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Week 1

Aaron J. Fisher, John D. Medaglia, and Bertus F. Jeronimus. Lack of group-to-individual generalizability is a threat to human subjects research PNAS, 2018, 115 (27) E6106-E6115.

Human social and psychological processes typically have an individually variable and time-varying nature, so they are unlikely to be ergodic (the same over a longer period). In this paper, we contend that nonergodicity—specifically, the lack of generalizability from group to individual statistical estimates—is a threat to human subjects research, because we don't know the full scope of the problem and are not adequately studying it.

Simpson’s paradox is a statistical effect in which trends in subgroups differ from (or are even inverse to) the aggregate trend when the groups are combined.The ecological fallacy is a common and problematic statistical interpretation error, in which statistical inferences from groups are inappropriately generalized to individuals. 

Wright, A. G., & Woods, W. C. (2020). Personalized models of psychopathology. Annual review of clinical psychology, 16. 

The personalized approach to psychopathology conceptualizes mental disorder as a complex system of contextualized dynamic processes that is nontrivially specific to each individual, and it seeks to develop formal idiographic statistical models to represent these individual processes. Although the personalized approach draws on long-standing influences in clinical psychology, there has been an explosion of research in recent years following the development of intensive longitudinal data capture and statistical techniques that facilitate modeling of the dynamic processes of each individual's pathology. Advances are also making idiographic analyses scalable and generalizable. The personalized approach to psychopathology holds promise to resolve thorny diagnostic issues, generate novel insights, and improve the timing and efficacy of interventions.

Borsboom D. (2017). A network theory of mental disorders. World psychiatry: official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 16(1), 5–13. 

In recent years, the network approach to psychopathology has been advanced as an alternative way of conceptualizing mental disorders. In this approach, mental disorders arise from direct interactions between symptoms. Although the network approach has led to many novel methodologies and substantive applications, it has not yet been fully articulated as a scientific theory of mental disorders. The present paper aims to develop such a theory, by postulating a limited set of theoretical principles regarding the structure and dynamics of symptom networks. At the heart of the theory lies the notion that symptoms of psychopathology are causally connected through myriads of biological, psychological and societal mechanisms. If these causal relations are sufficiently strong, symptoms can generate a level of feedback that renders them self-sustaining. In this case, the network can get stuck in a disorder state. The network theory holds that this is a general feature of mental disorders, which can therefore be understood as alternative stable states of strongly connected symptom networks. This idea naturally leads to a comprehensive model of psychopathology, encompassing a common explanatory model for mental disorders, as well as novel definitions of associated concepts such as mental health, resilience, vulnerability and liability. In addition, the network theory has direct implications for how to understand diagnosis and treatment, and suggests a clear agenda for future research in psychiatry and associated disciplines.

The use of the term “disease” implies a worked out etiology, by which symptoms arise from a common pathogenic pathway, while the term “mental disorder” refers to a syndromic constellation of symptoms that hang together empirically, often for unknown reasons. Because the interactions between symptoms can be understood as a network, in which symptoms are nodes and causal interactions between symptoms are connections between nodes, this conceptualization has become known as the network approach to psychopathology. Patterns of symptom-symptom interaction can be encoded in a network structure. In such a structure, symptoms are represented as nodes. Nodes corresponding to symptoms that directly activate each other are connected, while nodes corresponding to symptoms that do not directly activate each other are not.

Principles to encode the backbone of the network theory of mental disorders:

• Principle 1. Complexity: Mental disorders are best characterized in terms of the interaction between different components in a psychopathology network,

• Principle 2. Symptom-component correspondence: The components in the psychopathology network correspond to the problems that have been codified as symptoms in the past century and appear as such in current diagnostic manuals.

• Principle 3. Direct causal connections: The network structure is generated by a pattern of direct causal connections between symptoms.

• Principle 4. Mental disorders follow network structure: The psychopathology network has a non-trivial topology, in which certain symptoms are more tightly connected than others. These symptom groupings give rise to the phenomenological manifestation of mental disorders as groups of symptoms that often arise together.

A weakly connected network (top panel) is resilient. Symptoms may be activated by events in the external field, but the symptom-symptom interactions are not strong enough to lead to self-sustaining symptom activity. A strongly connected network (bottom panel), instead, can sustain its own activity and thus develop into a disorder state.

Hayes, S. C., Hofmann, S. G., Stanton, C. E., Carpenter, J. K., Sanford, B. T., Curtiss, J. E., & Ciarrochi, J. (2019). The role of the individual in the coming era of process-based therapy. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 117, 40–53. 

For decades the development of evidence-based therapy has been based on experimental tests of protocols designed to impact psychiatric syndromes. As this paradigm weakens, a more process-based therapy approach is rising in its place, focused on how to best target and change core biopsychosocial processes in specific situations for given goals with given clients. This is an inherently more idiographic question than has normally been at issue in evidence-based therapy over the last few decades. In this article we explore methods of assessment and analysis that can integrate idiographic and nomothetic approaches in a process-based era.

Highlights:

• The era of protocols for syndromes is passing away.

• Process-based therapy is emerging with a new set of methodological requirements.

• The role of the individual is particularly key to a process-based approach.

• Identifying processes that apply at the level of the individual will require changes in assessment and research design. 

Heino, M.T.J., Knittle, K., Noone, C., Hasselman, F., Hankonen (2021). Studying Behaviour Change Mechanisms under Complexity. Behavioral Sciences, 11, 77. 

