Overton, Development Across A life Span, 2003

[matthewmccarthy11]

Posting notes on the article for 'Development Across A Life Span' by Overton, for week 1 of the DDS Series.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282993483_Development_Across_the_Life_Span

Intro

• Discussing the 'background ideas' of development which are not 'unlike the foundations of a house'
  • a foundation is usually ignored unless there is a crack
  • Background ideas are metatheoretical- they both enable and constrain how research takes place
  • Background ideas that inform methods are 'metamethods'
  • The primary function of metatheory – including metamethod – is to provide a rich source of concepts out of which theories and methods emerge.
• A metatheory presents a vision of the nature of the world and the objects of that world. A metamethod presents a vision of the tools that will be most adequate to explore the world described by the metatheory.

1: Developmental Inquiry and the Metatheoretical

• How should we understand the field of developmental inquiry?

1A: The Nature of Developmental Change. Transformations and Variation

• There are two main theories of how change happens—transformation and variation.
  • Transformation is about change in pattern and structure, while variation is about change in quality
  • Variational change is about quantitative change; you get better at something. You can run a mile in 6:30, opposed to 7:00.
• There have been three ways of considering how the two go together.
  • The first is to see variation as the bedrock of development
  • The second is to see transformation as the bedrock of development
  • The third sees the two as interrelated
    • Transformational systems produce variation and variation transforms the system

1B: What Changes in Development? The Expressive and the Instrumental

• Like with the 'how', above, the 'what' has focused primarily on two different different perspectives
  • The expressive/constitutive function refers to the fact that any action may be considered the reflection of some underlying organization or dynamic system.
    • When exploring the expressive function of an action the ‘what’ that changes in development is the dynamic system that is reflected in the action expression.
  • The instrumental function of an action is understood as a means of attaining some outcome; it is the pragmatic and adaptive dimension of action
• Again, there have been three ways to consider their relationship: two as separate, and one as a synthesis
  • The first takes the instrumental-communicative as bedrock and marginalizes the expressive. This advocates for a purely functionalist or adaptionist approach.
  • The second is about the expressive, about the underlying system which is expressing a behavior
  • The third metatheoretical solution again – as in the case of the nature of change itself – presents the expressive and the instrumental as realities that operate within a relational matrix.

2: A Brief History of Metatheoretical Worlds and the Birth of Developmental Psychology

2A: The Modern Period

• Modernity was defined by a quest for absolute certainty of knowledge, as well as an effort to expand individual human freedoms- especially thought
  • Descartes introduced both splitting and foundationalism—meaning that within a specific domain, there are two dichotomies (splitting), and that one of them speaks to or represents ultimate reality (foundationalism). The Real (R) cannot be reduced to something else
  • This resulted in the 'splitting' of mind and body, and the idea of 'objectivism', or a ‘god's eye view’, the idea that the world around us is the Real (materialism), and that we can work to try and understand the world around us (empiricism)
• Splitting, foundationalism, materialism/objectivism, and empiricism became the 'metatheories' of modernity, which has been called the 'mechanical explanation' of the universe
• Mechanical explanation leads to two scientific processes: description and explanation
  • Step 1 is to describe material by reducing it to its mechanical properties
  • Step 2 is to look for a causal explanation- the reason why 'atomistic behavior' operates the way it does, it is in looking for a specific mechanism that can explain the cause of that behavior
  • Interestingly, mechanical explanation leaves out 'Aristotelian final and formal causes', which were able to provide reasons for more cosmic or fundamental processes
  • Step 3 is induction, the process whereby we make laws from causal explanations of empirically observed behavior. For the atomist, the whole world can be explained by laws that are () by empirical observation

2B: The Post Modern Period and the Chaos of Absolute Relativity

• Post modernism is also identified with finding freedom for the individual, but this is done almost exclusively through undermining modernity
  • Leads to a 'splitting' between modernity and post-modernity, where there is more of a focus on emotional, subjective experience and interpretation
• However, a different scientific metatheory has emerged, rooted in phenomenology and hermeneutics, which sees understanding, and not observation, as the basis for scientific inquiry
  • Interpretation in this picture operates as the method towards understanding
  • Verstehen (understanding) provides a metatheory for social sciences

3: Relational Metatheory: A synthesis of Opposites

• Latour describes post modernism as a symptom, not a solution, to the problems of modernity
• Latour suggests that 'amodernism' or 'relationism' is a cure to modernity

3A: Rejecting Splits and Bedrocks

• A relational metatheory suggests that the identity of objects occurs through relation
• A metatheory does not aim to split certain things the way modernism does — it seeks to have categories, but to understand these categories (i.e. biology and culture) as fundamentally entangled and co-dependant
  • "The inclusive framework must accomplish the seemingly paradoxical task of simultaneously establishing both an identity between the opposite categories and retaining the opposite quality of the categories"
  • The character of any contemporary behavior, for example, is 100% nature because it is 100% nurture
• Relational metatheory; seemingly dichotomous ideas that have often been thought of as competing alternatives can, in fact, enter into inquiry as complementary supportive partners.

