Once Upon a Time... All Of Us Had a Childhood... Part 1/4

Handbook of Child Psychology

Volume One (1):

Theoretical Models of Human Development

1. DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE, DEVELOPMENTAL SYSTEMS, AND CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT Richard M. Lerner
2. DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY: PHILOSOPHY, CONCEPTS, METHODOLOGY Willis F. Overton
3. THE MAKING OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY Robert B. Cairns and Beverley D. Cairns
4. DEVELOPMENTAL EPISTEMOLOGY AND IMPLICATIONS FOR METHODOLOGY Jaan Valsiner
5. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BIOLOGY FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT: A DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOBIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS VIEW Gilbert Gottlieb, Douglas Wahlsten, and Robert Lickliter
6. DYNAMIC SYSTEMS THEORIES Esther Thelen and Linda B. Smith
7. DYNAMIC DEVELOPMENT OF ACTION AND THOUGHT Kurt W. Fischer and Thomas R. Bidell
8. THE PERSON IN CONTEXT: A HOLISTIC-INTERACTIONISTIC APPROACH David Magnusson and Håkan Stattin
9. THE DEVELOPING PERSON: AN EXPERIENTIAL PERSPECTIVE Kevin Rathunde and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
10. ACTION PERSPECTIVES ON HUMAN DEVELOPMENT Jochen Brandtstädter
11. LIFE SPAN THEORY IN DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY Paul B. Baltes, Ulman Lindenberger, and Ursula M. Staudinger
12. THE LIFE COURSE AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT Glen H. Elder Jr. and Michael J. Shanahan
13. THE CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENT: ONE MIND, MANY MENTALITIES Richard A. Shweder, Jacqueline J. Goodnow, Giyoo Hatano, Robert A. LeVine, Hazel R. Markus, and Peggy J. Miller
14. THE BIOECOLOGICAL MODEL OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT Urie Bronfenbrenner and Pamela A. Morris
15. PHENOMENOLOGY AND ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS THEORY: DEVELOPMENT OF DIVERSE GROUPS Margaret Beale Spencer
16. POSITIVE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT: THEORY, RESEARCH, AND APPLICATIONS Peter L. Benson, Peter C. Scales, Stephen F. Hamilton, and Arturo Sesma Jr.
17. RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT THROUGHOUT THE LIFE SPAN Fritz K. Oser, W. George Scarlett, and Anton Bucher

THE PERSON IN CONTEXT: A HOLISTIC-INTERACTIONISTIC APPROACH David Magnusson and Håkan Stattin

Since the birth of psychology as a scientific discipline, the central task has been formulated in various ways. Some of these formulations have greatly influenced both theory and empirical research by focusing on aspects of the functioning of the total human being. However, lack of consistency in the theoretical framework for what scientists claim is the same discipline that still exists and is a major cause of the fragmentation that characterizes research on psychological phenomena. More and more psychologists are becoming aware of the need for a general theoretical framework for designing, implementing, and interpreting studies of specific issues. This has been particularly evident in personality research (e.g., Cervone, 2004; Mischel, 2004).

Focusing on that goal, the discussion starts from the proposition that the central task for scientific psychology is to contribute to an understanding and an explanation of why individuals think, feel, act, and react as they do in real life (Magnusson, 1990).

Proposition 1: The functioning and development of the individual is our main concern.

Proposition 2: Within the PE system, the individual functions and develops as an integrated, indivisible whole.

Proposition 3: The proposed task requires a research strategy where results from single studies contribute to the synthesis of knowledge that is required for understanding why individuals think, feel, act, and react as they do in real life and how they develop in these respects.

Proposition 4: A basic requirement in such a research strategy is the application of a general theoretical model on individual functioning and development as a common framework for the design, implementation, and interpretation of studies on specific issues.

Systems biology does not investigate individual genes or proteins one at a time, as has been the highly successful model of biology for the last 30 years. Rather, it investigates the behavior and relationships of all of the elements in a particular biological system while it is functioning. (Ideker, Galitski, & Hood, 2001, p. 343)

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

“Language in science is in the midst of change and appears as dominated by two contradictory trends. Globalization of scientific English seems to promise greater international unity, while growth of field-specific jargon suggests communication diasphora” (p. 1333). To summarize: A general model for human functioning and development will help to overcome fragmentation in research by serving as a common theoretical framework for the specification of issues and the design and interpretation of empirical studies on specific phenomena and for effective communication among researchers on central issues.

THE ENVIRONMENT

 Three environmental positions along that dimension are distinguished:

1. the immediate situation,
2. the proximal environment, and
3. the distal environment.

Individual experiences are fundamental for the developmental socialization process. Situations present—at different levels of specification—the information that we need to act adequately and they offer us the necessary feedback for building valid conceptions of the outer world. By assimilating new knowledge and experiences into existing mental categories and by accommodating old categories and forming new ones, each individual develops an integrated system of mental structures involved in continuous interaction with the environment.

Along the proximity dimension, the total PE system to which an individual belongs forms a hierarchic system in which immediate situations, proximal environments, and distal environments are integrated. The role of proximal and distal environments in the individual developmental PE interaction processes is discussed in the section titled: The Environment in the PE System.

THE GOAL OF SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY

The goal of scientific work is to formulate the basic principles and specific mechanisms for how and why phenomena function as they do at various levels of complexity.

The psychological importance of single variables or composites of variables in individual development is often measured by how well they predict later outcomes in statistical terms. The claim that prediction and control are central goals for developmental research continues to be espoused even in areas where it is not very appropriate.

The exact prediction of individual functioning and development as the ultimate goal for psychological research can be questioned for two interrelated reasons. The first has to do with individual functioning as integrated processes; the second concerns the laws that direct this type of process.

Research on human functioning belongs to the “life science.

As a life science, psychology has more to learn from biology than from physics.

The focus is individuality, and a key concept in discussion is process.

A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: THE HOLISTIC-INTERACTIONISTS MODEL

At all levels, the totality derives its characteristic features and properties from the functional, dynamic interaction of the elements involved, not from each isolated part’s effect on the totality. Each component of the individual structures and processes that are operating, as well as each component of the environment, takes on meaning from its role in the total, integrated functioning of the individual (Magnusson, 1990).

PERSPECTIVES

An individual’s thoughts, feelings, actions, and reactions can be the object of study from three complementary perspectives: synchronic, diachronic, and evolutionary. It should be recognized that the three perspectives are complementary, not contradictory.

