

Husserl, the process of observing is a form of experiencing If this is so, we run into a

contradiction: objective nature is not the type of thing that can be experienced For Husserl,

experiencing is a process that occurs not in a natural world that is untouched by interpretation,

but instead in an intersubjectively-shaped lifeworld (lebenswelt) – the public, implicit,

taken-for-granted medium of shared meanings that allow us to make our experience intelligible to each other If this is so, then what we call an “objective” observation cannot be a matter of simply recording the world as it really is Instead, it is a matter of building up, over time, shared categories and meanings that reflect regularities in our intersubjectively-experienced world

Scientific inquiry becomes a matter of creating shared categories and meanings for everyone

(“objectivity”), and not merely for either you or for me (“subjectivity”) In this way, for Husserl, what we call “objectivity” and “subjectivity” are defined against the backdrop of an already

psychological life of persons (Shotter, 2017) People are not inscrutable objects; we do not come to know persons by observing their behavior and then inferring about what might be occurring behind it Infants do not enter the world as isolated beings who are separated from the encased “minds” of others If that were the case, it would be difficult to understand how anyone could ever come to understand anyone’s psychological experience – or to know that anyone was experiencing anything at all (Overgaard, 2006) Instead, human beings gain

psychological knowledge of both self and other through their intersubjective capacities to (a) coordinate and share experience with others, and (b) reflect upon those experiences using shared, linguistically-represented systems of meaning

Psychological scientists are people They do not shed their shared psychological

knowledge when they enter the research laboratory (Greenbank, 2003; Martin & Sugarman, 2009) Instead, their psychological knowledge and shared experience function as their most basic tool for engaging the psychological lives of their research participants (Mascolo, 2009,

2017 It follows that our everyday existing socio-psychological lexicon provides us with the prior knowledge and pre-understandings that we need in order to engage each other as

psychological beings (Jost, 1995) Without those meanings, we would be unable able to

identity or describe psychological acts and experiences – let alone explain them Thus, if

psychological knowledge has its origins in intersubjective engagement with others, it would be

a mistake to believe that the meaning of psychological terms can be established through the

empirical observation of overt behavior – however careful and precise Instead, the seeds of any theory of psychological functioning are to be found in the systems of shared and contested meanings represented in our everyday socio-psychological lexicon (Stam, 2015)

Our everyday psychological lexicon, however, tends to be unsystematic, unarticulated, polysemous, vaguely-defined and tied to the particularities of context If our psychological analyses begin with everyday psychological language, it would be a mistake to rely upon the unreflected meanings of these terms (Martin, 1996) It would be an even deeper mistake to assume that the meaning of our psychological concepts will become clearer as we collect

additional empirical data Again, assumptions built into our initial psychological concepts will structure the types of studies we perform and the forms of data that we collect The process of conceptual clarification cannot be simply, “wait until after the data are collected and see what’s

there”; it must begin prior to the design of any given research project This can only be done through a rigorous philosophical analysis of the terms and concepts that make up our

theoretical systems (Hutto, 2009; Martin, 1996)

For example, even though terms like envy and jealousy are ubiquitous in everyday

speech, laypersons and psychological scientists alike often have difficulty defining them (Sissa, 2018; Protasi, 2016) Scholars define jealousy and envy in different ways Laypersons often use these terms interchangeably They also use each individual term in different ways How are the

meanings of these terms to be defined? One might think that one can define jealousy by

identifying actual instances of the emotion in order to identify what they have in common However, such a practice would beg the question of what constitutes jealousy; one must

already have some sense of what jealousy is in order to identify instances jealousy Similarly, it would not help to ask laypersons to define or describe instances of envy or jealousy, as any descriptions would be prefigured by their already existing conceptions of these emotions It is sometimes said that the meaning of a concept can be determined empirically by establishing reliability and validity of the assessments that measure it Even here, however, we encounter the same problem Assessments of reliability and validity presuppose an already existing

understanding of the terms on the assessment1

Thus, while the psychological analysis of experiences of jealousy or envy must have their origins in everyday language, relying on everyday language is insufficient There is a need for

rigorous and systematic philosophical reflection before an empirical analysis begins in order to

clarify the nature of the concepts being used Such a process would identify the conceptual structure of core concepts, the conceptual relations among competing versions of a given concept, and their connections to related concepts Examples of rigorous conceptual analyses

of the concepts of jealousy and envy can be found in Ben-Zev (1990), Kristjánsson (2016),