3B: The identity of opposites

3B: The opposites of Identity

• The question now becomes: with a background of an identity of opposites: generating relatively stable platforms from which to launch empirical inquiry

3C: The Synthesis: The View from the center

• Moving in the middle, above the conflict, as a synthesis, is the solution
• The synthesis of interest for the general metatheory would be a system that is a coordination of the most universal bipolarity we can imagine
• Instead of two different things being split apart, the challenge now is in three different things, or perspectives: human, biology (perhaps one might even say ecology), and culture
  • It is important to recognize that one synthesis standpoint is relative to other synthesis standpoints.

• The 'person standpoint', the 'culture standpoint', and the 'biological standpoint' all work together as the three synthesis, or perspectives
• Person
  • A person standpoint opens the way for the empirical investigation of universal dimensions of psychological structure-function relations
• Biological
  • Human and Society are coordinated by Matter, and thus, within psychological inquiry, biology represents a standpoint as the synthesis of person and culture (figure 3b).
• Cultural
  • A third synthesis standpoint recognizes that Human and Matter are coordinated by Society, and again granting that the inquiry is about psychological processes, culture represents a standpoint as the synthesis of person and biology
  • Boesch argues for a 'cultural standpoint' which is able to integrate the human being through social processes and the relationship between the two
• There are potentially more than three synthesis—discourse might also be a way to consider a synthesis of person and culture

4: A Rapprochement: an explanation in a relational context

• Mechanical explanation and hermeneutic understanding become an integrated metamethod in the following manner:

4A: Step 1: Relational Analysis—Synthesis Replaces Split Reductionism

• Analysis must occur in the context of some integrated whole, the integrated whole operates in the context of its analytic parts. Recognizing the important of both the mechanical and relational methods.
  • a major feature of this first step is the affirmation of the importance of analysis and the analytic tools of any empirical science.
  • "The provisos here are that it simultaneously be recognized that the analytic moment always occurs in the context of a moment of synthesis, and that the analysis can neither eliminate nor marginalize synthesis"

4B: Step 2: Relational Action Pattern—Conditions Explanation Replaces Split Causes

• rather than inquiry into the ‘causes’ of behavior or development, inquiry from a relational perspective examines conditions that are associated with behavior or development
• The assertion that causes are best understood as conditions leaves open the question of what, in fact, does produce behavior and change.
  • for present purposes mechanism is defined as an active method or process, rather than a cause or set of causes
• because of the relation of structure and function, when a system is viewed from the standpoint of structure, structure then explains function. Consequently, both structure and function enter centrally into the explanatory process.
• Structure and function are central to explanation but they are also fundamentally interpretative in nature; they are not directly observable. Structure-function relations are patterns of action, but patterns are never directly observed, they must be inferred.
• Example for Piaget:
  • On the structural side of the equation Piaget introduces the theoretical concepts ‘schemes,’ ‘coordination of schemes,’ ‘operations,’ groupings,’ and ‘group.’
  • Theoretical concepts of ‘adaptation,’ ‘assimilation-accommodation,’ ‘equilibrium,’ ‘equilibration,’ and ‘reflective abstraction,’ constitute the functional side of the equation.

4C: Step 3: Abductive Logic Replaces Split Induction and Deduction

• The third step towards a relational metamethod that integrates mechanical explanation and hermeneutic understanding addresses the nature of scientific logic.
• A relational metamethod introduces the logic of abduction as the synthesis of the opposite identities theory (broadly considered, including background ideas) and data.
• Abduction operates by arranging the observation under consideration and all background ideas (here including specific theoretical ideas) as two Escherian hands.

5 Embodied Development: A Relational Concept

• What became lost in dev. psychology (until recently) was the person as a vital integrated embodied center of agency and action; the embodied person who emerges from, and transacts with, the relational biological-cultural world, thereby developmentally transforming her own expressive and adaptive functioning.
• Embodiment represents the overarching synthesis described earlier between each of the biology-person-culture relations, and, thus, embodiment creates a seamless bridge between the biological, the psychological, and the sociocultural.
• It has a double meaning, referring both to the body as physical structure, and the body as a form of lived experience, actively engaged with the world of physical and sociocultural objects
• embodiment is the claim that perception, thinking, feelings, desires – that is, the way we experience or live the world – is contextualized by being an active agent with this particular kind of body
• Mind and actions grow from the embodied person constantly engaged in the world. It is this embodied person that both creates world meaning and is created by the meaning of the world.

5A: Person-Centered and Variable Approaches to Developmental Inquiry

• As a bridge concept, embodiment can be examined from a biological, a cultural, or a person standpoint.
• In a variable approach the focus is on biological, cultural, and individual variables as these are understood to operate as predictors, correlates, risk factors, or antecedent causes of behavior

5B: The person centered point of view

• Keeping the psychological person as the center of action is a necessary guard against explanatory reduction to biology, culture, discourse, etc
• a person-centered approach also highlights the fact that any act can be profitably understood – again in a complementary bipolar fashion as both expressive/constitutive and as instrumental/adaptive.
• benefit derived from a person-centered point-of-view is that it provides the necessary context for the resolution of certain important problems related to our general understanding of psychological meaning (like the symbol problem)
• Taken as a whole, the person-agent forms the nucleus of a psychological theory of mind. And in this context mind is defined as a self-organizing dynamic system of cognitive (knowings, beliefs), emotional (feelings), and conative or motivational (wishes, desires) meanings or understandings, along with procedures for maintaining, implementing, and changing these meanings.