Research on psychological phenomena in a synchronic perspective is concerned with the processes of thoughts, feelings, actions, and reactions within the framework of existing mental, biological, and behavioral structures. Accordingly, “synchronic” models analyze and explain why individuals function based on their contemporaneous mental, behavioral, and biological states and independent of the developmental processes that may have led to the present state of affairs (e.g., most cognitive models). In contrast, “diachronic” models analyze current functioning in terms of the individual’s developmental history. They are concerned with how relevant aspects of the individual and his or her environment have operated in the process leading to the current functioning.

Research on individual development is concerned with this process over the life span, from conception to death (Baltes, Lindenberger, and Staudinger, 1998; Cairns,1998; Overton, 1998; Valsiner & Conolly, 2003, presented elaborated overviews and discussions of the concept of development, its theoretical, conceptual, and methodological implications).

THREE GENERAL APPROACHES TO PERSON-ENVIRONMENT RELATIONS

At a metatheoretical level, three general approaches to the study of person-environment relations in individual current functioning and development can be distinguished:

1. unidirectional causality,
2. classical interactionism, and
3. modern interactionism, here designated holistic interactions.

Each has its specific implications for theory building and for the implementation and interpretation of empirical studies.

Unidirectional Person-Environment Models

The individual is the target of environmental influences.

According to classical psychoanalytical theory, the life course of an individual is under the unidirectional influence of the parent's treatment of the child during infancy.

Holistic interactionism rests on five basic propositions:

1. The individual is an active, intentional part of a complex, dynamic PE system.
2. The individual functions and develops as a total, integrated organism.
3. Individual functioning in existing psychobiological structures, as well as developmental change, can best be described as integrated, complex, and dynamic processes.
4. Such processes are characterized by continuously ongoing interactions (including interdependence) among mental, behavioral, and biological components of the individual and social, cultural, and physical components of the environment.
5. The environment functions and changes as a continuously ongoing process of interaction and interdependence among social, cultural, and physical factors.

THE PERSON AS THE ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE FOR SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

The Person as an Active Agent in the Person-Environment System

The view of the individual as active and purposeful is not new. The dynamic conception of the mind and mental processes as activities, rather than as an organ receiving and processing information, was advocated by the act psychologists in Europe such as Brentano (1874/1924) and Stumpf (1883). In the United States, James (1890) was a proponent of the same view. The intentional nature of the individual’s way of functioning, which formed a central element in Brentano’s view, was also stressed by Tolman (1951) in his focus on purposive behavior. More recently, the individual as an active, purposeful agent has been emphasized in action theory (e.g., Brandtstädter, Chapter 10, this Handbook, this volume).

Subconscious Processes

One of the most important elements of subconscious processes is the expectation in two interdependent respects:

1. expected outcomes of own activities in the present situation, and
2. general expectations about the environment in which the situation is embedded.

Values, Valuations, and Norms

Carver and Scheier (1998) stated: “Though not constituting the whole of the feedback loop, a goal is essential to the feedback loop”

The history of politics and religion is full of illustrations of the strong impact of values and valuations on the functioning of individuals, organizations, and societies, reflected in attitudes, traditions, and conflicts. An elaborate model for how personal and social values, through attitudes and subjective norms, affect behavioral intentions and actions in a current perspective was presented in Fishbein and Ajzen’s theory of reasoned action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980).

Values and valuations have a strong position in the integrated mediating system, both in guiding daily interests and activities and in the organism’s processes of maintaining continuity and stability in the individual’s way of dealing with the environment.

Self-Consciousness, Self-Perceptions, and Self-Evaluations

In addition, in The Wonder of Being Human: Our Mind and Our Brain, the Nobel laureate John Eccles and Donald Robinson (1985) used the term “self-conscious mind” for what they saw as the highest mental experiences and discussed the emergence of self-consciousness and analyzed it as a central element in the brain-mind processes.

Children’s experiences of handling their environment, of perceived control and predictability, have consequences for their view of themselves as (a) competent or noncompetent or as confident or non-confident in their abilities, (b) for their motivation to cope with demands of particular situations, and (c) for mobilization of behavioral and emotional resources. Harter (1990) described the prototype of the child with high self-esteem as the child who is confident, curious, takes initiative, tolerates frustrations, and adjusts to environmental changes.

The development of the individual’s self-perception, self-evaluation, and self-respect forms the main element in the process of learning and experience through which he or she gains the ability to exert predictive and active control over the environment (Bandura, 1977; Brandtstädter, 1993; Harter, 1983). The issue of personality and self in a developmental perspective is dealt with comprehensively by Baltes, Lindenberger, and Staudinger (Chapter 11, this Handbook, this volume). Pulkkinen and Rönkä (1994) empirically investigated the relationship between self-identity in personal control over development and future life orientation and the role of school achievement, school success, and socioeconomic status in the home for these developmental aspects. In an article on the interaction between the self and the environment, Karli (2000) analyzed the interconnected brain regions that are involved in the socially adaptive functions of affect and emotion.

During developmental transitions, a central role is played by self-definition in relation to formal and informal environmental age-graded developmental norms and expectations. 

Language and Language Acquisition

A crucial factor in the processes of individual functioning and development is language and language acquisition. In a current perspective, access to a functional language plays a fundamental role for internal processes such as thinking and abstraction, as well as for behavior, for example in social contexts, regardless of cultural context, age, and level of intelligence. Access to a functioning language is central to the individual’s interpretation of meaning in the environment. Language acquisition in the development of thinking was a central issue for Piaget (1964). In his empirical study of isolated and illiterate Uzbekistanis, Luria (1976) observed the link between access to linguistic ability and abstract thinking. The main topic of Science in February 2004 “Evolution of Language” is an indication of the current interest in this area from a broader scientific perspective. Recent research on individual language and language acquisition was summarized by Tomasello (1999; see also Lundberg, 2006).

Emotions

Everyday experiences show the importance of affective tones attached to inner life and external activities, with effects on our own behaviors and the behaviors of others. Scientists have recognized this in discussions of human nature since ancient times. Darwin (1872) devoted a book to this issue, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, and William James in Principles (1890) discussed emotions and their relations to biological processes. From this perspective, it is noteworthy, how empirical research on emotions was underestimated in the postwar period until the final decades of the twentieth century.

Research by Damasio (2003), LeDoux (1996), and others have increased our knowledge of the role of feelings and emotions in the functioning and development of the mental, mediating system and their bases in brain processes. There is a growing interest in the role of emotions in decision making (see, e.g., Schwartz, 2000)

Motivation

One of the most important concepts in individual functioning and development is that of motivation, closely connected with goals, values, emotions, and actions. Motivation is a fundamental issue for understanding human functioning and development: In everyday life, it is easy to recognize motivated individuals. Since the first century A.D., motivation has been a central topic in models of learning and education.