Protasi (2016), Purshouse (2004) and Sissa (2018) Thus, while it is tempting to believe that

1 More important, the meaning of a psychological construct cannot be found in measures of internal or external validity Such measures only indicate the inter-correlations of answers to questions within or among assessments Questions on psychological assessments tend to be included or discarded in order

to ensure the highest levels of reliability and validity As such, assessments are empirically-derived to maximize internal and external consistency The question of the relation between empirically-derived assessments and the psychological categories is a separate one.

observation itself will reveal the identity of the psychological forms we study, it is more likely that the opposite is true: unless we are able to clarify a working definition of a particular

concept going in, we will be unable to (a) design procedures for assessing psychological

functioning in terms of that concept; (b) develop falsifiable hypotheses based upon what it is that we seek to test; or (c) make clear judgments about the meaning of our resulting data

Everyday social scientific practices are necessarily organized with reference to

inescapable philosophical assumptions (Greenback, 2003) Philosophical reflection is not simply something that scholars do until sciences is able to solve difficult questions (Hutto, 2009) To the extent that scientific practices are organized by philosophical beliefs, the outcomes of any given form of scientific activity will only be as good as the philosophical assumptions on which that activity is based This is not an argument for the superiority of philosophy to science – or for the idea that science cannot produce valid and useful knowledge Instead, it is a call for

theorists to seek identify the proper relation between psychological science and philosophical

reflection (Basseches & Brandao, this volume)

Identifying an Integrative Unit of Analysis

Perhaps the most central concept to clarify going into a research project is the

fundamental unit of analysis for the study (Magnussen, 2000) An integrative conception of human action is one that recognizes that any psychological act is necessarily composed of some integration of the various processes that we call psychological – acting, thinking, feeling,

experiencing, perceiving, sensing, remembering, emoting, and so forth An integrative model is one that can explain how the particular categories of psychological processes operate in

relation to each other to produce a particular psychological act Therefore, deciding on a unit

of analysis for study must involve constructs that capture the particular set of relations at play

in the phenomenon of interest Any model of psychological functioning must begin addressing the question of the nature of psychological functioning itself

What makes a process a psychological one – as opposed to, say, a biological, social or

cultural process? One way to answer this question is to ask, what is it that all processes that we

take to be psychological have in common? One might suggest that a psychological process is any process that is mediated by the meaning that events have for an experiencing organism

(Mascolo, Basseches & El Hashem, 2010) From this view, all psychological processes are

necessarily biological processes; but all biological processes are not psychological processes The metabolism of glucose in the bloodstream is a biological process Because it is mediated by the meaning that events have for a person, imagining eating a piece of cake is a psychological process Such imaginings, however, can activate processes that elevate insulin levels because imagining is both a biological and a psychological process

Textbooks tend to define psychology as the science of mind (or mental processes) and behavior Such definitions are likely to be intended to capture the differences in what

psychologists take to be the subject matter of the field The definition is broad enough to

capture perspectives that identify psychology with both “internal” (e.g., thinking, feeling,

experiencing, etc.) and “external” (behavior; motor actions) processes Such definitions build upon traditional mind/body or mind/behavior dualities, and as such, fail to provide an

integrative conception of psychological functioning In contrast, the most general unit of

analysis for an integrative model of psychological functioning is transformative action Action is not a mere synonym for behavior The concept of action implies an active, agentive

experiencing organism whose actions transform their physical and social world From this view,

an action may be defined as a goal-directed, meaning-mediated operation on the world This use of the term is meant to transcend the inner-outer distinction: experience is the phenomenal

aspect of operating on the world; motor movements are means by which organisms effect change in the world in terms of their goals, motives and concerns (Powers, 2005)