Understanding the mechanisms underlying the effects of behaviour change interventions is vital for accumulating valid scientific evidence, and useful to informing practice and policy-making across multiple domains. Traditional approaches to such evaluations have applied study designs and statistical models, which implicitly assume that change is linear, constant and caused by independent influences on behaviour (such as behaviour change techniques). This article illustrates limitations of these standard tools, and considers the benefits of adopting a complex adaptive systems approach to behaviour change research. It (1) outlines the complexity of behaviours and behaviour change interventions; (2) introduces readers to some key features of complex systems and how these relate to human behaviour change; and (3) provides suggestions for how researchers can better account for implications of complexity in analysing change mechanisms. We focus on three common features of complex systems (i.e., interconnectedness, non-ergodicity and non-linearity), and introduce Recurrence Analysis, a method for non-linear time series analysis which is able to quantify complex dynamics. The supplemental website provides exemplifying code and data for practical analysis applications. The complex adaptive systems approach can complement traditional investigations by opening up novel avenues for understanding and theorising about the dynamics of behaviour change.

The aim of the intervention shock is to alter the system’s status, pushing against existing

forces to affect change. This is akin to attempts to work against gravity, which pulls a ball to the bottom of a valley. In this example, the valley represents a relatively stable state, also known as an attractor. Taking the analogy further, pushing the ball outside of the valley may lead it to roll off a peak, ending up in a deeper valley than where it started (i.e., a more table, deep-rooted state). A complex systems perspective implies that, even in the event of a successful intervention, stabilizing a system in a more functional state may require at least as many resources as the initial change itself. In general, while complex systems may often be impossible to control precisely, they can be stewarded approximately, while allowing for variability stemming from self-organisation to flourish instead of trying to iron it out.

In this paper, we have attempted to show that many common modelling strategies fail to adequately capture real-world dynamics of behaviour change, and that a change in approach can advance our understanding of behaviour and behaviour change processes.

Week 2

Eichas, K., Montgomery, M. J., Meca, A., & Kurtines, W. M. (2017). Empowering Marginalized Youth: A Self-Transformative Intervention for Promoting Positive Youth Development. Child Development, 88(4), 1115–1124. 

This article reports the results of a positive youth development (PYD) intervention for adolescents in alternative high schools (209 African American and Hispanic American adolescents, aged 14–18; 118 females and 91 males). The intervention was guided by a self-transformative model of PYD (Eichas, Meca, Montgomery, & Kurtines, 2014). This model proposes that the actions youth take to define themselves function as active ingredients in positive development over the life course. Consistent with the self-transformative model, results provided support for direct or mediated intervention effects on the self-transformative processes of self-construction and self-discovery, life goal development, identity synthesis, and internalizing problems. The findings illustrate the utility of using a self-transformative approach to PYD in work with marginalized youth populations.

Van der Gaag, M. A. E., De Ruiter, N. M. P., Kunnen, S. E., & Bosma, H. (2020). The Landscape of Identity Model: An Integration of Qualitative and Quantitative Aspects of Identity Development. Identity, 20(4), 272–289. 

The landscape of identity model views identity as a constellation of commitments with different levels of strength and integration, showing how this constellation emerges from everyday life experiences. Drawing on key principles from the complex dynamic systems approach, our model further describes this conceptualization, as well as the mechanisms underlying the development of an identity landscape. We show that the model solves current conceptual issues within identity theory, specifies how Marcia’s four identity statuses can be viewed as particular types of identity landscapes, and helps to further develop the identity field by generating predictions regarding how individuals with different types of identity landscapes would respond to major life events.

In conclusion, this article presents a landscape model of identity that integrates many different key concepts of identity literature. As such, the model provides a holistic and integrative framework for generating hypotheses and measurement instruments. Moreover, it deepens our understanding of crucial theoretical concepts of identity by describing how they intersect and develop. We hope that, in combining different lines of research on identity into one model, we have clarified some of the vagueness and fragmentation surrounding the concept of identity and that this clarification may help to move the field forward.

Figure 1. Schematic representation of different types of commitment valleys in the Landscape of Identity. The depth of a valley (y-axis of a valley) represents the commitment’s strength (i.e., deep valleys such as B and D are strong commitments), the width of a valley (x and z-axis of a valley) represents its level of integration (i.e., broad valleys such as C and D are highly integrated commitments that encompass rich, yet coherent, content). Figure adapted from Attractor basins by M.A.E. van der Gaag, 2018,

Kunnen, S. (2013). The effects of career choice guidance on identity development. Education Research International, [901718]. 

We investigated the effects of a student career choice guidance on identity development. We compared the levels of identity development before and after the guidance. In addition we compared the identity development of the participants with a norm group of the same age and educational level. Following the guidance we found—as expected—that the participants showed a significant increase in commitment strength in the vocational and personal domains and in global identity. The effect size was moderate. The participants showed significantly higher increase levels than did the norm group. The initial commitment strength in the group with career choice problems was lower as compared to the norm group in the vocational and personal domain but not in the global identity.

Starting from the perspective of identity theory, we argue that career choice intervention in late adolescents should not only address the commitment formation in the vocational domain, but also in the personal and global domain.

Kunnen, E. S. (2014). The effect of a career choice guidance on self-reported psychological problems. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, [547].