Development of the Mediating Mental System

Altogether, these examples support the conclusion that while the human being is born with great biological (genetic and constitutional) potentials, the nature of the individual’s functioning during all stages of the life course is dependent on his or her experiences, gained from the position in the integrated PE system.

Comments

Cautions are advocated when components of the mediating system are the target of theoretical and empirical analyses. The foregoing discussion of various facets of the mental system uses a number of concepts, some of which reflect hypothetical constructs such as values, goals, norms, attitudes, and self-perceptions. When using such concepts it is easy to fall into the trap of reification, to forget that these constructs are only abstractions covering different aspects of an organism that functions as an organized whole. Perceptions, cognitions, emotions, values, norms, and attitudes are components of the same integrated process.

Behavior in a Holistic-Interactionistic Model

It should be observed that individual behavior in a specific situation with its specific characteristics is not solely dependent on the individuals’ latent dispositions as reflected in trait measures. The behavior in a specific situation is a function of both individual mental and biological dispositions and situational characteristics; it is a matter of mutual causation. A person with a strong latent disposition for alcohol will not become an alcoholic if the proximal environment does not offer access to alcohol. Similarly, it is only under specific environmental conditions that an aggressive person commits violent crimes. This is one reason why prediction of individual behavior in new situations is often not possible.

Biology and Antisocial Behavior

Antisocial behavior is an aspect of individual functioning for which a systematic and often replicated relation to physiological activity/reactivity has been demonstrated. Research on neurotransmitters, hormones (e.g., testosterone, cortisol, and adrenalin), and pulse rate as components in adolescent development was summarized by Ortiz and Raine (2004) and Raine (2002). In these studies, a positive, sometimes strong correlation has been found between antisocial behavior and low physiological activity/reactivity as reflected in low adrenaline excretion.

Comments

The brief overview of the role of biological components shows the importance of considering such components in theorizing and empirical research in integrated developmental processes. Two characteristics of the biological tradition in psychological research are noteworthy. First, for example, despite Angell’s (1907) incorporation of biological factors into what might be seen primarily as a holistic view of individual functioning, biological factors have not been consistently integrated into psychological models. Rather, they have mostly formed an independent line of research with little impact on developmental research. Second, to the extent that biological factors have been studied empirically, their role in individual functioning has most often been seen as causal; a reductionistic view has dominated. Exceptions can be found in the work of Bronfenbrenner and Crouter (1983), Cairns (1979), and Lerner (1984) and in the presentations by psycho-biologists such as Kalverboer and Hopkins (1983) and Levine (1982). Dawson, Ashman, and Carver (2000) summarized research on the role of upbringing conditions and the long-term effects in brain development, and Glaser (2000) reviewed research on the role of child abuse and neglect for brain development. Also, an overview of research on biology in individual development was presented by Gottlieb, Wahlsten, and Lickliter (1998).

The Nature-Nurture Issue: Hereditary and Environmental Factors in Individual Development

An important step toward understanding the role of genes in developmental processes was the discovery of DNA and the genetic code in the 1960s. This discovery opened new windows for mapping the individual genome structure and for research on the mechanisms by which genetic factors operate. The interpretation of recent research along this line has led to the introduction of theoretical models that emphasize the composite function of genetic and environmental factors in the developmental processes of individuals.

Accordingly, in most respects, individual development takes place in a process of maturation and experience in interaction with the environment, on the basis of and within the limits set by inherited factors.

With reference to the results of a training program for animals and humans, Schrott (1997) concluded that:

environmental stimulation has been found to increase brain weight (especially forebrain), cortical thickness, the number of glial cells, the glia to neuron ratio, neuronal cell body and nucleus size, and to alter synaptic profiles by increasing dendritic branching, dendritic spine density, and the number of discontinuous synapses. 

Biological Age: A Marker of Maturation Rate

The existence of strong interindividual differences in growth rate may have profound consequences, not only for individual differences in various aspects of functioning but also with respect to the way the environment reacts to the individual. Differences in developmental timing are thereby related to individuals’ social relations, as well as to their capacity to meet environmental demands and to use environmental opportunities effectively. However, to control for biological age rather than chronological age when designing empirical studies is only a remedy under specified conditions. Biological and chronological factors are nested; the expression of individual differences in growth rate for central factors in developmental processes is sometimes counteracted by societal influences, which are bound to chronological age: for example, compulsory school education, compulsory military service in some countries, and the compulsory age for retirement.

For example, changes that have been characterized as “turning points,” sometimes appear as a result of “chance events” or “significant events.” 

What remains is the formidable task of disentangling causal status among the variables in the developmental sequence, including the transactions that turn genetic chemistry into behavioral individuality and the ways in which social context and social relationships are implicated in both stability and change. (Hartup & van Lieshout, 1995, p. 681)

“Satisfactory explanation of the past is possible even when prediction of the future is impossible” (p. 477).

The most impressive aspect of the living world is its diversity. No two individuals in sexually reproducing populations are the same nor are any two populations, species, or higher taxa. Wherever one looks in nature, one finds uniqueness.

Comments

First, the target of analysis is the individual as an integrated element in a sociocultural environment with its specific norms, rules, attitudes, values, and valuations. Accordingly, these characteristics should be taken into account in the appropriate way when designing and interpreting studies on specific issues. Second, if the researcher wants to generalize about developmental processes across cultures, a careful theoretical and, in some cases, empirical, cultural, and cross-cultural analysis is required.

THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE PERSON-ENVIRONMENT SYSTEM

An individual’s way of thinking, feeling, acting, and reacting develops in a process of close interaction with the physical and sociocultural environment. It is therefore pertinent to enumerate certain basic environmental properties that are relevant to understanding the processes involved in individual development. The aim is not to give a comprehensive presentation of research on environmental factors in the functioning and development of the integrated PE system. It is rather to draw attention to environmental aspects that should be considered when designing, implementing, and interpreting empirical studies on specific developmental problems. For a fuller conceptual treatment of the role of environmental factors in developmental processes, the reader is referred to Bronfenbrenner and Morris (1998) and Schweder et al. (1998).

The Concept of Context

A key concept in models for individual current functioning and development is that of context. The total, integrated, and organized PE system, of which the individual forms a part, consists of a hierarchical system of elements, from the cellular level of the individual to the macrolevel of environments (Hinde, 1996; Lerner, 1978; Riegel, 1975).

The Environment in Developmental Research

At the theoretical level, researchers in the area of personality have long emphasized that individual behavior cannot be understood and explained in isolation from the situational conditions under which it occurs. The importance of the situational conditions for behavior was observed by Reinhardt (1937): “reliability of predictions as to future behavior . . . depends not upon the constancy of individual purpose alone . . . but also upon the continuance or occurrence of the same type of situation” (p. 492). 

