Steps toward integrative theory of psychological development

Steps Toward Integrative Theory 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 Steps Toward Integrative Theory 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, takenfor-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 existing intersubjectivity While Husserl’s phenomenology of science applied to both the physical and natural sciences, the issue of intersubjectivity takes on greater importance in the social sciences This is because the processes by which we come to know persons are fundamentally different from those through which we come to know objects (Mascolo, 2017; Martin & Sugarman, 2009) In the natural sciences, our knowledge of the physical world comes from observing regularities in their physical features and movements This is not how we gain knowledge about the psychological life of persons (Shotter, 2017) People are not inscrutable objects; we not come to know persons by observing their behavior and then inferring about what might be occurring behind it Infants 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 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 Steps Toward Integrative Theory 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 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 Steps Toward Integrative Theory 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 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 Steps Toward Integrative Theory 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 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 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 Steps Toward Integrative Theory 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 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 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 Steps Toward Integrative Theory 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 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 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 Steps Toward Integrative Theory 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 – 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 Steps Toward Integrative Theory 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 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 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 Steps Toward Integrative Theory 10 Changes in the structure of early word combinations are provided in Figure 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 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 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 Steps Toward Integrative Theory 18 thus the process of developing increasingly differentiated and integrated understanding the relations between parts and wholes over time The hermeneutic circle provides a metaphor for understanding methodology for an integrative developmental theory The goal of such an endeavor would be to develop an integrative model of psychological function – perhaps a model similar to that depicted in Figure Such a model would guide research activity in a variety of more local areas and relations among local areas Discrepancies between and among outcomes of local research areas lead to the transformation of the integrative model, which would then spur additional research activity The benefits of such a process would be multiple In suggesting that theoretical integration is an important and worthwhile goal of developmental science, it would It allow developmental scientists to work toward an integral account of developing persons rather than merely the analysis of local psychological processes; identity gaps in our understanding of the psychological functioning of persons; help researchers identify how their individual research programs contribute to broader goals in developmental science, and vice-versa; stimulate an increased awareness of the mutual interplay among processes studied by different researchers in psychological functioning; and provide frameworks for interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research Cultivating Mindful Methods Research methods are often considered the sine qua non of psychological science In the social sciences, traditionally, research methods are often seen as procedures and techniques that are largely distinct from the theoretical traditions that guide inquiry From this view, the source of any given theory is largely irrelevant to the scientific process; what matters is how the constructs of any given theory are operationally defined so that they can be tested against objective descriptions of the world However, if, as argued here, research methods are not theoretically-neutral, then the usefulness of any given research method is defined with reference to the philosophical, theoretical and axiological assumptions that motivate it If this is so, we must embrace a rigorous practice of reflexivity in order to identify our basic presuppositions and beliefs, and to ensure that our methods are able to that which we intend them to In the absence of reflexivity, there is always the risk that the tool (method) will drive the purpose (theory), rather than the other way around To ward off this problem, there is a need for research designed with a series of considerations in mind Assessing contextualized action over time Piaget’s (1953) interpretive-observational analyses of the sensorimotor development of his three infant children remains a stellar example of the longitudinal analysis of developmental structures and processes By observing the gradual changes in the moment-by-moment process of acting on particular objects in particular contexts over time, Piaget was not only to extract a highly generalizable developmental sequence, he also identified powerful change processes (e.g., circular reactions; equilibration; hierarchical integration) that explain developmental processes For example, Piaget described examples in which an apparently chance action produced by a young infant would result in outcomes that appeared to perpetuate the action in question He called these behaviors circular reactions For example, Steps Toward Integrative Theory 