Late adolescents with career choice problems often have psychological problems as well. The starting point of this study was the question of career choice counselors whether potential clients with career choice problems and psychological problems could be accepted in career choice intervention, or whether it was better to advise them to seek help for their psychological problems. We investigated whether a successful career choice intervention reduced psychological problems, and whether this program was equally effective in participants with low and with high levels of psychological problems. Participants were 45 Dutch students (age 17–24) with career choice problems. They had above average levels of self-reported psychological problems before the start of the intervention. These problems decreased significantly following the intervention. With regard to vocational commitment development, the intervention was equally effective for participants with low or average and with (very) high levels of psychological problems before the start of the intervention.

Making satisfying career choices can be seen as the development of strong and adaptive vocational commitments, and thus as an important aspect of identity development. However, especially in the Netherlands career choice development is considered very important, because failure in making the right vocational choice has major consequences. Higher education in the Netherlands is characterized by a large amount of specific different studies and new students have to choose for one of these studies, such as for example psychology, or economy, or sociology.

Empirical evidence shows that late adolescents with career choice problems often have high levels of psychological problems.

In the literature no support is found for the assumption that psychological and behavioral functioning affects career choice development, but there is some evidence for effects of career choice development on psychological functioning. Theory and research suggest that career choice problems in late adolescents (conceptualized as problems in identity development in general and in the vocational domain specifically) may affect psychological wellbeing in a negative way, and that intervention that stimulates the development of vocational identity reduces psychological problems as well.

Week 3

Reitsema, A. M., Jeronimus, B. F., van Dijk, M., & de Jonge, P. (2021). Emotion dynamics in children and adolescents: A meta-analytic and descriptive review. Emotion, in press.

Theories on children and adolescents emotion dynamics were reviewed using data from 102

ecological momentary assessment studies with 19.928 participants and 689 estimates. We

examined age-graded differences in emotional intensity, variability, instability, inertia,

differentiation, and augmentation/blunting. Outcomes included positive versus negative

affect scales, discrete emotions (anger, sadness, anxiety, and happiness), and we compared

samples of youth with or without mental or physiological problems. Multi-level models

showed more variable positive affect and sadness in adolescents compared to children, and

more intense negative affect. Our additional descriptive review suggests a decrease in

instability of positive and negative emotions from early to late adolescence. Mental health

problems were associated with more variable and less intense positive affect, and more

intense anxiety and heightened sadness variability. These results suggest systematic changes in emotion dynamics throughout childhood and adolescence, but the supporting literature proved to be limited, fragmented, and based on heterogeneous concepts and methodology.

Emotions are dynamic and contextualized processes that enable humans to appraise and act on changes in their (internal or external) environment that are relevant to their well-being. 

Using a meta-analytic approach, Houben et al. (2015) showed that adult emotion dynamic patterns associate with variance in psychological well-being and mental health.

Different types of emotions:

• Emotional functioning, and emotional dynamics in particular, plays a central role innormative psychological development and youth functioning. 

• Emotional intensity captures the strength of an emotion over a protracted period of time and reflects how strong someone experiences an emotion on average.

• The transition from childhood to adolescence is characterized by a number of important physical, cognitive, and social changes, which are often thought to increase emotional variability. Emotional variability captures the general dispersion of emotional intensity but an estimate of instability also requires information on the temporal dependency of such fluctuations. 

• High predictability or temporal persistence is known as emotional inertia, which indicates that emotions are resistant to change. Inertia is often expressed as the autocorrelation or autoregressive coefficient, which capture temporal dependencies.

• Emotion differentiation quantifies the ability to describe emotional experiences with a high degree of specificity. It can facilitate adaptive responding to environmental challenges. 

• Most people experience a sequence of different emotions throughout the day, and the intensity of each emotion can influence the intensity of subsequent emotions, either by increasing (augmenting) or decreasing (blunting) their future intensities. 

This multi-level meta-analytic and descriptive review summarizes 102 ecological momentary

assessment studies with 689 estimates of emotion dynamic patterns in 19.928 children and

adolescents, and aimed to examine age-related differences in emotional intensity, variability,

instability, inertia, differentiation, and augmentation/ blunting. These emotion dynamic

patterns were also compared between samples of typically developing youth and peers with

physiological or psychological problems. Our study yielded seven key observations: 1) The

literature on emotion dynamics in youth is surprisingly small and fragmented and few

estimates other than emotional intensity and variability were available; 2) The intensity of

negative affect (NA) was higher in adolescence compared to childhood, whereas the intensity of positive affect (PA) as well as happiness was independent of age; 3) Youth with

internalizing mental health problems reported lower intensity PA than typically developing 

youth, and more intense anxiety, but not more intense NA, anger, sadness, or happiness; 4)

The variability of sadness was higher in adolescence compared to childhood; 5) Compared to typically developing youth, peers with internalizing mental health problems reported higher

variability of PA and sadness, while externalizing mental health problems also associated

with higher sadness variability; 6) Emotion dynamics seem to stabilize in later adolescence;

and 7) Youth reported more differentiated positive emotions than negative emotions.

Our meta-analytic model showed increased intensity of negative affect and increased variability of sadness across childhood and adolescence, but no age-based changes in positive affect or happiness. Internalizing mental health problems in youth were characterized by lower positive affect intensity and heightened anxiety intensity, but higher variability of positive affect and sadness. In general, emotion dynamics appear to stabilize across adolescence. 

Van Roekel, E., Vrijen, C., Heininga, V.E., Masselink, M., Bos, E.H., Oldehinkel, A.J., 2017. An Exploratory Randomized Controlled Trial of Personalized Lifestyle Advice and Tandem Skydive as a Means to Reduce Anhedonia. Behav. Ther. 48. 