Figure 1 contains a sketch of the dynamic person-environment system, which is

composed of five broad classes of components (Magnussen, 2000; Mascolo, 2013; Mascolo &

Fischer, 2015) As indicated at Point 1, the primary unit of individual analysis is (A) action Actions are intentional processes in the sense that they are about or directed toward some (B) object, real or imagined (Brentano, 1874) Actions and objects are dynamically-coupled

processes; the object of action is part of the very process of acting (Fischer, 1980) In drinking a

cup of coffee, the coffee plays a direct role in structuring the act of drinking A change in object

(hot coffee; an aperitif) typically requires a change in the structure of action Particular

psychological acts are performed within (E) particular socio-cultural contexts and often occur in interactions with (C) other people In intersubjectively-mediated social action, self and other

(D) co-regulate (Fogel, 1993) each other’s actions over time using cultural tools and other forms

of mediational means (Wertsch, 2007) Cultural tools vary from particular objects (e.g., a cup)

to the signs and symbols that mediate higher-order forms of thinking, feeling and acting

Cultural tools and mediational means are integral parts of the process of acting The act of drinking coffee from a mug is different from the act of sipping an aperitif from a cordial glass

Figure 1: A Relational Process Model of Socio-Psychological Functioning

The left panel of Figure 1 outlines the architecture of individual action, which functions

as but one part of the larger person-environment system As indicated in Figure 1, at their core, actions are organized by the emotion process In this model, emotions consist of felt modes of engaging the world Any given emotion is organized around (1) a particular relationship

between an organism’s motives and the perceived world Relations between one’s motives and the world are continuously and unconsciously monitored over time Significant transformations

in the fate of one’s motives produce (2) affective changes (feeling-producing activity) as well as (3) fast-acting action patterns that function in the service of a person’s motives Emotional activations function as fast-acting modes of adaptation that operate before higher-order

processes involving conscious deliberation become active

Emotion plays a central role in the organization of consciousness Changes in affect are produced as unconscious processes continuously monitor changes in the motivational

significance of a person’s circumstances Affective processes thereupon (4) select these

unconsciously-detected and motivational-significant events, amplify their importance, and organize them into (5) conscious awareness for further deliberation (Lewis, 1996; Tomkins,

1981) It is in this way that pre-consciously-detected adaptively-significant events become represented in consciousness (Mascolo & Kallio, 2019) As they do so, (6) consciousness

activates lower-order knowledge activation processes that operate continuously outside of consciousness These processes activate novel forms of meaning and representation that are made available to consciousness for the purpose of resolving adaptive challenges

In everyday action, persons experience themselves as “in control” of their actions

Figure 1 shows how control over action is distributed throughout the person-environment system Actions self-organize through the mutual regulation of processes that occur both

within and between persons (Fogel, 1993) As indicated at Point (6), consciousness plays an

important role in the regulation of action However, consciousness is itself a product of

nonconscious processes As such, consciousness cannot be seen as a kind of homunculus that

controls action ex nihilo Nonetheless, with development of the symbolic function,

consciousness gains the capacity (7) to loop back in an act of reflection and thereupon (8) take itself as its own object of awareness (Mead, 1934; Zahavi, 2006) It is at this point that the

representational self is born, and with it, the capacity to use desired conceptions of self as higher-order goals that drive social action

Conceptualizing Developmental Change

Any theory of psychological development must begin with an analysis of the nature of human activity However, such a model tells us little about what it means to say that

psychological processes develop Development is a complex concept that is used in many

different ways In conceptualizing development, one must address both the question of the

meaning of developmental change and the process by which developmental changes occur In

this section, we address the question of what constitutes a developmental change from an integrative point of view

The Concept of Development

People use the concept of development in many ways The concept of development has

been used to refer to change, age-related change, growth, history, evolution and progress (see