19 “[a]t 0;3 (5) Lucienne shakes her bassinet by moving her legs violently (bending and unbending them, etc.), which makes the cloth dolls swing from the hood Lucienne looks at them, smiling, and recommences at once (p 157-158) In the days that followed, Piaget experimented with his child in order to determine whether the girl’s “vigorous shaking” was the result of the joy of seeing the dolls shake, or whether the shake constituted an active attempt to make the dolls move: At 0;3 (8) I again find Lucienne swinging her dolls An hour later I make them move slightly: Lucienne looks at them, smiles, stirs a little, then resumes looking at her hands as she was doing shortly before A chance movement disturbs the dolls: Lucienne again looks at them and this time shakes herself with regularity She stares at the dolls, barely smiles and moves her legs vigorously and thoroughly At each moment she is distracted by her hands which pass again into the visual field: she examines them for a moment and then returns to the dolls This time there is definite circular reaction (p 158) In these observations, Piaget appreciated the child’s actions as a structured whole involving a goal (i.e., making the dolls swing), operation (i.e., shaking), feeling (i.e., joy) as it was performed on a particular object (i.e., the basinet; dolls) in a particular socio-physical context (the basinet; Piaget’s experiments of moving the dolls) A circular reaction is not a thing; it is a process that occurs in real time Support for the concept of circular reaction could only arise from close observation of the moment-by-moment coupling between action and object over time A primary circular reaction is both an integrated structure and a dynamic process that operates in real time Without observing the ongoing process by which the child continuously adjusts her action over time, there would be no way to identify the action as a circular reaction Thus, through the use of the “simple” method of observation to track developmental change, Piaget derived a sequence of development has applicability far beyond his three children While the interpretation of Piaget’s sequence has been question over time, the sequence itself has withstood the scrutiny of decades of dedicated research Piaget’s seemingly simple method is founded upon a simple principle: He observed what individual children actually did over time within particular contexts There are many reasons why researchers choose the methods that they do; a research method must serve many masters at the same time However, in serving those masters, to the extent that research methods move beyond this core principle, it becomes increasingly difficult to understand the meaning of the abstract relations reported by any given study Variables, Variability and Person-Centered Research Psychological and developmental research is often organized around the goal of establishing general relations among psychological variables (e.g., self-esteem, executive functioning, conscience, age) A variable consists of any quality that is free to change In psychological science, the construction of psychological variables is founded upon several common practices First, a psychological construct must be (a) operationalized in terms of some form of observable criteria For example, self-esteem might be operationalized in terms of responses to a questionnaire, selfratings on Likert scale, and so forth The operational definition (e.g., score on the questionnaire) functions as a proxy for the psychological construct in question In developing an assessment (e.g., a questionnaire), (b) the participant may be asked multiple questions that assess the construct in different contexts, times, relationships and so forth The final score is Steps Toward Integrative Theory 20 thus an aggregate of mediated judgments that have been collapsed across time, place, interaction, social partners, and so forth To establish the psychological reality of the measure, researchers design research instruments in order to produce appropriate levels of (c) reliability (i.e., agreement among raters) and (d) validity (i.e., correlations with other indices assumed to measure the same construct) In any particular study, (e) mean ratings on questionnaires are abstracted across participants on the instrument in question are used to establish statistically reliable relations among the variable in question and other such variables However, to the extent that researchers can only capture what is directly observable, the process of operationalization runs the risk of defining psychological constructs in ways that are several steps removed from their original conceptualization: operational definitions tend to underspecify the construct they are intended to measure (Blumer, 1940; Hibbert, 2019; Slife, Write & Yanchar, 2016) While the practice of aggregation allows for the construction of stable quantitative variables, aggregations have no empirical content; they not refer to anything tangible or existing in the world Aggregations based on self-report data exacerbate this problem, as they are based not on observations of distinct events, but on summative judgments collapsed across time and place (Bergman & Trost, 2006; von Eye & Bogat, 2006) Calculation of measures of reliability and validity allow researchers to identify correlations among different measures However, to create such assessments, researchers must include only questions that produced the desired inter-correlations; other questions that might have been though to assess the construct are left out As a result, while assessments may gain reliability and validity, it is not always clear what they are reliable and valid measures of (Kvale, 1995; Muk Yan, 2013) Thus, in establishing statistical relations among abstract psychological variables, it is not always easy to determine what those relationships represent It is through these practices that psychological variables are constructed In so doing, however, there is a risk of treating abstract variables as if they were psychological entities in their own right with an independent existence that can be observed and assessed (Przyborski & Slunecko, 