Anhedonia is a major public health concern and has proven particularly difficult to counteract. It has been hypothesized that anhedonia can be deterred by engagement in rewarding social and physical events. The aims of the present study were to examine (1) the effects of personalized lifestyle advice based on observed individual patterns of lifestyle factors and experienced pleasure in anhedonic young adults; and (2) whether a tandem skydive can enhance the motivation to carry out the recommended lifestyle changes. Participants (N = 69; M-agi = 21.5, SD = 2.0; 79.7% female) were selected through an online screening survey among young adults. Inclusion criteria were persistent anhedonia and willingness to perform a tandem skydive. Participants filled out questionnaires on their smartphones for 2 consecutive months (3 times per day). After the first month, they were randomly assigned to one of three groups: (1) no intervention, (2) lifestyle advice, and (3) lifestyle advice and tandem skydive. The momentary questionnaire data were analyzed using interrupted time series analyses (ITSA) in a multilevel model and monthly pleasure and depression questionnaires by repeated measures ANOVA. No group differences were found in monthly depression and pleasure scores, but the momentary data showed higher positive affect (PA) and pleasure ratings in the month following the intervention in the two intervention groups than in the control group. The tandem skydive did not have any effects above the effects of the lifestyle advice. Our results indicate that providing personalized lifestyle advice to anhedonic young adults can be an effective way to increase PA and pleasure.

Personalized lifestyle advice was effective in increasing pleasure and PA. No additional effects were found of the tandem skydive. Momentary interventions could be implemented as an addition to treatment as usual. 

Bastiaansen JA, Ornée DA, Meurs M, Oldehinkel AJ. An evaluation of the efficacy of two add-on ecological momentary intervention modules for depression in a pragmatic randomized controlled trial (ZELF-i). Psychol Med. 2020 Dec 14:1-10. 

Depression treatment might be enhanced by ecological momentary interventions (EMI) based on self-monitoring and person-specific feedback. This study is the first to examine the efficacy of two different EMI modules for depression in routine clinical practice. 

Methods: Outpatients starting depression treatment at secondary mental health services (N = 161; MIDS-DEPRESSION = 35.9, s.d. = 10.7; MAGE = 32.8, s.d. = 12.1; 46% male) participated in a pragmatic randomized controlled trial with three arms. Two experimental groups engaged in 28 days of systematic self-monitoring (5 times per day), and received weekly feedback on either positive affect and activities (Do-module) or negative affect and thinking patterns (Think-module). The control group received no additional intervention. Participants completed questionnaires on depressive symptoms (primary outcome), social functioning, and empowerment before and after the intervention period, and at four measurements during a 6-month follow-up period.

Of the 90 (out of 110) participants who completed the intervention, 86% would recommend it. However, the experimental groups did not show significantly more or faster changes over time than the control group in terms of depressive symptoms, social functioning, and empowerment. Furthermore, the trajectories of the two EMI modules were very similar.We did not find statistical evidence that this type of EMI augments the efficacy of regular depression treatment, regardless of module content. We cannot rule out that EMIs have a positive impact on other domains or provide a more efficient way of delivering care. Nonetheless, EMI's promise of effectiveness has not materialized yet.

Week 4

Adolph, K. E., Hoch, J. E., & Cole, W. G. (2018). Development (of walking): 15 suggestions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(8), 699–711. 

A fundamental goal of developmental science is to identify general principles of change, but developmental scientists rarely generalize beyond their specific content domains.

Because infant motor skill acquisition is directly observable over multiple, nested timescales, it can be used as a model system for development.

We offer 15 suggestions for developmental research based on motor skill acquisition that collectively address the multilevel nature of change processes, cascades of real-time and developmental events, the diversity of developmental trajectories, inter- and intraindividual variability, starting and ending points of development, the natural input for learning, and the roles of body, environment, and sociocultural context.

We argue that these 15 suggestions generalize across developmental domains and have important implications for clinical work. We encourage researchers to consider them within their own areas of research.

Suggestion 1: Universal Stage-Like Progressions Do Not Represent Individual Development.

Suggestion 2: Skill Onset Is Not an On–Off Switch.

Suggestion 3: Starting Points Are Arbitrary.

Suggestion 4: Endpoints Are Arbitrary.

Suggestion 5: Childrearing Alters the Onset Age and Form of Skill Acquisition.

Suggestion 6: Experience Is Not the Mere Passage of Time.

Suggestion 7: Natural Input Shapes Everyday Learning.

Suggestion 9: Developmental Outcomes Are Not Real-Time Motivations.

Suggestion 10: Many Developing Components Contribute to Skill Acquisition.

Suggestion 11: Behavior Happens in a Body in an Environment.

Suggestion 12: Learning Occurs in the Context of Development.

Suggestion 13: Variability Is Inherent to Development.

Suggestion 14: Behavior Is a Cascade of Real-Time Events.

Suggestion 15: New Skills Instigate a Cascade of Developmental Events.

Tamis-LeMonda C.S., Kuchirko Y., Suh D.D. (2018). Taking Center Stage: Infants’ Active Role In Language Learning. In: Saylor M., Ganea P. (eds) Active Learning from Infancy to Childhood. Springer, Cham. 

