Dynamic Development of Thinking, Feeling, and Acting

Models of psychological development have taken a relational turn. From this view, human psychological development is an integrative, dynamic, emergent, and coactive process. It is integrative in the sense that psychological processes never operate in isolation of each other. There is no such thing as a purely cognitive, emotional, or behavioral act. Any given instance of psychological activity necessarily involves the structured integration of multiple component psychological systems. Despite their organization, psychological structures are dynamic processes rather than fixed states. Their structure varies as a function of person, task, time, context, emotional state, culture, and many other variables. Psychological development is coactive in the sense that novel psychological structures emerge over time as a product of the dynamic interplay between and among elements of a hierarchically nested person environment system. In this chapter, we show how integrated structures of thinking, feeling, and action arise in both real and developmental time through complex coactions that occur between biological, psychological, and sociocultural processes. Drawing on a theory of the dynamic development of skills, the discussion first addresses the coactive nature of sensorimotor-affective development in infancy. It then illustrates alternative trajectories in the coactive development of integrative structures of moral thinking, feeling, and acting as they occur within particular moral domains and social contexts. We complete the chapter with an analysis of how integrative psychological structures undergo microdevelopment in real time as a result of processes that occur between individuals in joint interaction. Keywords: adolescence; adult development; alternative trajectories of development; childhood; coaction; developmental pathways; dynamic development; emergence; infancy; intersubjectivity; moral development; skill development