The dynamic systems (DS) approach has emerged as an influential and potentially unifying metatheory for developmental science. Its central platform--the argument against design--suggests that structure spontaneously and without prescription emerges through self-organization. In one of the most prominent accounts of DS, Thelen and her colleagues…

Migration induces complex processes of human transformation that are usually not reflected in theories that describe these changes. In most theories regarding these transformations, the implicit assumption is that immigrants undergo a transition to the culture of the mainstream population according to a modernization perspective. Based on a review…

This paper poses the following question: When, in spite of knowing that it is wrong, people go on to hurt others, what does this mean for the development of moral agency? We begin by defining moral agency and briefly sketching relations between moral agency and other concepts. We then outline what three extant literatures suggest about this…

For children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds the ability to maintain flexible identities and integrate multiple facets of self is a crucial developmental task. We present a conceptual model for the development of expertise in navigating across cultures, delineating how community characteristics interact with family and…

The acculturation gap-distress model purports that immigrant children acculturate to their new culture at a quicker pace than their parents, leading to family conflict and youth maladjustment. This article reviews literature on the acculturation gap-distress model, showing that acculturation gaps function in unique ways depending on many social…

Adolescence is a period of marked change in the person's cognitive, physical, psychological, and social development and in the individual's relations with the people and institutions of the social world. These changes place adaptational demands on adolescents, ones involving relations between their actions upon the context and the action of the…

This article reviews Giyoo Hatano's ground-breaking theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions to conceptual change research. In particular, his discovery of "vitalism" as part of children's legitimate and distinctive biology at early ages stands as a landmark. In addition, his work reinterpreted childhood "personification," changing…

This article focuses on the common and unique contributions of three major life-span theories in addressing improvement/maintenance and reorientation, which represent central processes of coping with major life change and loss. For this purpose, we review and compare the dual-process model of assimilative and accommodative coping, the model of…

The symposium is described as being devoted to the question of whether and to what extent action may constitute a useful paradigm for developmental psychology, where action is understood as voluntary behavior employed by the agent as a means of attaining certain ends. (Author/RH)

To illustrate the need for careful analysis, discusses (1) intrapersonal versus interpersonal paradigms of intention and (2) differentiation between reason and cause and their joint consideration.(RH)

Views developmental schemes as closed formal depictions of the dialectic which cannot account for their own existential relativity within experience. Shows how the internal logic of a scheme depends on the experimental perspective from which it is posited. Argues for the possibility of constructing a "positional logic" that would relate…

Points out that while some symposium papers pursue a model of the individual mind, others explore the social mind. Argues that concepts of cognitive theory originally based on social existence have been deformed to emphasize the individual as a self-contained entity.(RH)

Summarizes the general perspectives represented in the symposium and attempts to reconcile them by reconstructing a dialog between them. Issues addressed include the intersubjective nature of intentionality, the nature of action theoretical explanations, and the distinctive characteristics of action theory. (RH)

Argues that the study of the life course is necessarily a historical form of inquiry that demands acknowledgment of narrative structure. Because the data of narration derive from experience, the idea of development can only be placed within the realm of subjectivity. (RH)

Comments on the potential importance for developmental theory of recent advances in the thermodynamics of "self-organizing" systems by Ilya Prigogine and the Brussels School. Implications of the concepts of classical and modern thermodynamics of structural development for an understanding of psychological evolution and development are…