Developmental Science: Toward a Unified Framework

Abstract

6 Carolina Consortium on Human Development results of detailed prospective longitudinal studies of human beings. These findings have forced the reevaluation of traditional conceptions of behav-ioral functions and of how these functions are organized over time in children, adolescents, and adults. They have also provided new solutions to the problem of how behaviors are organized in context. This concrete information on development has become wedded to psychobiological con-structs of ontogeny, and the synthesis that has emerged has in tum created pressure for radical change in traditional measures, designs, and constructs. The statement on the scope and limits of developmental science pro-vided here is an introduction to the issues addressed in this volume. It was given its preliminary form during discussion and debate among the faculty and felIows of the Carolina Consortium on Human Development. It is a statement that continues to evolve, and the nature of this evolution is reflected in the chapters that folIow. A fresh synthesis of ideas and findings has recently emerged across the several areas of developmental investigation. As indicated in Chapter I, this synthesis employs concepts that have issued from longitudinal inves-tigations, life-course studies of contextual change, cognitive development, and developmental psychobiology. Consistent with the colIaborative state-ment, the stuff of development is seen as arising from the dynamic inter-relations among systems that exist within and without persons. A nuclear principle of this holistic framework of development is that "the individual is an active, purposeful part of an integrated, complex and dynamic person-environment system. A consequence of this view is that it is not possible to understand how social systems function without knowledge of individual functioning, and it is not possible to understand individual functioning and development without knowledge of the environment" (Magnusson & Stat-tin, in press). Accordingly, development is not simply a property of individuals -social interactions develop, communities change, and so-cieties evolve. In this chapter, we sununarize some principles that provide a bridge between the conceptual framework of developmental science and the concrete methods required for the conduct of developmental research. In the consensus statement in Chapter I, we observed that "recognizing the complexity of development is the first step toward understanding its coherence and simplicity." The problem has been that it has been difficult for researchers to move beyond the first step. Accordingly, the holistic perspective described in the colIaborative statement presupposes multi-disciplinary methods and multilevel measures. These procedures are re-quired to analyze the integrated operation of bidirectional and correlated systems across levels of influence. A developmental orientation implies that observations should be extended over time and generations in order to plot the mechanisms and rates of change and to identifY developmental pathways that are formed for persons and contexts. 7