2009) This problem is exacerbated when researchers create measures of abstract variables based on the un-reflected meanings of everyday concepts and categories When this happens, everyday categories are treated as if they corresponded to extant objects in the world If we have a word for self-esteem, then self-esteem must exist in the world; if it exists in the world, it can be identified and measured as an independent entity The problem, of course, is that self-esteem is a concept that people use to make sense out of experience Its status as a term that refers to really existing states and process is not something that can simply be assumed One way to address these concerns is to move toward person-centered research methods (Bergman & Trost, 2006; von Eye & Bogat, 2006) Person-centered approaches seek to assess the development of psychological processes as they operate at the level of the individual (Lerner, Agans, DeSouza & Gasca, 2013) Instead of abstracting across individuals in order to identify abstract generalizations that operate at the level of the population, person-centered research seeks to identify processes that occur within particular individuals The question of whether principles and process that operate at the level of the person can generalize to other persons or to entire populations is something that must be established rather than assumed The concept of variable takes on a different meaning in person-centered research Instead of defining variables as dimensions that are abstracted across individuals, from a Steps Toward Integrative Theory 21 person-centered approach, a variable can be understood in terms of the systems that operate at the individual level of action or social interaction A system is any series of elements that operates as a single unit Over time, elements of a system change in relation to each other Each element can be understood as a type of variable – a process that assumes different states over time as it functions within the larger system of elements (Mascolo, Fischer, Steenbeek & van Geert, 2016) At the level of individual action, Figure shows the relation between emotion and action over time in an interaction between a 13-month old child and his mother In this exchange, over a period of several minutes, the mother alternated giving and taking a bottle of water from her son In this example, clusters of activity emerged over time, when given the bottle, the child oriented toward the mother with positive emotion; when the bottle was taken away, the child alternated between withdrawing in frustration and moving against the mother in anger (Mascolo, in press) Figure 7: Changes in Relation between Emotion and Action in Real Time (adapted from Mascolo, in press) Assessing Developmental Change Integrative analyses of psychological development should be developmental in several importance senses First, they should be informed by a developmental conception of psychological change – one that is organized with sensitivity to how developmental endpoints structure one’s sense of developmental trajectories A developmental metric should be devised with an appreciation of how changes may be defined in terms of units based in a theoretical conception of anticipated developmental outcomes Second, such analyses should have a way of assessing not only quantitative change in frequencies of behavior over time, but structural change the form of the activities in question (Fischer & Bidell, 2006; Werner & Kaplan, 1962/1984) Many empirical analyses of psychological change provide only the quantitative analyses of psychological growth or decline Figure depicts typical analysis of trajectories of change that occur over the course of ontogenesis The Steps Toward Integrative Theory 22 data depicted in these growth curves are informative, important and useful However, as reported, they not provide a way to assess the structure of developing action over time Clearly, forms of oppositional behavior vary over the course of ontogenesis, even among children who show consistently high or low levels of the behavior in question Figure 8: Trajectories of Growth over Time (adapted from Bongers) As an analysis of psychopathological development, Figure also points to the importance of understanding trajectories in terms of possible and normative developmental outcomes As in instance of psychopathology, “opposition” is defined with respect to standards that identify “non-opposition” (e.g., collaboration or cooperativeness) as valued or normative outcomes of development A consistently developmental analysis would analyze trajectories of opposition in terms of their relation to trajectories of cooperation, collaboration of other relevant outcomes Systems for representing the hierarchical structure of action in development can be found in Fischer (1980; Fischer & Bidell, 2006; Mascolo & Fischer, 2015), Case (1996), Commons (1998), Dawson (this volume), Ross and other systems These frameworks mainly provide systems for describing the structure of action and thought; they have been suitable for as tools for assessing structure of experiential, affective or socialrelational processes over time There is a need to further develop ways to represent the integrative structure of action in developmental analysis (Mascolo, in press) Third, a genuinely developmental analysis is one that examines the structure of a psychological process in the process of its formation over time Such analyses can be done in either macro- or microdevelopmental time scales (Bidell & Fischer, 1994; Granott, this volume; Sigler & Jenkins, 1998; Wagoner, 2009) What is important in such analyses is to the same individuals longitudinally over time A genuinely integrative analysis is one that can assess the step-by-step process by which developing structures emerge both in vivo and in medias res – in the middle of everything (Fischer & Bidell, 2006) Steps Toward Integrative Theory 23 The Problem of Ergodicity In an attempt to establish principles about psychological processes that generalize beyond individual samples, research and statistical analysis in psychological science tends to be organized around task of estimating of population