In this chapter, we highlight the ways that infants actively shape their social experiences around language—through their everyday behaviors and developmental advances. We review the perceptual, social, and cognitive capacities that infants bring to the task of learning language. We then show that infant real-time exploratory, play, communicative, and locomotor behaviors are impetuses for social interactions. As infants act on their worlds, they elicit temporally contingent, lexically rich, developmentally attuned, multimodal inputs from parents. Indeed, much of the speech that parents direct to infants is driven by what infants are doing in the moment. Finally, we examine how developmental changes in infants’ language, play, and motor skills expand infants’ opportunities for learning language. As infants progress in abilities such as talking and walking, they engage with the objects and people of their environments in new ways, thereby eliciting novel language inputs from parents and other caregivers.

Parents are vigilant and eager participants in infants’ language-learning

journey, and much of their child-directed speech is driven by what infants are doing in

the moment. 

Statistical learning and contingency detection are basic learning mechanisms crucial to acquiring language. Infants exploit these capacities during everyday social interactions to discover how sounds combine to form words and how words map to objects and events in the environment. We next investigate how infants’ exploratory, communicative, and motor actions function to elicit timely, meaningful, and lexically rich language inputs from parents. In turn, the perceptual and social feedback generated by these behaviors are seeds to learning words. Infants actively participate in their learning experiences through vocalizations, gestures, exploration and play with objects, and so forth. These mundane, moment-to moment behaviors create abundant opportunities for parents to respond with verbal and physical inputs that promote language learning. The next section investigates how developmental changes in infants influence their language experiences. Developments in language and motor skills drastically alter how infants engage with people and objects. As infants progress in play sophistication, grow their vocabularies, and combine words into simple sentences, parents change in the content and complexity of their infant-directed speech. As infants learn to sit, crawl, and walk, their new motor skills allow them to explore near and distant objects and places and carry objects over to other people. The behavioral changes associated with motor development prompt new language forms and functions from parents.

Infants take center stage in learning language. Here, we described three key ways that infants contribute to their own development. First, infants enter the world of language armed with basic learning mechanisms that are foundational to learning words, including capacities to detect social contingencies and statistical regularities. Infants extract statistical regularities in language inputs, which allow them to discern meaningful phonemes; cull words from continuous auditory streams; and connect words to referents in the world. Infants are also able to detect temporal connections among the actions they produce, the perceptual and sensory inputs they experience, and the words they hear. Second, infants reap serendipitous benefits from the language inputs they elicit through their everyday behaviors. Infant touches, looks, vocalizations, gestures, and object play are catalysts for parents’ infant-directed speech and actions. Parents respond to these infant behaviors with rich, multimodal cues to word meaning, which help infants connect words to their referents in the environment. Infants can exploit the richness of socially embedded, multimodal language experiences to discern the meaning of words—that “ball” and “throw” refer to the round bouncy thing they just threw to the ground; that “soap,” “splash,” and “water” accompany the objects and actions of bathtime; that “juice” and “cheerios” are the staples of breakfast, and so forth. 3 Taking Center Stage: Infants’ Active Role in Language Learning 50 Lastly, developments in infant language and motor skill expand opportunities for infant learning and are highly salient to parents. Parents respond to infants’ developmental achievements by raising the bar of social interactions: They ask more questions, increase their decontextualized talk, and produce more grammatically complex constructions with child age and skill. As infants sit, crawl, and walk, they interact with people and objects in new ways, and parents adjust their language in response to those advances. In short, infants journey through an ever-changing world of communication that is made possible by the quite basic yet highly remarkable developments of everyday behavior.

Sheya, A., & Smith, L. (2019). Development weaves brains, bodies and environments into cognition. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 34(10), 1266–1273. 

Understanding how and why human cognition has the properties it does is one of science’s fundamental questions. Current thinking in Cognitive Science has delineated two candidate approaches that differ in how they address the question of the relationship between sensorymotor and cognitive processes. In this paper, we add to this discussion by arguing that this question is properly phrased as a developmental question and that ultimately to understand the properties of human cognition we must ask how human cognition came to have these properties. We conclude that because development weaves brains, bodies and environments into cognition, cognition is inexorably linked to processes of perceiving and acting and inseparable from them. 

Over multiple time scales brains, bodies and environments are structuring each other. It is through the moment to moment influences that cognition emerges and it is with particular brains, bodies and environments that cognition is weaved. To understand our abilities to categorize, communicate, use tools, imitate and use abstract formal systems like mathematics, we must focus on their development. Traditional approaches to cognition have sought to explain the products of cognition individually, assuming the fundamental structure of cognition is static operating on a consistent environment. Here we have argued that to understand the structure of adult cognition, we must understand the process by which cognition emerges. That is the dynamic, online processes that coordinate sensory-motor systems with a changing, variable environment that is itself structured by and not independent of bodies, brains and behaviors. This is consistent with embodied cognition, which holds that bodies (including brains) and the environments in which those bodies are embedded are essential, fundamental structuring influences on cognition. Because development is driven by behavior and its consequences, development is embodied. Cognition is thus embodied through development. That is, cognition is fundamentally a contextual-historical process that links brains, bodies and environments in reciprocal structuring interactions. By simply examining the woven, the product of development, we have discerned fascinating structure that has only led us to a theoretical morass in that there is no readily apparent way to resolve the conflict between embodied and traditional characterisations of cognition solely through experiments with adults. We have argued that the way forward is a focus on the phenomena of cognition at its most fundamental: how current states influence future states, the capacity to sustain, store and retrieve previous experience, the ability to integrate experience to uncover abstract relational structure and the systematicity of knowledge. To move forward we must embrace the historical-contextual (developmental) process from which the properties of cognition emerge. In studying this process, the weaving of brains, bodies and environments, we can determine what patterns might be woven and thus explain the properties of cognition.

