LECTURE EXTENSION A Dynamic Systems Perspective: Moving Beyond the Nature-Nurture Controversy (pp. 29-30)
According to the dynamic systems perspective, the child's mind, body, and physical and social worlds form an integrated system that shapes mastery of new behaviors. The development of the child is self-organizing in that new patterns of behavior emerge from the interactions of the various constituents of the system without specific instructions from within the child or from the environment (Thelen & Smith, 1997). Instead of behaviors being "hard-wired" in the nervous system, they are thought to be "softly assembled" (Hopkins & Butterworth, 1997; Thelen & Smith, 1997). Soft assembly allows the constituent parts of the system to interact in ways that create new, qualitatively different behaviors. Similar to Gestalt theory, the whole (the new behavior) is more than the sum of its constituent parts. Soft assembly also implies that behavior is dynamic and, thus, reorganizes when changes occur in the constituents of the system. Dynamic systems perspectives also challenge the traditional nature verses nurture controversy by acknowledging the bidirectional influence between an individual and his or her environment. For example, Collins, Maccoby, Steinberg, Hetherington, and Bornstein (2000) argue that current findings on parental influence suggest that multiple factors including child temperament, parental dispositions, and environmental context influence the quality of the parent-child relationship. Lytton (2000) adds that biological factors make important contributions to the developing child, but these tendencies are mediated by parental behaviors and attitudes. In addition to the above examples, a provocative new research study by Smith, Thelen, Titzer, and McLin (1999) utilizes dynamic systems theory to challenge one of the most highly researched phenomena in the study of infant cognitive development: Piaget's theory of object permanence. For instance, in the traditional Piagetian A-not-B search task, an object such as a watch is hidden under location A while the infant is observed as he or she recovers the hidden item. The hide-and-seek game continues for several trials and then the researcher hides the object under location B. Interestingly, Piaget found that instead of retrieving the object from its new location, infants continue to search location A for the hidden item. Piaget concluded that the AB search error found in young infants is a universal phenomenon reflecting a cognitive processing deficiency. By modifying the traditional A-not-B search task, Smith, Thelen, Titzer, and Mclin (1999) provide summaries of six experiments that challenge Piaget's notion that infants commit the search error because of an immature understanding of objects as permanent entities. Instead, the authors suggest that multiple processes contribute to the erroneous searching of location A. They found that goal-directed reaching is a continuous, self-organizing process, which involves multiple interactions between visual input, direction of gaze, posture, and memory for previous events. Infants with past experience, for example, are less likely to commit the A-not-B error because they can profit from previous learning. It is reasonable to predict that the more experience infants have with the A-not-B search task, the more efficient their searching skills will become. However, the authors warn that looking and reaching, like other dynamic processes, are intertwined and cannot be understood without considering the context in which they occur. Even older children and adults can be expected to commit an A-not-B search error in ambiguous situations. Instead of simply relying on unidirectional explanations for behavior, this study emphasizes the complex, interacting processes involved in development. Collins, A. W., Maccoby, E. E., Sternberg, L., Hetherington, M. E. & Bornstein, M. H. (2000). Contemporary research on parenting: The case for nature and nurture. American Psychologist, 55, 218-232.
Hopkins, B., & Butterworth, G. (1997). Dynamical systems approaches to the development of action. In G. Bremner, A. Slater, & G. Butterworth (Eds.), Infant development: Recent advances (pp. 75-100). East Sussex, UK: Psychology Press.
Smith, L. B., Thelen, E., Titzer, R., & McLin, D. (1999). Knowing in the context of acting: The task dynamics of the A-not-B error. Psychological Review, 106, 235-260.
Thelen, E., & Smith, L. B. (1997). Dynamic systems theories. In R. M. Lerner (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 1. Theoretical models of human development (5th ed., pp. 563- 633). New York: Wiley. LEARNING ACTIVITY Making Systematic Observations of Young Children (p. 33)
This activity allows students to try out observational procedures described in Chapter 1. To do this activity, students must find children to observe. Ask them to visit a nearby park or the home of a family they know. The procedures used to collect systematic observations vary, depending on the research problem posed. One option is the specimen record, a description of the child's entire stream of behavior-everything said and done for a particular time period. When many aspects of the child's behavior and those with whom the child interacts are of interest, it is the technique of choice. Often, information on only one or a few kinds of behavior is needed, and it is not necessary to preserve the entire behavior stream. In these instances, more efficient observation procedures are best. One common approach is event sampling, in which the observer records all instances of a particular behavior of interest during a specified time period, ignoring all others. A second efficient means of observing is time sampling. In this procedure, the researcher records whether or not certain behaviors occur during a sample of short time intervals. First, a checklist of the behaviors of interest is prepared. Then the observation period is divided into a series of brief time segments. For example, a half-hour observation period might be divided into 120 15-second intervals. The observer collects data by alternately watching the child for an interval and then checking off behaviors during the next interval, repeating this process until the entire observation period is complete. Several decades ago, most naturalistic observations were obtained by jotting down notes on a pad of paper. This is a cumbersome technique, and information was missed in instances where researchers tried to capture a complete account of each participant's behavior. Today, sophisticated equipment and recording devices are available to increase the convenience and accuracy of observational research. The observer can whisper softly into a tape recorder, dictating on-the-spot descriptions of subjects' behavior. Videotaping is often used to obtain a complete record of participants' behavior in the laboratory. It can be used effectively in natural environments as well, if the equipment is placed so that subjects are not distracted or made to feel self-conscious by its presence. This activity can be carried out in the classroom by showing a brief videotaped segment of a child's behavior and asking students to apply each of the three observational procedures just described.
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