Basseches & Brandao, this volume; Kaplan, 1984; Stein, this volume) These terms, however,

are not synonymous Change refers to any sort of difference over time A few moments of

reflection reveal that while development certainly involves change, it is not reducible to

change Although one can change the placement or orientation of an object on a table, the

placement or orientation of the object cannot be said to have developed Development thus

involves change, but consists of a particular type of change We tend to think of development

not as just any type of change, but instead as the process of becoming something

In developmental psychology, perhaps the most common use of the term development

is to refer to age-related change – changes in psychological forms and functions that that occur

in tandem with changes in age (Baer, 1970; Basseches & Brandao, this volume) Such a

conception of development is invoked whenever a researcher uses age as a criterion for

defining changes as developmental By itself, however, age is inadequate as a marker of

development One can easily identify age-related changes that one would not refer to as

developmental changes For example, while the loss of memory function that occurs as

individuals age qualifies as an age-related change, it would be odd to say that such a change reflects the development of a person’s capacity for remembering We ordinarily recognize

declines that occur as a result of aging as a form of backward movement or regression (Granott,

this volume) Such characterizations suggest the directional implications of the concept of

development Development is a term that is used to refer to progressions – movement in a

particular direction – rather than merely age-related change

If development implies a directional change, can growth be seen as a form of

development? As before, development is a process that can involve growth, but cannot be

defined in terms of growth Growth is a quantitative concept that simply refers to increase in

amount, size, or quantity Hair grows in the sense that it becomes longer A coral reef can be said to grow in the sense that the number of polyps of which it is comprised increases A

person’s girth grows when fat cells become larger or more numerous However, in each of these examples, the growing entity only changes in quantity The changes do not involve steps

in the process of becoming something It is possible to say, of course, that over the first 21 years of life, a person’s body grows Is this an instance of development? Here, the colloquial

use of the term grow masks important differences To be sure, in ontogenesis, a person’s body

grows; the number of cells increase; the size of the individual’s organs, muscles and bones grow

larger The person can even be said to grow taller However, as a person “grows”, the structure

of the body becomes modified A person is not conceived as a fully formed human who simply gets bigger over time Over time, the body assumes particular shapes as it moves in the

direction of a fully-formed human this case, physical development would seem to have

something to do with structural change as the organism assumes an increasingly developed

human form

If we want to say that development involves a process of becoming something, can it be said that development is simply the same as the history or steps in the process? In this view of history as a sequence of events, we can trace how certain outcomes came to be over time Here again, the concept of history, in this linear sense, and the concept of development

diverge A history is an accounting of changes that occurred over time in the past As an

accounting, a history is an analysis of selected events that occurred over time – events that are

understood as important by one standard or another In a history, there is no presumption that

historical events are moving in any particular direction or involve a process of becoming

something The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire describes the history of Roman Empire in

terms of both progressive (rise) and regressive (fall) change While development involves history, it is not the same as history

The term evolution comes closest to the concept of development However, even here it

is clear that the results of evolution – forms selected for their adaptive value over time – do not imply the existence of developmental change While later-evolving forms may be more

adaptively fit than earlier forms, their characterization as more fully developed can only be

made with reference to standards that define what one takes to be a fully-developed form The

cockroach is an astonishingly adaptive organism – perhaps more adaptive than humans who

threaten to destroy their own environs; this does not make the cockroach a more developed organism than the human

While each of the concepts discussed above are clearly involved in development, none captures the full meaning and implications of the term Development is the process of

becoming something Development can be differentiated from related concepts in its emphasis

on the idea that when something develops, its structure undergoes transformation as it moves

in some direction Sometimes the direction of development – its outcome or endpoint – cannot

be known until development is completed Other times, its direction may be understood,

imputed or even stipulated in advance It is only with reference to some conception of the outcome of development that we can we speak of progress, regression, backward transition, forward movement or lateral change

Heinz Werner’s (1948; Werner & Kaplan, 1962/1984) orthogenetic principle of

development remains the quintessential developmental principle It states that when an entity

develops, it moves from a global and less differentiated state to states of increasing

differentiation, integration and hierarchic integration The orthogenetic principle is modeled on

the organismic process of embryogenesis At conception, the zygote is a single undifferentiated cell Thereafter, as the single cell divides, it makes replicas of itself in the process of

differentiation or cleavage Cellular specialization involves both the process of differentiation cells becoming different from one another) and integration cells coming together to form

cell assemblies, organs, and so forth As organs and organ systems come together (further integration), they increasingly function as a single, hierarchically integrated unit, namely the organism as a whole

