Most important lecture notes with Interventions in individual development at the University of Groningen

Learning goals for all weeks

• Understand and explain why we need person-centered interventions and person-centered research.

• Understand and describe various interventions in individual development. 

• Understand and describe person-centered research methodologies.

• Design and describe your own person-centered study of an intervention in individual development. 

Week 1 Introduction and complex dynamic systems

Ergodiciteit is de eigenschap van een dynamisch systeem dat het gemiddelde gedrag over de tijd gezien ruwweg hetzelfde is als het gemiddelde over alle toestanden waarin het systeem kan verkeren. Ergodicity continuum is that there are individual differences, a single subject to increasingly fixed coefficients.Ways of having a ergodicity continuum are: 

• Ecological inference fallacy. This has to do with stereotypes. The individual members of a group have the average characteristics of the group at large. Like for example the way that the coronavirus symptoms are indicated. The indication doesn’t fit everyone. 

• Simpson’s paradox. This has been used to illustrate the kind of misleading results that the misuse of statistics can generate. Data alone isn't enough. Data generation process, it is possible to draw two opposite conclusions from the same data. Think casually/logically to choose the right one.

The ergodic switch means that every member of the group is identical and every member will remain the same in the future. An example is the average man from the WOII. They found that pilots sometimes crashed their plane, because not every person was the same size where they had the same seats and measures. So they noticed that there were differences between individuals that needed to be taken into account. 

The complex dynamic systems theory can help to understand individual change processes. Self-organization is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. It can create attractors (= a state the system is drawn to). Een attractor is in de systeemtheorie iets waar een dynamisch systeem in de loop van de tijd naartoe evolueert en daar vervolgens blijft, ongeacht of er sprake is van enige verstoring van buitenaf. Het systeem legt zo een bepaald traject in de richting van de attractor af. For example with ants, they eventually choose the fastest route to their food and back to the nest.

Resilience represents the ability of an entity to deal with stressors such as extreme events. While vulnerability might be considered as the perspective on an entity’s susceptibilities to harm. Because of connectivity of the network some individuals are very resilient and some aren’t.

Early warning signals that a new pattern is about to emerge are an increase in fluctuation and a critical slowing down. During the time of fluctuation the interventions may have the most impact, because experiences may be more impactful. A win for an intervention may be to let the fluctuation and slowing down take place. 

Week 2 Identity development

Marcia’s identity status model:

* Foreclosed is having commitment, without exploration. Achieved is having a commitment, with exploration. Diffused is having none. Moratorium is having no commitment, with exploration.

Landscape of identity model is belangrijk om even goed uit te zoeken! Ook in combinatie met Marcia's statuses. 

Career choice is about identity development. To stimulate career choice processes we need to support identity development. Optimal identity development consists of a period of exploration of different options, followed by the development of a commitment. Commitment is a choice, and it expresses the degree to which someone feels attached to the choice and feels the choice fits. A mature commitment is strong enough to help people to navigate through life choices, and flexible enough to help to adjust in changing circumstances.

Week 3 Emotional development

Dominant emotion state emerges, because systems orchestrate large suites of mutually amplifying cognitive, physiological and behavioral mechanisms to produce efficient and flexible situational responses. Emotions are functional categories, which differ in many degrees, qualities and intensities. Variability is the norm of constructed emotions. 

Emotion regulation has historically been a requirement for other developmental tasks. The goal is expression, understanding and regulation of emotions. Intra-psychic (intern) and interpersonal processes (extern). Caretakers help to regulate the emotions of the ones they give care to. By rocking, avoid things that make you anxious and include cognitive strategies (distraction and positive reappraisal). Strategies to intervene in the emotion construction process, identify the experiential components, and help individuals to re-categorize them, which may influence their perception of reality. 

Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) is a structured diary technique, to sample subjective experiences, behavior and context. It’s context is in the flow of daily life and there is typically made use of a smartphone technology. Participants typically fill out structured diaries. The advantages of EMA are that it is ecologically valid data, it reduces recall bias and it can be used to personalize treatment. EMA interventions have been put forward as a promising tool to personalize affective disorder treatments and improve their effectiveness. Three EMA interventions:

• Resource mobilisation device in depression (REMOD-ID)= six weekly sessions of ESM-based feedback in depressed patients. Patients with antidepressants and no therapy jet. Lifestyle changes work in reducing depressive symptoms.

• No Fun No Glory study= two monthly sessions with ESM-based feedback in youth with anhedonia (loss of pleasure).If they move more, they get more pleasure. If they got more pleasure, they worried less. If they got elaborate feedback with recommendations, the anhedonia reduces.

• ZELF-i-study= four weekly digital ESM-based elaborate feedback in depressed patients. Psychotherapy was involved here in combination with antidepressants. Here no differences between the control and experimental group were found. 

Week 4 Cognitive development

Vigotsky was emphasizing(benadrukken) that social interaction was necessary for development. You can not see this learning situation without seeing the social interaction partner. They need help from an older person to go to the next phase. It’s transactional, which means that both child and parent are active participants. Like for example when pointing at a cow, the mother says: “cow”.  Cognitive development is nested within the social and physical environment. Language development is grounded in the continuous interaction between a child and their social, material and cultural environment. 

For education interaction with teachers and material is crucial. The teacher has to challenge to support cognitive development. The teachers need to change the way they teach science. If you want them to learn something, let the students talk. 

Week 5 Autonomy development

Self-determination theory. Self-determined behaviour are actions that are self-regulated (voluntary) and integrated. Self-regulation is an action governed by the self that is voluntary. The opposite is the external locus of causality. The integration is coherence(samenhang) and lack of internal conflict in autonomous actions. To foster this, three basic psychological needs are important: 

• autonomy

• competence

• relatedness

How does autonomy develop?

• trough support of thwarting of the environment (feedback loops, positive and negative spirals)

• self-reinforcement (autonomous functioning breeds need satisfaction, which breed autonomous functioning)

• positive development, autonomous behavior, wellbeing (may be achieved by supporting basic psychological needs, avenue for intervention)

It is important to be authentic in order to create a relationship with someone. I have to be able to know what is less good about myself. 

Week 6 Talent development

Resilience is bouncing back from stressors. It is a dynamic process by which a biopsychosocial system returns to the previous level of functioning, following a perturbation caused by a stressor. Look at how the bouncing back process looks like at different individuals. Then you can find indicators when someone is going to lose their resilience. 

There is a nurture side to talent and a natural side. Both are the best to have ofcourse. A talented athlete is an athlete who performs better than peers during training and competition and has the potential to become an elite athlete in the future. 

Goal setting should be specific, realistic, challenging and long term and short term. Specific, measures, achievable, relevant, time-bound (SMART). The coach is really important with giving feedback to this. 

Week 7 conclusion of the course

You can intervene in development in identity, emotions, talent & resilience, autonomy and cognition. We have focused on stimulating positive development. What characterizes these developmental interventions?

• Positive focus: stimulate development

• Broad age range: childhood, adolescence, emerging adulthood, adulthood.

• Individual central

Protocolled vs. individualized interventions: They are not totally the opposites of each other. You can implement them together. But with a protocol it stands how many treatments you should use and what to do when. It is clear for the person who treats and for the finances, but they lack flexibility to adapt to individuals. It only works when the protocol matches with the needs of the client.  Comorbidity(multiple disorders) is very common and this is hard for the protocol, because it is just made for one disorder. How can we individualize interventions? 

Take-away from this course: use developmental principles in your interventions, design new interventions, or improve existing ones, with adaptations to the individual mind and study them with person-centered approaches instead of only the group-centered approach. So think beyond protocols and clinical based conclusions.