The fact that psychology has not developed a language of environments to the same extent that it has acquired a language of behavior and personality is particularly indicative when one considers the role that environmental theories have played in neighboring disciplines that are also concerned with the functioning and development of organisms at the individual level.

Actual and Perceived Environments

An old distinction is that of the environment “as it is” and the environment “as it is perceived,” construed, and represented in the minds of individuals. Here the two aspects are discussed as actual versus perceived environments. Knowledge about the organization and function of the environment in both these perspectives is needed for a proper analysis of person-environment interaction processes. It is assumed that the main function of the environment in these processes is the environment as it is perceived and interpreted by the individual. However, individual perceptions and interpretations of the external world are formed and function with reference to the organization and function of the environment “as it is,” the actual sociocultural and physical environment.

The Actual Physical Environment

“Experience of objects, of physical reality is obviously a basic factor in the development of cognitive structures”

The arrangement of the physical environment, as well as the variety of stimulation and information it offers, has implications for the development of sensory perception, as well as for cognitive development.

The Environment as a Source of Information and a Source of Stimulation

The impact of external factors comes primarily through individuals’ processing of information offered by the environment.

Experiences are interpreted in the current frame of reference.

The concept of the environment as a source of stimulation is best illustrated in experimental psychology. An essential tenet of the experimental tradition is that the stimulus is defined in objective terms. This assumes that the impact of a certain contextual factor is general and has the same meaning and the same stimulus value to all individuals (e.g., Fechner’s reasoning about the objective character of physical stimuli).

Formative and Eliciting Events

Formative life events influence the predisposition for a certain behavior, including antisocial behavior and vulnerability to disorders. Thus, they affect development by increasing or decreasing the probability for later behaviors and disorders (e.g., Brown, Harris, & Peto, 1973). Triggering events may elicit a certain behavior or a schizophrenic episode without necessarily increasing or decreasing the probability for later behaviors and episodes.

Where triggering events are interchangeable because their effects are typically channeled through nonspecific routes, like stress in the case of physical and mental disorders, formative events may be more specific and noninterchangeable. From an interactionist view, formative events would be active in development by shaping individuals’ readiness to cope with particular situations.

Significant Events

In other cases, a significant event may be the result of deliberate action by the individual himself/herself or by individuals whose actions influence others. Sometimes the effect is not visible immediately, but grows slowly and eventually has decisive effects on the individual’s life in a manner that is typical of the so-called butterfly effect in chaos theory. Originally, attention was drawn to this characteristic of dynamic systems by Poincaré (1946):

A very small cause, which escapes us, determines a considerable effect we cannot help seeing, and then we say that the effect is due to chance. . . . If we could know exactly the laws of nature and the situation of the universe at the initial instant, we should be able to predict the situation of this same universe at a subsequent instant. . . . But it is not always the case; it may happen that slight differences in the initial conditions produce very great differences in the final phenomena; a slight error in the former would make an enormous error in the latter. Prediction becomes impossible, and we have the fortuitous phenomenon.

Peers

An extensive body of literature indicates that peer relations constitute the interpersonal environment in which much new behavior emerges among children and adolescents. Peer relationships and friendships are particularly interesting for adolescents (e.g., Berndt, 1982; Cairns & Cairns, 1994). With respect to the role of peers in the developmental processes, three themes for research on peer relations can be distinguished: (1) individual behavior associated with peer relations, (2) the characteristics and the functioning of the peer group for individual behavior, and (3) the contextual embeddedness of the peer group.

Social development applies not only to the individual but to the social organization of which he is a part. Variations occur not only in the social status of a particular person within the group, but also in the structure of the group itself—that is, in the frequency, strength, pattern, and the basis of the inter-relationships which bind the group together and give it a distinctive character. (p. 363)

Formal and Informal Societal Regulations

To a varying extent, opportunities and restrictions for the functioning and development of individuals and of proximal environments are determined by formal, societal rules. Some are bound to chronological age such as entering and ending compulsory education, joining the army, or age of retirement. Some are nationally regulated, while others may be locally determined. The extent to which legal norms exist varies across countries and societies. The socialization process is also dependent on and influenced by informal societal norms and rules such as the rules for dating in the traditional U.S. culture or for female dress in fundamentalist Muslim countries. Informal rules for individual behavior may be general and even hold across societies; others are more specific and bound to certain groups (e.g., religious sects) or temporary trends (the hippie movement of the 1960s and 1970s)

Ideological and political movements influence and alter educational opportunities and systems as well as societal norms, rules, roles, and values. Urbanization, almost throughout the world, has not only meant that more people grow up and live in urban areas but also that the economic, social and cultural character of urban areas has changed, sometimes drastically. One implication of these changes is that a person growing up and staying in the same local environment may die in a distal environment that differs greatly from the one in which he or she was born. Moreover, different generations are born in and live in different environments, with different norms, values, resources, and demands. It follows that valid generalizations are difficult to make across generations and across cultures about what are the dominant factors and the operating mechanisms in individual developmental processes.

The diversity of possible life paths may generate stress and insecurity among young people. What can be considered a favorable pathway toward adulthood in a society depends on the culture’s “implicit theory of success” (Klaczynski, 1990; Ogbu, 1981).

In summary, how children and adolescents use the available opportunities in the sociocultural environment, the age at which they make transitions, and how they define themselves in age-graded norms in society, can have profound consequences for their adjustment contemporaneously and for their future life track. To some extent, individual behavior is organized by the broader sociocultural arrangements as, through its institutions and age requirements on behavior, society shapes the direction of and sets the milestones for individual behavior. But individuals also organize their own development within the opportunities and restrictions offered by the environment, and by their own actions, young people select some types of developing environments at the expense of others, and through these means contribute to shaping their unique development.

A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Cross-cultural comparisons are particularly needed to examine whether the setting mechanisms behind behavior are similar across cultures, whether the mediators of behavioral, family, and peer processes are similar or different, and whether the same factors operate as moderating conditions for psychological functioning in the same way across cultures.

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF THE HOLISTIC-INTERACTIONISTS MODEL

The term “variable” is one of the most misused concepts in psychological research. Misunderstanding is sometimes due to the concept being used in two distinctly different senses: as a psychological concept reflecting a certain aspect of individual functioning, say intelligence or aggressiveness, and as a statistical concept, referring to the measurement level of data.

In the mind of the person, each aspect constitutes an element in an integrated process and its significance and importance are to some extent unique for the individual.

The building blocks of all biological organs are the cells. Behind individual development as an organized, functional totality from a single cell lies the process of interaction among cells. Each cell develops, functions, and dies as a result of cell-cell interaction in which information is received from and sent to neighboring cells.