The orthogenetic principle is not a description of what actually happens over the course

of ontogenesis Different types of changes occur in ontogenesis, changes that can be called change, age-related change, growth, history, evolution, and development As a principle of development, the orthogenetic principle is a conceptual tool; it is a principle that allows us to develop working conceptions of the developmental processes under study As a conceptual tool, the orthogenetic principle provides a way of identifying – out of the many types of

changes that occur over the course of ontogenesis – changes that can properly be understood

as developmental changes and therefore may be candidates for a unit of analysis

The Importance of Structural Change Some might question why invoking a concept

such as the orthogenetic principle is necessary at all Is it not both possible and useful to track changes, age-related changes, growth and other forms of temporally-organized difference over the course of ontogenesis? Is it not informative to track what is or what actually happens over

ontogenesis, without worrying about whether or not any given change is an instance of

development? This is a reasonable position to take The choice of how to study ontogenetic

change is determined, of course, by one’s theoretical and research goals The task of tracking what happens in ontogenesis is a necessary one One cannot determine whether any set of ontogenetic changes can be regarded as genuinely developmental changes without tracking

temporal or age-related changes

However, it is easy to confuse different principles of ontogenetic change Figure 2 contains an analysis of age-related changes in the frequency of one-word utterances, two- and three-word utterances, and utterances of four or more words for a single child (Bassano & Van Geert, 2005) The figure displays three overlapping waves (Siegler, 1986) The top graph shows

a gradual decline in single-word utterances (holophrases) from 14-29 months The middle curve shows an inverted U shape, with two- and three-word utterances rising in frequency from 14-25 months, and then declining thereafter The bottom curve shows a non-linear increase in four-word utterances, beginning around 20 and reaching an asymptote around 29 months What types of changes do these curves show?

Figure 2: The Growth of Language Use in a Single Child (adapted from Bassano & van Geert, 2007)

Individually, each line represents a growth curve – a quantitative change in the

frequency of each type of utterance over time In isolation, each curve tells us about the

growth or decline of particular forms of language Whether or not these changes reflect

developmental changes depends upon how they represent changes in the structure of the developing phenomenon as they move in a direction that we might call syntactic competence

Against the backdrop of an understanding of the structure of single-word and multiple-word utterances, assuming that these curves reflect normative changes taken together, these

curves can be taken as an indication of structural transformations and thus developmental change

Changes in the structure of early word combinations are provided in Figure 3 Single

word sentences tend to be holophrases in which a single linguistic unit conveys a broad and

often undifferentiated meaning (e.g., “Mommy”, “cookie”, “milk”) Two-word utterances begin

to show differentiation in the function of individual lexical units (e.g., “More milk”) Utterances

of four words or more indicate increasingly complex syntactic constructions (e.g., “I want more

milk”) and indicate a shift in the complex structure of language use Armed with this

knowledge, one might suggest that in this child, major structural transformations occur in her

language use around 19 and 29 months of age

Figure 3 Alternative Trajectories in the Structure of Syntactic Competence

Trajectories of Development Thus, not just any age-related change is a developmental

change Developmental changes are structural changes defined with reference to some sort of outcome or endpoint The endpoints that define developmental trajectories may be specified beforehand (e.g., learning to use the “count-on” rule in addition) or open-ended (e.g., the outcome of couples counseling), implicit (tacit) or explicit (articulated); real l (knowing the times tables) or idealized (becoming the perfect basketball player); valued (cultivating compassion) or

devalued (becoming a pickpocket)

In the case of language development, we can assume that the changes reflected in Figure 2 reflect normative changes in structure (as indicated in the left panel of Figure 3) In so

doing, they can be taken to reflect structural changes in the direction of syntactic competence

