methods) are integrated within the now dominant paradigm.15 Relational Developmental Systems Theory Given the evidence about the role of genes in the developmental system that I have summarized, the contemporary study of human development eschews Cartesian, split conceptualizations and, in turn, favors post- postmodern, relational metatheories that stress the integration of different levels of organization as a means to understand and to study life-span human development.16 Thus, the conceptual emphasis of relational developmental systems theory, which today is at the cutting-edge of theory and research within developmental science, is placed on the nature of mutually influential relations between individuals and contexts, represented as “individual/context” relations.17 That is, in such theory, the focus is on the “rules,” the processes that govern exchanges between individuals and their contexts. Brandtstädter (1998) terms these relations “developmental regulations” and notes that where developmental regulations involve mutually beneficial individual/context relations, they constitute adaptive developmental regulations.18 The possibility of adaptive developmental relations between individuals and their contexts, and the potential plasticity of human development that is a defining feature of ontogenetic change within the relational developmental system, are distinctive features of this approach to human development. As well, the core features of developmental systems models provide a rationale for making a set of methodological choices that differ in design, measurement, sampling, and data 36 GeneWatch
analytic techniques from selections made by researchers using split or reductionist approaches to developmental science. Moreover, the emphasis on how the individual acts on the context to contribute to the plastic relations with it fosters an interest in person-centered (as compared to variable-centered) approaches to the study of human development.19 Furthermore, the array of individual and contextual variables involved in these relations constitutes a virtually open set. Estimates are that the odds of two genetically identical genotypes arising in the human population is about one in 6.3 billion, and each of these potential human genotypes may be coupled across life with an even larger number of life course trajectories of social experiences.20 Thus, the number of human phenotypes that can exist is fundamentally equivalent to being infinite, and the diversity of development becomes a prime, substantive focus for developmental science. This diversity may be approached with the expectation that positive changes can be promoted across all instances of variation, as a consequence of health-supportive alignments between people and settings. With this stance, diversity becomes the necessary subject of inquiry in developmental science. That is, to understand the bases of and, in turn, to promote individual/context relations that may be characterized as healthy, positive, adaptive, or resilient – which are relations reflecting the maintenance or enhancement of links that are mutually beneficial to individuals and context – scholars must ask a complex, multi-part question.21 They must ascertain: what fundamental attributes of individuals (e.g., what features of biology and physiology, cognition, motivation,
emotion, ability, physiology, or temperament); among individuals of what status attributes (e.g., people at what portions of the life span, and of what sex, race, ethnic, religious, geographic location, etc. characteristics); in relation to what characteristics of the context (e.g., under what conditions of the family, the neighborhood, social policy, the economy, or history); are likely to be associated with what facets of adaptive functioning (e.g., maintenance of health and of active, positive contributions to family, community, and civil society)? These multiple, nested sets of conditions indicate that each person should be studied as a unique individual, an idea that has been coupled with relational developmental systems theory-predicated methodological innovations.22 The emergence of such methodological advances is important, given that addressing such a set of interrelated questions requires a systematic program of developmental research elucidating trajectories across life of individual/context relations within the developmental system. Moreover, the linkage between the ideas of plasticity and diversity that gave rise to this set of questions provides a basis for extending relational developmental systems thinking to form an optimistic view of the potential to apply developmental science to promote person/context exchanges that may reflect and/or promote health and positive, successful development. Accordingly, employing a relational developmental systems frame for the application of developmental science affords a basis for forging a new, strengthbased vision of and vocabulary for the nature of human development and for specifying the set of individual and ecological conditions
January-February 2012