The brain and the immune system form a bidirectional communication network in which the immune system operates as a sense organ to provide the brain with information about infection and injury, thereby allowing the brain to coordinate a defense. Activated immune cells release proteins called cytokines, which signal the brain by both blood and neural routes. Information that reaches the brain across this sensory channel produces large changes in neural activity, behavior, mood, and cognitive functioning. Appreciation of the functioning of this network may illuminate poorly understood aspects of stress, depression, and intraindividual variability in behavior, mood, and cognition.

The mentalistic model emphasizes mental factors as the central ones for understanding why individuals function and develop as they do. The focus of interest in theorizing and empirical analyses is on intrapsychic processes of perceptions, thoughts, emotions, values, goals, plans, and conflicts. In the biological model, an individual’s thoughts, feelings, actions, and reactions are assumed to be determined basically by his or her biological equipment and its way of functioning. Primary determining factors are assumed to be found in the brain, the physiological system, and the autonomic nervous system. When biological models of individual development are applied, the major determining guiding factors are genetic and maturational. In its extreme version, this model implies that individual differences in the course of development have their roots in genes, while environmental and mental factors play a minor role. The environmentalists model locates the main causal factors for individual functioning and development in the environment. It is reflected in theories and models at all levels of generality for environmental factors: macro-social theories, theories about the role of the “sick family” and S-R models for specific individual variables, are a few examples. The environmentalist model has been very influential in developmental research.

The amazing precision with which different cell types find their correct location in developing tissues has fascinated biologists for decades. Models of cell fate patterning during development emphasize the contrast between spatial gradients of developmental signals that act at long range and cell-to-cell signaling events that act locally.

From the beginning of fetal development, self-organization is a guiding principle. “Finality in the living world thus originates from the idea of organism, because the parts have to produce each other, because they have to associate to form the whole, because, as Kant said, living beings must be ‘self-organized’ ” (Jacob, 1976, p. 89).

The strength and indeed the very preservation of nascent connections between neurons appear to depend on patterns of neural activity in the developing nervous system and these patterns of activity vary among individuals—at best they are only statistically regular—so that detailed wiring of each individual’s brain is distinct.

The basic principles of developmental processes lead to the conclusion that progress in research on working mechanisms requires further development and application of appropriate methods for systematic observation and description under controlled conditions. Sometimes nature offers conditions for systematized observation. An illustration of how knowledge can be obtained by observations that use variation in natural conditions for the study of basic psychological phenomena is Luria’s (1976) study of language, self-perceptions, perceptions of others, and perceptions of the world.

The generalization of results from studies on specific issues is a goal of scientific research. In the tradition of experimental psychology, replicability has been regarded as the main criterion of the validity of results. Unsophisticated use of this rule has sometimes, for example, had the consequence that differences in results from studies on a specific issue in different cultures have been interpreted as errors. This motivates some comments.

The Mind: Worldviews and Self-Perceptions

The integrated mind, involving perceptions, cognitions, self-perceptions, emotions, and values, forms the mental frame of reference for an individual’s conscious and subconscious sense of meaning in observations of the external world and of her or his own role. Thus, the mental life of an individual plays a decisive role in that individual’s inner life, relations to other people, interpreting what happens, expectations about what might happen in the proximal and distal environments, and the goals and directions of internal and external activities.

THE DEVELOPING PERSON: AN EXPERIENTIAL PERSPECTIVE Kevin Rathunde and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

AN EXPERIENTIAL PERSPECTIVE ON HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

Experiential or phenomenological perspectives are underutilized in developmental thought, despite the fact that they can reveal much about the process of development. In particular, optimal experience and its regulation can help explain why some individuals are able to maintain cognitive flexibility throughout life and are better able to navigate a path of lifelong learning. A better understanding of these person-level processes can also shed light on the characteristics of social contexts that positively affect the experience and, therefore, the course of development.

Adopting an experiential perspective in no way implies taking the person out of context. Nor does it suggest that individual processes are more important than biological or cultural ones.

An Experiential Turn: Putting the Study of Experience in Historical Context

William James did much to establish the relevance of subjective experience for psychology. James’s interest in experience and its relation to optimal functioning was unique for his time.

“Only those items which I notice shape my mind,” he said, “without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos” (James, 1890, p. 402). This statement signals James’s inclusive and holistic view of consciousness and his attempt to understand how immediate interests and emotions affected the ongoing stream of thought. His stream-of-thought metaphor highlighted the crucial importance of understanding the moment-to-moment use of attention as a foundation for understanding many other outcomes, such as lifelong learning, and even genius.

One of the most important points: Intrinsic motivation provides an invaluable and continually renewable source of energy for development. Intrinsic motivation, as conceptualized here, is not another instance of dichotomizing inner and outer as is sometimes the case with intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation debates. Rather, intrinsic motivation can be thought of as the energy that results when momentary involvement and goals are not artificially or forcefully divorced from one another.

If such immediacy is not considered in relation to consciously pursued goals, it is very difficult to understand the motivational forces behind them. Dewey understood this, as did James. It was the primary reason that Dewey devoted so much time to understanding the relationship between education and experience (1938). He believed that education must not ignore the importance of momentary, unfolding experiences. That is why Dewey stressed the interplay of thinking and doing in the classroom; rationality was a problem-solving tool best used in coordination with action.

Aesthetic experiences could reveal a great deal about human potential and the ideal conditions for learning. In contemporary psychology, Abraham Maslow (1968) was instrumental in highlighting how such “peak” experiences were related to optimal growth in self-actualizing individuals. Maslow—like Dewey and James before him—grounded his thought in a philosophy that challenged traditional scientific approaches. Maslow’s grounding came from the tradition of existentialism as well as phenomenology. Self-actualizing individuals were on a path of lifelong learning; as one might expect, they reported more peak experiences than individuals who were stuck in lower phases of growth. Peak experiences could occur in any domain of life, but Maslow tended to view them, like James, as rare, transcendent moments that could have life-changing consequences.

...flow experiences

Flow can accompany a life event of singular importance, but it can also occur in the context of seemingly ordinary daily activities.

The Developing Person in Context

Each community develops an image of what constitutes a “good” person and what qualities and skills are important to develop to be a valued member of a group. For example, the traditional Hindu view is that a person is not an individual, but a position in a network of social relations (Marriott, 1976). A physical specimen of Homo sapiens is not a person, unless he or she belongs to a group, and fulfills the responsibilities thereof. The classical Chinese view and the understanding of the native tribes living along the Amazon River are not that different (Lévi-Strauss, 1967). In most cultures, the individual in its physicality is no better than any other animal. It takes the transforming power of culture and society to turn the animal into a person.