It follows that not just any changes in structure (or complexity) can be regarded as

developmental changes For example, if we were to encounter a child who uttered phrases such as “I box open” or “I you love”, we would not recognize these statements as proper

examples of normative syntactic development However, if we knew that the child was

learning Japanese, we would be able to locate these utterances on a different developmental

trajectory, one syntactically organized around a subject-object-verb structure rather than the English subject-verb-object formulation (Sugisaki, 2008)

Identifying Multiply-Nested Change Processes

The study of development is the study of origins and change In developmental

psychology, such questions immediately raise the troublesome nature-nurture question For millennia, scholars have asked whether the course of ontogenetic development is something that is inherent in the nature of the individual or is something that is nurtured from social forces outside of the individual A classic example is the debate in early biology between pre-formationists, who believed that seeds or zygotes contained tiny fully formed organisms, and

advocates of epigenesis, who argued for the gradual emergence of qualitative changes in form, under the influence of environmental factors While the concept of epigenesis has a long

history in biology and psychology, it has only recently gained currency as a systematic

resolution to the nature-nurture controversy (Gottlieb, 2002; Lerner, 2015; Meloni, 2014)

As currently used, the term epigenesis has two basic meanings One can differentiate

epigenesist in the narrow and broad senses The term epigenesis is composed of the root

genesis, which refers to “origins”, and the prefix epi, which means “above” Epigenesis in the

narrow sense refers the ways in which to particular biological processes that operate “above”

the genome affect gene activation These processes, including methylation and histone

modification, function to activate and deactivate genes in the process of protein synthesis

(Handy, Castro & Loscalzo, 2011; Sun, 2011) Epigenesis in the broad sense refers to the idea

that anatomical and psychological structures emerge in development through the mutual

influence of genes and the environments in which they are embedded (Lickliter & Honeycutt, this volume) However, in contemporary theories of epigenesis, “environments” are

understood relationally, as inter-participating systems and sub-systems, each active at its own level and influencing the activity other levels in which it participates Thus, environments are not only physical and social but also cellular, sub-cellular and organ-level systems Thus, while the systems of genes and the multiple environments operate as distinct processes, they are nonetheless inseparable as causal factors in the development of individual anatomical or

psychological structures (Fischer & Bidell, 2006, Mascolo & Fischer, 2015)

Contrary to the mechanistic view of genes giving “instructions” to carry out

development, the inter-participating systems tend to work together to channel development in

a particular direction much the way a hilly landscape channels water toward a river A

landscape that is very hilly can channel water in multiple directions, down one slope side or another The molecular biologist Conrad Waddington (1956, 1957) described this process with a much-repeated metaphor of an “epigenetic landscape.” Waddington’s classic epigenetic

landscape metaphor continues to provide a helpful illustration of the process of by which development can take multiple pathways even in the presence of the same genome The

landscape shown in Figure 4 represents the effects of heredity The ball at the top of the

landscape represents development The grooves or canals in the landscape represent the paths, determined by heredity, that it is possible for development to take Some canals are deeper or more canalized than others The course of development is represented by the pathway that the ball takes as it rolls down the landscape As the ball rolls down the hill, it reaches choice points

in which development can take more than one pathway All conditions being equal,

development is most likely to take the deepest or most canalized pathways However, at any given choice point, conditions in the environment of the ball can function to bring the ball out

of its most likely pathways and place it in an alternative pathway

Figure 4: Epigenetic Landscape Metaphor of Development

In his epigenetic systems conception of biological and psychological development, Gilbert Gottlieb (2002, 2003, 2007) maintained that developmental change occurs as a product

of coactions that occur at both the vertical and horizontal levels of a multi-nested

developmental system A representation of Gottlieb’s model is provided in Figure 5 Vertical coactions involve exchanges that occur between levels (e.g., gene-cytoplasm; cytoplasm-cell; cell-organ; organ-organism; organism-environment) while horizontal coactions occur at the same level of organismic functioning (e.g., gene-gene; cell-cell; organ-organ; organism-

organism) Gottlieb’s model embraces a form of relational or systems causality No single

process or system is primary in the construction of psychological forms Instead, as shown in