van Vondel, S., Steenbeek, H., van Dijk, M., & van Geert, P. (2016). ‘Looking at’ Educational Interventions: Surplus Value of a Complex Dynamic Systems Approach to Study the Effectiveness of a Science and Technology Educational Intervention . In M. Koopmans, & D. Stamovlasis (Eds.), Complex Dynamical Systems in Education: Concepts, Methods and Applications (pp. 203-232). New York: Springer. DOI: 

What the standard research practice implicitly or explicitly conveys to educators is, to

begin with, the idea that influences of one variable onto another — such as

motivation on school science performance — can be meaningfully separated from

other influences and then in a sense stitched together again to provide a picture of

individual educational processes. Several studies report that interaction is essential to stimulate students’ performance. More specific, asking thought-provoking, student-centered, questions is a key element to stimulate students to reason with longer sentences and on higher levels of understanding.

From a content-based perspective, the surplus value of a complex dynamic systems approach was illustrated by analyzing the (effect of) the Video Feedback Coaching program for teachers intervention, in which complexity properties were intertwined in design, data collection, and analysis. When looking at the aggregated and static data, the results showed a positive intervention effect on the macro level of students’ scientific understanding.

To summarize, the surplus value of the analysis is that it illustrates how a complex dynamic systems approach can be used to describe the processes underlying static group-based average educational intervention effects, and provide information about the quality of that intervention. By using a process-based methodology, we were able to show that average results can be deepened by focusing on several complexity properties. We suggested answers to the question of why the VFCt intervention worked and why it seemed to work better during some lessons compared to other lessons within one class (i.e. type of questions, attuned interactions, using active participation during experiments versus classical experiment lessons). In addition, insight was provided into the actual changes during lessons and how interaction proceeded. This information cannot be found in conventional longitudinal studies, but are essential for teachers as this might more accurately reflect what they experience during their lessons and gives insight into how teachers can optimize their lessons – compared to standard evaluations. 

Menninga, A. (2017). Language and science in young learners: Intervening in the balance between challenging and adapting. Chapter 7: Changes in interaction patterns during an early elementary science intervention: a State Space Grid analysis [Groningen]: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. 

There is a growing consensus that the complex dynamic systems approach provides a theoretical framework and effective method for the study of patterns within one single interaction and over multiple interactions in real-time educational settings (Fischer & Bidell, 2006; Steenbeek & Van Geert, 2013; Van Geert, 1994; 2003). According to this approach, real-time interactions are the building blocks of learning and development. Next to theoretical concepts, the complex dynamic systems approach offers methodological tools and techniques to capture the dynamics of change processes over time. A widely used example of such a tool is the method of State Space Grid analysis (SSG; Granic & Hollenstein, 2003; Hollenstein, 2007; Lewis, Lamey, & Douglas, 1999), which can be used to graphically describe patterns of interaction and changes within interactions over time. Using ordinal data of 167 two components within a system (in this study: teacher and students), a state space is constructed, which provides information about the teacher-student interaction over time. This information concerns knowledge about the quality (content) and about the temporal structure of the interaction. In other words, it reveals qualitative descriptions of the patterns of interaction in terms of coupled behaviors of teachers and students as well as general (whole grid) and specific (region) measures of real-time variability in these patterns of interaction. Together, these measures enable us to quantify when and how teacher and students coordinate their behavior.

The present study provides insight into the dynamics of the real-time processes of change over the course of the LaT intervention. This study explored the patterns of interactions between teachers and students in terms of quality and structure, and aimed to investigate whether there are differences between experienced teachers and novice teachers. In order to do this, the changes in real-time teacher-student interactions over time were explored by applying the method of state space grid analysis. This methodology offers tools to visualize and analyze the quality of the interaction and the (temporal) structure of these interactions. The quality of the interaction is important in terms of behavior that is more optimal with regard to intervention goals. The structure of the interaction, which is the patterning of behavior (such as the interactional variability), informs us about the changing dynamics of the interaction patterns during the LaT intervention. The results suggested that the quality of the interaction during and after the intervention changed in comparison to this quality pre-intervention. In regular science education, without intervention, the teacher-student interaction took the form of a relatively rigid pattern of nonoptimal interactions (no co-construction). The system was drawn repeatedly towards this type of interaction, in which it rested over extended periods and to which it returned quickly. This quadrant was the preferred state at the start of the intervention. The results showed that the elements of the intervention are powerful enough to change these patterns of interaction as well as to support the teacher-student system to employ a richer repertoire of teacher-student interactions. The active co-construction quadrant, which is more optimal in terms of intervention goals, was visited more often. The strength of the preferred state (Q1) decreased, which means that the behavior of teachers and students returned less quickly to this state. In the end, this might lead to more ‘active co-construction’ during science lessons. The most important conclusion from the current study is that this relatively short period of intervention suffices to establish a new attractor pattern of less interactions of the type no coconstruction and more active co-construction. We argue that the intervention is a perturbation in the sense that it is actively changing existing practices as a consequence of an external force (the coaching sessions). Based on these results, we cannot conclude whether a pattern in which, for instance, Q4 (active co-construction) would quantitatively dominate over Q1 (no coconstruction) would indeed be a better pattern in terms of learning effect than the current one. A balance between the different types of interaction – adapted to the specific (potential) abilities of the students and the learning environment – may be most beneficial, and this balance is most likely different for each teacher-student interaction at each moment in time. With regard to the structure of the interaction, the conclusion is that the variability of the interaction (in terms of its structure) in general was rather high. High dispersion might be seen as a characteristic of adaptive classroom behavior (Geveke, 2016; Steenbeek & Van Geert, 2005). Over the course of the intervention, the interaction increased in variability, which reveals changes in the dynamics of the interaction. The interpretation of this increase in variability can be twofold. First, increasing variability can be an indication that the system became more erratic and disorderly. This is often seen as an indication of a process of change (Bassano & Van Geert, 2007; Van Geert & Van Dijk, 2002). After this period of increased variability the system can stabilize. The results did not show this decrease in variability, which might be an indication that the system did not yet stabilize into a new (more beneficial) preferred state of interaction (long-term stability). Secondly, the increase in variability can also be an indication of more flexible and adaptive interaction between teachers and students. From a pedagogical-didactic point of view, this could mean that this fluctuation between preferred states within and over lessons may be termed flexibility. Follow-up sessions in future intervention studies are needed to determine which interpretation applies to the current data. If the variability decreases, this may indicate stabilization of the system after a period of chaos (process of change). High variability in the long-term may indicate an increase in flexibility in the teacher-student interaction.