In some cultures, a man or woman is not considered a full-fledged person until their first grandchild is born. Being a grandparent means, among other things that: (a) one is fertile, and therefore endowed with sacred power; (b) one is successful because only reasonably wealthy parents can find spouses for their children; and (c) one is wise or at least experienced, having lived this long (LeVine, 1980). Only when these qualities are finally achieved is a person finally complete.

For instance, Eric Erikson (1950) focuses on the sequence of psychosocial tasks we must confront: Forming an identity in adolescence, developing intimacy in young adulthood, achieving generativity in middle age, and finally bringinging together one’s past life into a meaningful narrative at the stage of integrity in old age (see also Vaillant, 1993). Robert Havighurst (1953) shifted the emphasis more on social role demands and developed a model of life transitions based on changing expectations related to age—for example, the student, the worker, the parent. More recently, Levinson (1980) and Bee (1992) proposed similar models. Developmental theories usually do not make the claim that these tasks are always resolved, or even that the person is necessarily aware of them. But unless they are successfully resolved, the person’s psychological adaptation is likely to be impaired. Common to these models is the assumption that individuals who deviate from normative developmental stages without good reason run the risk of compromising their chances for full personhood.

Stressing the ways in which a person is socially constructed and embedded in their social contexts seems to imply a passive and relativistic position. It may suggest that the criteria of personhood are more or less arbitrary, the result of chance historical developments in different places and times. It may also suggest that most aspects of life are “unconscious” and not subject to a person’s active influence. However, we do not believe these statements to be true. The understanding of how a person develops may vary a great deal across times and places, and social practices may place powerful constraints on paths to becoming a person. However, adopting an experiential perspective highlights core aspects of human nature that—if nurtured and allowed to flourish—provide opportunities to exert influence on the course of development.

Human Nature and Optimal Arousal

Because all experiences are situated in contexts, the exact nature of anxiety, boredom, and flow will differ with respect to specific content. In other words, cultures have different symbolic domains, and because they organize information differently, there are many differences in what activities are likely to produce flow, and what specific steps constitute the most effective path to it.

To understand the developing person from an experiential perspective, one could start from other common human experiences besides flow. However, there are certain advantages in focusing on optimal arousal, especially when a primary goal is to understand the developing person. Anxiety ignites a conservative response (e.g., caution, consolidation of a position); it motivates because of the need to protect things that are thought to be essential, such as one’s life, family, or beliefs.

Flow is a more difficult way forward as a solution to boredom and anxiety than the short-term solutions of distraction or retreat. The flow experience, therefore, provides a valuable window for viewing the developing person because of its status as a complex experience, or one that lies at the very “edge” of stability and change (Waldrop, 1992).

The absence of flow also reveals much about the developing person. As with other dialectical models, such as Piaget’s (1962) model of assimilation and accommodation, the balance between skills and challenges is thought to be in flux and always changing. To resolve a high arousal condition (i.e., high challenge and low skill) in a way that promotes growth over the long run, a person needs to raise skills and thereby increase a sense of order and emerging control. However, when arousal is reduced in the short term by disregarding a challenge or holding ever more tightly to the skills already possessed, the flow will not occur.

Conversely, a healthy solution to boredom (low challenge and high skill) occurs when a person challenges their existing skills and thereby initiates an emerging sense of change and expansion. The short-term solution of finding a distraction, or some form of quick entertainment, may take the sting out of feeling bored, but it will not result from the inflow. In the long run, such “solutions” are a waste of valuable resources of attention that could be invested in growth-oriented activities. Dewey referred to these unhealthy outcomes as drudgery and fooling, respectively (Dewey, 1913).

Instigating One’s Own Development: The Potential Self-Regulation of Experience

Again, the moment-to-moment experience lies at the heart of emergent person-environment interactions and, therefore, provides a potential leverage point for affecting development and the course of socialization.

A person is subject to the socialization forces of a culture, but he or she is capable of initiating change because the opposite is also true: Social practices must accommodate human nature and its parameters for the optimal experience. Just as the eye works best by avoiding the extremes of too little or too much illumination, socialization processes will be rejected when they do not provide opportunities for sustaining optimal arousal through transforming anxiety and/or boredom (i.e., by building new skills or finding meaningful challenges, respectively). When social practices consistently result in aversive experiences or offer only short-term solutions to such experiences, they will not be replicated or endorsed by future generations. Individual actors—through their own self-regulatory actions—will be compelled to change them.

Rigid social practices, for example, authoritarian regimes or unchanging traditional cultures, might survive for a time due to the threat of violence, the pressure of public opinion, or the safety and familiarity they provide to people facing anxiety-provoking threats. However, if such contexts do not provide individuals with opportunities to transform the challenges faced, experience is likely to alternate between anxiety and the deadening of the human spirit resulting from the inflexible “solutions.” With time, the quality of life in such contexts works to undermine the stagnant system. Many modern societies face the opposite dilemma: The absence of an external threat and the relative comfort of life have resulted in socialization practices that are geared toward entertainment and distraction rather than growth. Such permissive systems protect the right to self-indulgence, but they provide few opportunities to really challenge the existing order that provides the basis of comfort. Personal experience in such a society can become increasingly frivolous and meaningless. Therefore, pressure for change results from trying to escape the aversive cycle of “solving” the problem of boredom with endless new distractions.

Anxiety that is not effectively resolved through the growth of new skills (i.e., finding a new sense of order) is often resolved by a retreat to the status quo; boredom that is not ameliorated with meaningful challenges is often “treated” with temporary distractions. Both of these undesirable outcomes, if multiplied over time, can result in unhealthy developmental trajectories for societies and the people in them. However, such conditions will not hold in the long run because they waste valuable resources of attention and do allow a person to organize and reorganize experience in increasingly more complex ways.

At first, change may come from a “creative minority” of individuals who see a better way forward (Toynbee, 1987). Eventually, however, if a society is to flourish, the forces of stability and change in society must work in a complementary way, with each used to refashion the other.

Periods of great human achievement and progress often coincide with historical periods where social integration and differentiation were both presents, but one did not dominate the other.

Ideal Outcomes of Adult Development: The Role of Psychological Complexity

Psychological complexity, or more simply—complexity, refers to habitual dispositions that actively respond to aversive experiential conditions: when anxiety indicates disorder in the self-environment relationship, creating order through a higher level of integration becomes a conscious goal; when faced with boredom, seeking change through differentiation becomes the aim. In other words, a person with psychological complexity responds to new challenges with skill-building attempts, rather than a retreat to familiar methods that alleviate anxiety without transforming the problem that creates it. When facing the opposite experiential impasse, such a person responds to conditions of monotonous ease and comfort by finding a challenge that focuses attention in a transformative direction. Such a change is more than a shortcut to stimulation; it embraces what Piaget would refer to as disequilibrium in the self-environment relationship as a way toward higher development (Piaget, 1962).