Figure 5, developmental changes are the products of coactions between and among processes

that operate over time both within and between levels of a complex developmental system Figure 5 provides an outline of some of the change principles that function at the various levels

of functioning described by Gottlieb

From an integrative perspective, psychological development occurs through the

operation of multiply-embedded change processes – nested processes that operate

simultaneously at multiple levels of functioning (Cole & Packer, 2016; Gottlieb, 2002; Mascolo, 2013; Overton & Lerner, 2012) Figure 6 illustrates coactions among nested change processes

as they function in the context of micro-development (see Granott, this volume) This example

shows the typical scaffolded development curve reflecting the type of development that occurs

in the context of direct teaching-and-learning over time As shown in Figure 6, individuals tend

to function at lower levels of performance when they are (1) working on their own or under conditions that do not provide support for optimal levels of performance Learners are able to operate at higher levels of skill when (2) working together with more accomplished others

After learning, (3) when working alone again, learners are able to operate at levels between

their initial level and their level under conditions of scaffolding

Figure 5: The Epigenetic Systems Model of Development (adapted from Gottlieb, 2002)

Figure 6 also illustrates the embedded nesting of change processes as they operate over

time Let us assume that in this hypothetical example, a child learns to recite the Jack and Jill

nursery rhyme In so doing, the teacher and child interact against the backdrop of shared

cultural meanings and practices These include the existence of the symbolically-constituted

nursery rhyme itself; its history, meaning and genre of expression; the idea that nursery rhymes

are valued objects of teaching and learning; expectations for how teachers and students are

related in a particular context; and so forth Within this cultural context, learning occurs at the

nexus of the individual and social-relational levels of functioning The social-relational level

involves the form of interaction that occurs between the child and the teacher (or more

generally between the child and context); the individual level consists of what the child herself

actually does within the particular form of social interaction

observation; imitation; identification; internalization/appropriation; reflective abstraction; etc

DNA ßà RNA ßà methylation and histone modification; cell growth, differentiation and integration; discontinuities in brain growth; pruning; protein synthesis; unconscious neural network functioning; affective activation and selective attention, etc

Figure 6: Multiply-Embedded Change Processes over Time

In the example, at Point 1, at the individual level of functioning, the child draws on her existing

knowledge to begin to recite the first two lines of the rhyme Let us assume, for the sake of

illustration, that the student is able to differentiate representation of each line and thus

understands each line as a separate and disconnected symbolic idea, such as:

As two juxtaposed or disconnected ideas, the child can shift her attention (>) from one

representation to the other, but without fully representing the relationship between the two

representations Shifting attention functions as a change process at the individual level: with

each shift, the child focuses attention back and forth on representations, and begins to process

of coordinating them into a relationship However, in so doing, as she reaches the phrase, “Jack

fell down and broke his crown”, she experiences a conflict between her existing background

knowledge and the odd concept of “crown”

To resolve the conflict, the child engages her teacher and asks, (2) “What is a crown? At the

social-relational level of functioning, the teacher scaffolds the child’s activity In so doing,

teacher does not answer the child’s question directly, but instead uses a distancing strategy

The teacher provides information beyond the child’s current level of comprehension, but with the expectation that the child will use this information to figure out the answer for herself At

Point (2), we can say that the child and adult are able to hold in mind a more-or-less shared

understanding that is both more complex and integrated than that represented by the child at Point 2 (rounded brackets indicate the structure of action between people):

At Point 3, working alone again, at the individual level of functioning, the child performs acts of

appropriation (taking aspects of another’s meaning using it her own thinking) and coordination

(connecting ideas) In so doing, she is able to construct for herself an answer to her own

question In specific, she appropriates the teacher’s statement that “Jack is a king” and is able

to coordinate the relation between Jack’s being a king and what king’s wear on their heads:

All action operates within and through the medium of biological processes Representational activity of the sort describe above is only possible given a requisite level of brain development While a certain level of brain development is essential for representational activity to occur, representational activity itself plays a role in organizing these very brain processes This should not be surprising, as representational activity is, of course, meaning-mediated biological

activity As layers or levels of organismic functioning, change processes do not operate in isolation form one another They are mutually-embedded and operate simultaneously in

relation to each other over time

Toward Integrative Methodology

An integrative conception of development calls for a corresponding integrative

approach to methodology Research methods are not simply off-the-shelf, theory-neutral tools Research methods are tied to the researcher’s conception of development The research tools stemming from individualistic conceptions of development reflect those conceptions and are inadequate to integrative approaches For this reason it is essential to construct methodologies that reflect and support integrative approaches to research

Positivism and Hermeneutics in Developmental Science A methodology consists of a

theoretical representation and justification of the system of methods used in a field of study (Overton, 2006) The methods used in psychological science had their epistemological

foundations in early positivism – the view that psychological methods must focus only on

observable behavior; positivism focuses on the positive in the sense of directing attention to what is there rather than not there Unfortunately, this basically scientific sentiment, in the

hands of the Vienna Circle and later British empiricists, morphed into “logical positivism,” a set

of rigid rules, restricting what could be considered valid research topics and methods In one of its worst forms, the behaviorist tradition sought to rule out any study of mental phenomena because they were “unobservable.” Epistemological debates in philosophy as well as in the

natural and social sciences have led to a recognition of the limits of positivism Post-positivism emerged as a group of philosophical and scientific views which reject the restrictions of

positivism and advance various frameworks for broadening the understanding of the nature of

scientific theories and methods (Zammito, 2004)

In developmental psychology, seminal thinkers such as Baldwin, Piaget, Kolherg,

Vygotsky, Werner and others have long maintained that it is not possible to understand the world without the participation of some existing way of organizing or relating to the world For

Piaget, to know is to be able to assimilate an object to an already existing scheme – whether

that scheme is an innate reflex or a highly developed conceptual structure The Piagetian

conception is a form of hermeneutic thinking (Basseches & Brandao, this issue; Beillin, 2013),

which provides an alternative to positivist epistemological frameworks

From a hermeneutic perspective, novel events are always interpreted with reference to

some form of pre-understanding Preunderstandings range from everyday concepts to formal

theory through the full range of implicit and explicit background assumptions Without some existing way to organize events, understanding simply cannot occur However, because of the richness of the experienced world, in any act of interpretation there will always be some

discrepancy between our existing understandings and ongoing experience Successful

understanding thus requires the revision of preunderstandings in light of novel experience

Understanding thus proceeds through the continuous revision and refinement of

pre-understandings in light of novel forms of experience As knowledge develops, we are never free

from invoking preunderstandings to organize the world Instead, we reflect upon, revise and replace our preunderstandings with better and more powerful explanatory concepts (Martin, 2002; Rennie, 2012)

Hermeneutic and post-positivist conceptions both acknowledge that (a) prior

understandings influence the process of observing, understanding or experiencing the world, and that (b) when the outcomes of observational activity are inconsistent with prior

understandings, they can invalidate those understandings and serve as a test of their integrity However, while post-positivism retains a sharp distinction between researcher and world, hermeneutic and phenomenological perspectives identify observation as a form of

experiencing-the-world As an inextricable part of the experienced world, the researcher

cannot step back to view it as it is independent of her experience Thus, while post-positivism

retains the idea that scientific truths can be identified by accommodating theory to objective data, hermeneutic and phenomenological perspectives call for continuous reflection on how that which we call data are organized within the matrix of our participation in an

intersubjectively experienced world

This point is especially important for the psychological sciences This is because the preunderstandings that undergird psychological understanding come not from objective

observation, but instead from a capacity for intersubjective engagement In the natural

sciences, we do not assume that the movements of an object or body are mediated by the meaning that events have for it We need not establish any degree of intersubjectivity with the planets in order to understand the source of their trajectories This point is illustrated in an exchange between the philosopher Alisdair McIntrye and an audience member at a talk entitled

What Natural Science Can't Explain (MacIntyre, 2013) At this session, MacIntyre argued that even among animals, norms could be understood as mere statistical regularities Even in