Week 5

Ryan, R. M., Deci, E. L., & Vansteenkiste, M. (2016). Autonomy and autonomy disturbances in self-development and psychopathology: Research on motivation, attachment, and clinical process. In D. Cicchetti (Ed.), Developmental psychopathology: Theory and method., Vol. 1, 3rd ed. (2016-25392-009; pp. 385–438). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; APA PsycInfo. 

Self-determination theory (SDT) maintains that the adequate support and satisfaction of individuals' psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness promotes the gradual unfolding of individuals' integrative tendencies, as manifested through intrinsic motivation, internalization, identity development, and integrative emotion regulation. At the same time, the thwarting of these same psychological needs and the resultant need frustration is presumed to evoke or amplify a variety of psychopathologies, many of which involve autonomy disturbances. We begin by defining what autonomy involves and how socializing agents, particularly parents, can provide a nurturing (i.e., need-supportive) environment, and we review research within the SDT literature that has shed light on various integrative tendencies and how caregivers facilitate them. In the second part of this chapter, we detail how many forms of psychopathology involve autonomy disturbances and are associated with a history of psychological need thwarting. We especially focus on internally controlling regulation in internalizing disorders; impairments of internalization in conduct disorders and antisocial behavior; and fragmented self-functioning in borderline and dissociative disorders. The role of autonomy support as an ameliorative factor in treatment settings is then discussed among other translational issues. Finally we highlight some implications of recognizing the important role of basic psychological needs for both growth-related and pathology-related processes.

This chapter consists of three major sections. First we define autonomy as it is classically understood and currently applied within the SDT perspective. In doing so, we not only specify what autonomy entails, but also distinguish it, both theoretically and operationally, from other developmental constructs with which autonomy is often confounded. These include the constructs of independence (Silk, Morris, Kanaya, & Steinberg, 2003; Smetana, Campione-Barr, & Dadis, 2004); individualism (e.g., Iyenger & Devoe, 2003); individuation (e.g., Blos, 1979); and emotional autonomy (e.g., Steinberg & Silverberg, 1986). Next, we elaborate on the type of social environments that are conducive to autonomous regulation via the satisfaction of individuals’ psychological needs and those that have been found to obstruct and undermine autonomous regulation by eliciting need frustration. Then we discuss the different healthy manifestations of autonomy, thereby reviewing in greater detail its developmental origins. Using research from both SDT and attachment theory, we begin by highlighting that secure attachments in childhood are developed through autonomy supportive and involved caregivers, who not only hold and protect (i.e., provide security) but also stimulate the budding initiative and self-expression of the infant (i.e., support autonomy), setting the stage for developing further capacities for mature self-regulation (e.g., Miklikowska, Duriez, & Soenens, 2011; Whipple, Bernier, & Mageau, 2009). Apart from being conducive to secure attachments, autonomy supportive relationships support the integrative functions of the self that allow for greater internal psychological coherence and more effective behavioral regulation. Exemplifying this, we then turn to evidence concerning how autonomy supportive contexts facilitate developmentally relevant integrative processes including: (1) intrinsic motivation; (2) internalization and integration of social regulations; (3) the development of emotion regulation; and (4) the formation of identity. We pay particular attention to how socializers, especially parents, either facilitate or thwart the developing child’s autonomy, thereby supporting or hindering the individual’s inner resources for successfully negotiating each of these developmental lines. These reviews of autonomy in psychological development, and of parental nurturance versus thwarting of autonomy, provide the foundation for examining.autonomy disturbances in varied types and presentations of psychopathology. The next section focuses on psychopathology is twofold: we consider autonomy depriving and thwarting environments as an etiological factor in psychopathology; and we highlight how autonomy frustrations are often a symptomatic factor in various disorders and sometimes a by-product of other cascading effects. Moreover, we identify three general types of psychopathology in which autonomy is differently implicated. These are internally controlling disorders, in which there is excessive self-control or internal compulsion; impairments of internalization, reflecting both impoverished development of self-regulation capacities or lack of value for social regulations; and finally fragmented self-functioning, which we relate to chronic or traumatic need thwarting. We conclude this section by considering implications not only for clinical interventions, but also for the design of social institutions such as schools and workplaces that can support persons vulnerable to psychopathology. Finally, we provide a summarizing overview and discuss a number of critical future research directions.