One fruitful direction, we believe, is to look beyond outward appearances and focus on how—within any system—optimal functioning involves the need for integration and differentiation in the self-environment relationship. 

It is reasonable to believe that a person with psychological complexity will more often enjoy the full engagement of attention and optimal arousal that it implies, and will have, therefore, a greater capacity to actualize their potential.

Bruner (1986) has argued that developmental psychologists cannot just describe, but must also prescribe optimal ways of developing. If not, they abdicate their role in the construction of the public meanings that societies depend on for self-regulation.

Instead of suggesting specific criteria for optimal development, we propose to look through an experiential lens at similarities in the process of regulating experience.

OPTIMAL EXPERIENCE THEORY

Thus, equilibrium describes the state of the open system such that the self and environment are related in a way that is differentiated and integrated; to our way of thinking, such equilibrium would signal optimal arousal. Assimilation and accommodation are two facets of a unitary and dynamic evolutionary process and must be understood together: As an organism differentiates, it moves, so to speak, through assimilation toward accommodation (i.e., from structure toward change). This movement calls for a reverse movement through accommodation toward assimilation (i.e., from change to structure) that integrates the organism with the environment in a new way.

The claim here is that moments of self-environment equilibrium are experienced by the self as optimally rewarding. To the extent that Piaget was correct in asserting that the search for equilibration energized human development, it is accurate to say that development is also motivated by the search for the optimal experience. It is through monitoring such experiences that we can learn to recognize when relationships are complex and when they are too differentiated or too integrated (i.e., having overemphasized either accommodation or assimilation, respectively). And to the extent that the person is defined less as a static entity and more as a relational process, then a theory of optimal experience becomes an important link to a fuller understanding of the developing person. 

Other Perspectives on Self-Environment Equilibrium

What does it mean to love one’s fate? For Nietzsche, it meant the affirmation of life through a full acceptance of its circumstances. Despite hardship or obstacle, or perhaps more accurately, because of them, one would not wish for one’s life to unfold in any other way. This is so because the process of overcoming obstacles provides the opportunities through which the person is created. Amor fati, or love of fate, is a central concept in Nietzsche’s philosophy: “My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. . . . Not merely bear what is necessary... but love it” (1968, p. 714). The fully alive person (i.e., the overman) is not content with just surviving and adapting, but is intent on transcending himself or herself. Such experiences of transcendence provided his deepest motivation: “I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful” (1974, p. 223).

Maslow’s (1971) studies of self-actualization and peak experiences led him to a similar conclusion. The healthy person is not motivated just by deficits, simple endurance in life, or by the survival of self or offspring, but also by growth. Based on his observations and interviews with individuals he considered to be self-actualizing, including creative artists and scientists, he concluded that the processes of growth were often rewarded with fulfilling peak experiences. These experiences coincided with a synchronous relationship between self and environment; he referred to this synchrony as a balance of “inner requirements” with “outerrequiredness,” or “I want” with “I must.” Especially true of self-actualizing persons, during such experiences “one freely, happily, and wholeheartedly embraces one’s determinants. One chooses and wills one’s fate” (p. 325).

 Life processes do not merely tend to preserve life, but transcend the momentary status quo of the organism, expanding itself continually and imposing its autonomous determination upon an ever-increasing realm of events”.

Most important, it is an experience that confirms, manifests, and accompanies what the organism wants most: to develop and to grow.

The Optimal Experience of Flow

Inflow, a person is fully concentrated on the task at hand. There is a feeling that action and awareness merge in a single beam of focused consciousness. Inflow, it is very clear what needs to be done from one moment to the next; goals are clearly ordered and sequenced. One also knows immediately how well one is doing: Feedback is unambiguous. The tennis player knows whether the ball was hit well, the violinist hears whether the note just played was right or wrong. Inflow, a person loses self-consciousness; the vulnerable ego disappears.

Anxiety and boredom are aversive phenomenological states that result from disequilibrium in the momentary fit between skills and challenges or self and environment. When challenges are too high relative to skills, the asynchronous relationship leads to anxiety because one feels overwhelmed, out of control, threatened by a loss of integrity and order. In contrast, when skills are too high for the given challenges, the fit between self and environment is too easy and comfortable, resulting in the loss of novelty and therefore a decrease in the sense of focus and urgency.

The idea of “skills” suggests an analogous process; a skill is a practiced response, one that is habitual and automatic. A skilled pianist, therefore, primarily relies on an assimilative mode when reading an easy piece of music. On the other hand, if the challenge of reading the score moves beyond the skills of the pianist, an accommodative mode comes into play. Accommodation is a more effortful response to novelty (Block, 1982).

Overaccommodation is equivalent to the imbalance of challenges over skills, and it is experienced as anxiety. When anxious, one feels at the mercy of environmental circumstances that are beyond one’s control and thus blinded by the excessive stimulation to ways of making sense of the situation.

Flow and Development

Boredom, in a healthy personality, initiates a process of searching for a meaningful challenge, not just a diversion; as interest and curiosity draw the self out of its shell, boredom wanes, and the experience becomes more intrinsically rewarding.

Psychological Complexity and Development

An ego-resilient person is better able to keep the two modes in equilibrium and therefore avoid the particular dangers of over assimilation and overaccommodation by being flexible in changing life conditions. Such a person is capable of spontaneity under conditions of over- assimilation, and capable of self-direction and organization under conditions of overaccommodation (Block, 1982; Block & Block, 1980).

Ford and Lerner’s (1992) description of the competent person as possessing flexible self-regulation is also relevant here: “A competent person can modify effectively his or her own behavior and/or the features of the social situation in which he or she is engaged. . . . People can, for instance, change their topic of conversation if they find they are boring or upsetting others; or if they are bored or upset by what is being said, they can turn the topic of conversation round to more pleasant topics, or terminate it. . . . Such competency—such efficient self-regulation—is an instance of how one may act as a producer of their own development”.

Self-organizing systems are adaptive, in that they don’t just passively respond to events the way a rock might roll around in an earthquake. They actively try to turn whatever happens to their advantage. . . . Complex systems have somehow acquired the ability to bring order and chaos into a special balance. This balance point—often called the edge of chaos—is where the components of a system never quite lock into place, and yet never quite dissolve into turbulence, either. The edge of chaos is where life has enough stability to sustain itself and enough creativity to deserve the name of life. . . . The edge of chaos is the constantly shifting battle zone between stagnation and anarchy, the one place where a complex system can be spontaneous, adaptive, and alive. (pp. 11–12).