parameters In so doing, it becomes necessary to recruit a sufficiently large sample so that sample means approximate the central tendencies of the populations from which they are drawn As such, the practice of averaging and aggregating across individuals is performed for the purpose of identifying properties of the population Problems arise, however, when principles that hold at the level of the population not apply to processes that operate at the level of individuals, and vice-versa This is the problem of ergodicity (Lerner, DeSouza & Gasca, 2013; Molenaar & Nesselroade, 2014; Steenbeek & van Geert, this volume) A research finding is non-ergodic when relations that hold at the level of the population not hold at the level of the individual (and vice-versa) Conversely, a finding is ergodic when established relations function in the same way at both the individual and population levels of analysis In psychological and developmental science, much – if not the vast majority of empirical research – is non-ergodic One of the reasons that this occurs is that many of standard research and statistical designs are organized around the logic of analyzing inter-individual differences – differences between people – rather than intra-individual differences – differences that occur within individual persons The logic of inter- and intra-individual research is depicted in Figure As shown in the center figure, data typically consists of a series of scores on a series of variables from multiple individuals with reference to a single occasion (e.g., contexts, time, age groups, etc.) As indicated on the left panel, most psychological research is organized around inter-individual data Studies partition variance between individuals on average scores on different variables with the intention of generalizing results to the population In this approach, there is an assumption that samples drawn will be homogeneous and thus representative of their respective populations The figure on the right shows the structure of research organized around intra-individual data Here, instead of analyzing individual differences between people, scores on variables for single individuals are organized around multiple occasions (e.g., real or developmental time) In intra-individual designs, it is possible to analyze how behavior varies over time or context at the level of the individual person In typical inter-individual designs, scores are averaged across individuals which obscures the variation that occurs in individual action across time and context Research is ergodic if the scores and relationships identified at the level of interindividual comparisons are the same as those identified at the level of intra-individual comparisons A particularly good example of non-ergodic research based on the logic of individual differences concerns research in behavioral genetics Behavioral geneticist research seeks to understand the sources of variation in human behavior in terms of separable effects of genes and environment This is typically achieved through the calculation of statistical estimates of heritability and environmentality For any given psychological disposition, heritability coefficients estimate the degree to which differences between individuals in a disposition (or “trait”2) can be attributed to differences between individuals in their genes A “trait”, of course, is not the type of thing that can be observed The term trait names a theoretical construction and an empirical abstraction When we think of persons in terms of traits, we identify them Steps Toward Integrative Theory 24 Conversely, environmentality coefficients express the degree to which differences between individuals in a disposition can be attributed to differences between them in their environments Research has shown that heritability coefficients range from between 40 and 60 for a wide variety of psychological dispositions Figure 9: Inter- Versus Intra-Individual Data (Adapted from Molennar and Ram, 2009) However, estimates of heritability and environmentality are statistics that apply only to populations While such statistics may be able tell us something about the sources of differences between people in a population; they tell us little or nothing about the contributions of genes and environments to the formation of patterns of activity as they develop within individual organisms The heritability coefficient for the number of colds people get in a given year is likely to be quite high For example, people with more robust immune systems – a disposition likely to be canalized by genetic processes are likely to develop fewer colds in a given year than people with less robust immune systems In this way, knowledge of genetic differences between people can help us understand differences between people in the number of colds they get in a given year However, the task of understanding how people differ in a given set of processes is not the same as understanding the development of those individual processes themselves Knowledge that differences between people in their immune systems explain differences between people in their susceptibility to colds tells us little or nothing about what colds are, how they arise from coactions between an individual’s immune system and the presence of the rhinovirus, and the time course of their effects on individual persons as static beings populated by of abstract inner entities With exceptions, when we assess “traits” in psychological studies, we build a static conception of behavior into the very procedures we use to assess those behaviors When this occurs, alternatives to the concept of trait cannot be tested, as the relevant data are never collected No attempt is made to understand how particular forms of behavior emerge and change over time in particular individuals and particular interactions Steps Toward Integrative Theory 25 In this way, most behavioral genetics research is non-ergodic – such studies are applicable only to understanding how relations between genetic and phenotypic variation at the level of the population (Lerner & Overton, 2015) There is simply no corresponding relationship between genetic variance and phenotypic