Maestria

Dynamic Development of Integral Structure of Action

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The Dynamic Development of Thinking, Feeling and Acting over the Lifespan

Michael F. Mascolo Merrimack College & Kurt W. Fischer Graduate School of Education Harvard University

In W. F. Overton (Ed.), Biology, cognition and methods across the life-span. Volume 1 of the Handbook of life-span development, Editor-in-chief: R. M.Lerner. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. (2010).

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These are exciting times for developmental psychology. In the last several decades, advances in theory and research have produced profound changes in the ways in which we understand human action and development. These changes involve a reversal of many long-held assumptions about the nature ofpsychological functioning. The most salient of these involve refutations of the legacy of strong dualities that have long constrained progress in the study of human behavior and development. These include strong distinctions such as mind/body; emotion/reason; biology/psyche; organism/environment; inner/outer; behavior/mental process; individual/culture; and similar dualities (Overton, 2006). The mostexciting developments have come from the recognition that the elements and contexts of human activity cannot be understood independent of each other. Instead, human development occurs in medias res – in the middle of everything. When taken seriously, the implications of this idea are vast. Instead of operating as separate modules, thought and emotion; experience and action; biology and agency, personand environment; and other ostensibly opposing processes, are highly dependent upon each other. In this chapter, we elaborate a model of human development that takes seriously the idea that the structures and processes of human action operate as dynamic processes that take diverse forms and trajectories as they develop in medias res. A recurring theme that has emerged in developmental theory andresearch over the past several decades is the profound lack of independence of the systems that make up human action as well as the systems and contexts within which human action is embedded (Gangestad & Simpson, 2007; Gottlieb, Wahlsten & Lickliter, 2006; Lerner & Overton, 2008). Instead of postulating sequences of internal cognitive processes

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without reference to brain, body and social context, psychologists have examined the embodied nature of thought and action (Gibbs, 2006; Gallagher, 2005; Overton, Mueller, & Newman, 2007; Thompson, 2007). Thought has its origins in actions that occur within the medium of the body and which operate within physical and social contexts (Johnson, 1998; Noe, 2004). Instead of studying cognitionand emotion as separate and distinct psychological modules, psychologists, philosophers and neuroscientists currently maintain that emotion plays a necessary role in the organization of all human action (Freeman, 2000; LeDoux, 2002; Mascolo, Li & Fischer, 2003). Instead of viewing individual persons as entities that can function independent of physical and social contexts, current theory andresearch support the idea that person and context operate as distinct parts an interlocking system (Clark, 1997; Fischer & Bidell, 2006; Gottlieb, 2007; Lerner, 2005; Overton, 2006). This emergence of these approaches has important implications the ways in which we address central questions about human development. First, consider the foundational question: What is it that develops in psychologicaldevelopment. Emerging perspectives proceed with an appreciation of how seemingly different psychological functions co-develop and influence each other over time. For example, Campos and his colleagues (Campos, Anderson, Barbu-Roth, Hubbard, Hertenstein, Witherington, 2000; Lejeune, Anderson, Campos, Witherington, Uchiyama, & Barbu-Roth, 2006; Uchiyama, Anderson, Campos, Witherington, Frankel,...