EXAMPLES OF COMPLEXITY IN LATER LIFE

An enjoyable and deeply involving conversation, for example, requires participants to express differing points of view; it also requires the coordination of such views for common understandings. When a conversation drags, a person with psychological complexity would presumably find a “problem” by working to stir things up, perhaps by expressing an opinion, offering new information, playing devil’s advocate, and so on. If a conversation is losing its continuity, and participants are expressing widely divergent points of view, such a person would work to build bridges and shared understandings. The particular qualities that represent complexity would depend on the particular domain of activity, but in general, it can be stated that structure-breaking/problem-finding phases start from an implicit sense of order that coincides with a push to take a risk, test a limit, be open to new challenges, and seek the edge of chaos. Conversely, a structure-building/problem-solving phase begins from a taken-for-granted sense of diversity or novelty, which coincides with a determination to find closure, be diligent, and patiently seek the edge of order.

Conversely, problem-solving begins from a context of differentiation. Let’s say that the student became really involved in searching for new information and was enjoying the process. He or she gathered a variety of new sources, jotted down a number of new ideas, and worked for days on the challenge of differentiating her original understanding. Now, however, boredom with writing an easy paper is no longer his or her problem. The ground has shifted and he or she feels anxious when considering the task ahead; the challenge has become the need to integrate all the new information. In terms of attention, the same dynamics apply, but the focus is reversed. Now, the student’s skills allow him or her to recognize multiple dimensions of the historical topic under study. The student does not have to expend much effort to consider all the different facets that he or she has become aware of over the past few days of research. If he or she takes this new challenge seriously, the situation also sets up a good opportunity for flow: His or her skills provide a context of differentiation that frees up voluntary or selective attention to work on the challenge of integration.

In the problem-finding situation (i.e., transforming boredom), the voluntary effort was doing the work of differentiation and finding novelty, and immediate attention was providing a sense of integration and order (i.e., the student's original grasp of the assignment). In the problem-solving scenario (i.e., transforming anxiety), the voluntary effort was used to do the work of finding new connections that could order the new information (e.g., finding a new theme or thesis for the paper), while immediate attention provided a kaleidoscope of new facts. In both cases, skills (automatic attention) and challenges (voluntary attention) must work in a complementary fashion to negotiate optimal arousal. Flow occurs when both are engaged and deepens the intensity of the present moment beyond what either mode could accomplish on its own.

Individuals who have been recognized for their eminent creativity may seem inappropriate for illustrating complexity. Creativity is often identified with one part of the developmental dialectic we have described, namely, the part associated with breaking structures and finding problems. It is true that creativity is most often identified with such differentiating responses, but that is probably because many creativity studies have set out to measure creativity in this way. However, creativity, which is sustained over a great length of time and results in eminent achievement, is not something that rests on divergent thinking alone; convergent, integrative thinking is equally important.

“Despite the self-evident need for strenuous effort . . . creative thinking entails, at least in some degree, surrender to freely rising playfulness”.

Creativity is not just about what is gained by playfulness and spontaneity that is free from abstraction; it is also about what is gained from the voluntary and directed control of attention that takes effort. 

Dimension of complexity

Equally as important as the effect, however, is a mode of detachment that allows the person to make sure that the enthusiasm fits reality:

It is very important to find a way to be detached from what you write . . . to let you work out the criticism. You can’t be so identified with your work that you can’t accept criticism and response. . . . The side of me that is more . . . detached tries to let the situation that I’m writing about, and its complexities . . . just be. The danger of too much effect is not only that the self gets too involved in it where we can’t take criticism . . . but also that there’s too much restructuring of the people around your own investment.

Wisdom is a quality of the long-lived person in a community is a theme that repeatedly occurs in Eastern and Western cultures. Such persons are thought to have a special insight that enables them to make or advise the “best” course of action in a given set of circumstances. The transmission of this idea across countless generations and societies argues for its validity on evolutionary grounds.

Sternberg (1990) describes wisdom, in contrast to intelligence and creativity, in the following way: “The wise person seeks to understand the meaning and limitations of this [existing] knowledge. The intelligent person seeks to make optimal use of this knowledge. The creative person, though, wishes to be freed from this knowledge”

The common terms love and discipline8 represent parenting behaviors that encourage complexity: When a parent appropriately mixes love with discipline, a child develops successful habits of assimilation and accommodation, thus making the coordination of these modes, and optimal experiences, more likely to occur. Over time, children socialized in homes that balance love with discipline develop a superior capacity to self-regulate their attention and respond to the environment in ways that promote optimal experience and growth. In other words, they are more likely to manifest the development-instigating characteristics that are associated with complexity.

Learning is compromised by a disruption in the stream of experience and the disconnection of immediate and voluntary uses of attention.

As most teachers can attest, during the elementary grades many children are enthusiastic about learning. However, middle school too often brings a decline in motivation and the quality of the school experience.

Maria Montessori came to believe that children’s spontaneous concentration revealed the essence of being human.

Montessori was impressed with children’s powers of concentration and spoke of it often: “It has been revealed that children not only work seriously but they have great powers of concentration. . . . Action can absorb the whole attention and energy of a person. It valorizes all the psychic energies so that the child completely ignored all that is happening around him” (Montessori, 1946, pp. 83–84).

“It is essential for the child, in all periods of his life, to have the possibilities of activities carried out by himself in order to preserve the equilibrium between acting and thinking. . . . [otherwise] His thoughts could . . . have the tendency to lose themselves in abstraction by reasoning without end” (pp. 24–25).

CONCLUSIONS: THE ROLE OF EXPERIENCE IN DEVELOPMENT

If experiential considerations are ignored when attempting to understand positive self-regulation and development, we miss the fact that to become active agents in their own ontogeny, individuals have to want to develop. And they will want to do so only if they enjoy it. If they do not, development becomes alienating because the child, as well as the adult, learns and grows primarily for extrinsic reasons. The child will study to graduate from school, the adult will work to get a paycheck and be promoted, and both will endure their present conditions listlessly in anticipation of a more pleasant future. This is not a developmental trajectory that leads to complexity or a desirable old age. By contrast, development takes an intrinsically motivated course if a child feels fully engaged and fully present while learning and engaging in new challenges. Habits developed in the successful regulation of optimal arousal are ones that form a solid basis for lifelong learning.

THE CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENT: ONE MIND, MANY MENTALITIES Richard A. Shweder, Jacqueline J. Goodnow, Giyoo Hatano, Robert A. LeVine, Hazel R. Markus, and Peggy J. Miller

POSITIVE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT: THEORY, RESEARCH, AND APPLICATIONS Peter L. Benson, Peter C. Scales, Stephen F. Hamilton, and Arturo Sesma Jr.

RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT THROUGHOUT THE LIFE SPAN Fritz K. Oser, W. George Scarlett, and Anton Bucher

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