variance at the level of the individual Human behavior cannot be separated in to distinct genetic and environmental components Assessing Complexity at Multiple Levels of Analysis We began this section with the example of Piaget’s qualitative analysis of infants’ construction of new structures of actionorganization through a real-time microgenetic analysis While seemingly simple, Piaget’s method captures the core principles of a consistently developmental analysis – the focus on structure, relationality, process, macro- and micro-developmental change, the role of context, and so forth As research questions and methodologies become increasingly sophisticated, it is easy to lose an appreciation of the power of basic methods of developmental analysis Happily, developmental science has entered an exciting phase in its own development reflected in emergence of methods capable of capturing the complexity of genuinely developmental processes as they operate at multiple levels of analysis (Valsiner, this volume) Arguing for the importance of integrative (Bergman, Cairns, Nilson & Nystedt, 2000; Magnussen & Cairns, 1996) and theoretically-guided methodology (Molenaar, Lerner, & Newell, 2014; Overton, 2014; Valsiner, 2006; this volume), developmental scientists have made inroads in the development of relational-systems (Lerner & Callina, 2014; Overton, 2014) and dynamic systems-based methodology (Brown Urban, Osgood, Okamoto, Mabry, & Hassmillier Lich, 2014; Mascolo, Steenbeek, Fischer & van Geert, 2016; Steenbeek & van Geert, this volume) based on principles of dynamic self-organization, coaction (Card, Selig & Little, 2008; Jelicic, Theokas, Phelps, & Lerner, 2007; Steenbeek & van Geert, this volume) and circular causality (Witherington, 2011) Researchers have developed microdevelopmental (Granott, this volume; Wagonner, 2009) and ideographic approaches (Hamaker & Dolan, 2009, Mascolo, this volume; Molennar, 2004) to tracking development at multiple levels of functioning The study of epigenesis has taken the form of the analysis of epigenetic mechanisms in the genesis of social behavior in animals, particular forms of gene-environment interaction Person-centered methods (Molenaar, & Nesselroade, 2014) have produced novel findings about enabled the tracking the relations among multiple variables as they operate over time both within (Lerner, Agans, DeSouz & Gasca, 2013) between (Timmerman, Ceulemans, Lichtwarck-Aschoff & Vansteelandt, 2009) and among targeted groups of individuals (Nagin & Odgers, 2012) Developmental science has moved from the elegant simplicity of Piaget (1953) to the use of large-scale “big data” in global analyses of development (Davis & Jager, 2012, 2017) Beyond the prescription that research methods must be created to serve the theoretical purposes of the researcher, an integrative model of development makes no prescriptions about the particular type of methods that can be used to assess theoretical claims As tools of inquiry, a method is only as good as its capacity to serve functions defined by the goals of inquiry (Magnussen, 1996) From this view, it is neither helpful nor desirable to identify forms of psychological inquiry according to any particular form of method (e.g , experimental psychology, quantitative psychology, qualitative psychology, mathematical psychology) – nor perhaps, to create too large a schism between methodological specialization and theorietical integration (Card, 2017) There is no a priori reason to prefer one form of method over another, Steps Toward Integrative Theory 26 and no reason why particular methods cannot and should not be used in conjunction with each other (Gennetian, Magnuson, & Morris, 2008; Yoshikawa, Weisner, Kalil & Way,2008) An integrative developmental psychology is thus one that is open to multiple methods that assess psychological functioning at multiple levels of analysis through the coordination of multiple forms of intra—and interdisciplinary activity (Card, 2014; Timmerman, Ceulemans, LichtwarckAschoff & Vansteelandt, 2009) Conclusion: Developmental Personhood What is an integrative theory of psychological development a theory of? An integrative psychology is based on the idea that any given psychological act necessarily involves some sort of integration of all of the process that we call psychological, as well as all of the processes that organize any given psychological act When we step back and look at such a holistic integration, what emerges, hopefully, is a developing person Psychological science has been successful in breaking persons down into their component processes and studying those processes as if they were largely independent of each other There is nothing inherently problematic in such an approach – except if the act of breaking down obscures our understanding of the ways in which relations among the parts make the whole – and vice-versa At the very least, there is a need for a synthetic psychological and developmental science – one that seeks to understand what it means to live and act as a person in relation to other persons Such a conception should be one in which we are able to recognize ourselves and each other – not simply from a third-person perspective, but also from the standpoints of first person and second person intersubjective experience At best, an integrative psychological science must be one that proceeds with reflexivity – with an awareness of how what we study is informed by broader conceptions of what it means to be a person, and with an eye toward making contributions to a broader conception of personhood Steps Toward Integrative Theory 27 References Baer, D M (1970) An age-irrelevant concept of development Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 16(3), 238–245 Baldwin, J M (1906) Mental development in the child and race (3rd Edition) New York: Macmillan & Co Ben-Zev, A (1990) Envy and Jealousy Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 487–516 Bergman, L R., Cairns, R B., Nilsson, L.-G., & Nystedt, L (2000) Developmental science and the holistic approach (L R Bergman, R B Cairns, L.-G Nilsson, & L Nystedt, Eds.) 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