Among the central aims of SDT is the explication of the social-contextual conditions that promote optimal development of self. Thus, we have focused considerable attention on specifying the conditions that both facilitate and undermine optimal development. In this way, basic psychological needs are constructs that link SDT’s efforts in understanding growth and positive experience, to the study of ill-being and the development of psychopathology. It is our contention that many of the processes that are integral to nonoptimal functioning in normal populations are also central to various psychopathologies. Indeed, we see continuity in the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness across people’s personality differences, developmental epochs, and cultures, suggesting that thwarting of these basic needs, especially when being severe, is a critical component of psychopathology and more normal or transitory maladjustment. The developmental antecedents of disturbed autonomy are manifold, with genetic, biological, interpersonal, and sociocultural factors all being relevant (Cicchetti & Dawson, 2002; Ryan & Hawley, in press). Genetic and other biological factors enter transactionally into interpersonal relationships, facilitating or forestalling the quality of these social contextual inputs and thus constituting an obstacle or affordance for experienced need satisfaction, and cultural factors both shape and are emergent from patterns of social and familial functioning. Our focus has been primarily on the social and familial factors, although our aim was not to provide a complete account of the development of autonomy disturbances. Rather, we have attempted to describe the phenomenological significance of autonomy in normal and pathological development and to show empirically and theoretically how interpersonal factors contribute to the etiology of pathologically disturbed autonomy. Within this approach, we have viewed the development of autonomy as proceeding most effectively in familial and social contexts that provide autonomy support, optimal structure, and interpersonal involvement. In the absence of these necessary social nutrients—in contexts that thwart satisfaction of the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness—disturbed self-development is expected, resulting in the emergence of psychopathology. Psychopathology is thus the result of disorganizing influences, of contexts that thwart or forestall personality integration. We have reviewed a large number of studies indicating that the development of autonomy— that is, the maintenance of intrinsic motivation, the internalization of values and regulatory processes, the integration of emotions, and the formation of identities—is facilitated by the contextual nutrients of caregiver attention and interest, and of encouragement for exploration and self-initiation. Contexts where interpersonal involvement and autonomy support are absent have been found reliably to diminish autonomous regulation and impair the development of self. The contextual elements that have consistently been found in our studies to impair autonomy and development—namely, controlling or uninvolved parenting—have also been emphasized in the clinical literature on the antecedents of disorders that involve either heteronomous introjects or failures of internalization. Thus, there appear to be clear parallels between the results of the empirical explorations of autonomy dynamics in normative development and the conclusions from clinical studies of psychopathology. Indeed, basic psychological needs represent constructs linking our understanding of both growth and pathology in self-development (Vansteenkiste & Ryan, 2013).

Kolden, G. G., Wang, C.-C., Austin, S. B., Chang, Y., & Klein, M. H. (2018). Congruence/genuineness: A meta-analysis. Psychotherapy, 55(4), 424–433. 

Congruence or genuineness is a relationship element with an extensive and important history within psychotherapy. Congruence is an aspect of the therapy relationship with two facets, one intrapersonal and one interpersonal. Mindful genuineness, personal awareness, and authenticity characterize the intrapersonal element. The capacity to respectfully and transparently give voice to ones’ experience to another person characterizes the interpersonal component. Although most fully developed in the person-centered tradition, congruence is highly valued in many theoretical orientations. In this article, we define and provide clinical examples of congruence. We also present an original meta-analysis of its relation with psychotherapy improvement. An analysis of 21 studies (k), representing 1,192 patients (N), resulted in a weighted aggregate effect size (r) of .23 (95% confidence interval = [.13, .32]) or an estimated d of .46. Moderators of the association between congruence and outcome are also investigated. In closing, we address patient contributions, limitations of the extant research, diversity considerations, and therapeutic practices that might promote congruence and improve psychotherapy outcomes. (APA PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved). 

Week 6

Hill, Y., den Hartigh, R. J. R., Meijer, R. R., de Jonge, P., & Van Yperen, N. W. (2018). Resilience in sports from a dynamical perspective. Sport, Exercise and Performance Psychology, 7(4), 333-341. 

On the road to excellence, it is essential to develop resilience, that is, to be able to

positively adapt within the context of significant adversity. Researchers tend to agree

that resilience is a complex process with a multitude of underlying variables. To

stimulate research on the process of resilience, we propose the dynamical system

approach that provides a theoretical perspective on mapping out and understanding how

resilience unfolds over time. Furthermore, we will demonstrate how the findings of

previous research on resilience in sports fit with several dynamical properties, including

complexity, iterativity, and the formation of attractor states. New findings on the

dynamic properties of resilience will result in in-depth knowledge about, and in the

understanding of the process of how individuals adapt to adverse events. Practitioners

might benefit from this approach by being able to detect early warning signals of critical

transitions (e.g., critical slowing down) and take preventive actions before breakdowns

in performance occur.

Research on resilience in sports has increasingly focused on investigating the process that defines resilience (Fletcher & Sarkar, 2012, 2013; Galli & Vealey, 2008). To improve our understanding of this crucial concept for athletic performance, we call for using dynamical systems approach to understand resilience as an iterative process that is driven by ongoing interactions among a multitude of variables. New research designs should be tailored to measure adequate performance behavior and capture how the resilience process unfolds over time (Galli & Gonzalez, 2015). Specifically, researchers need to demonstrate the dynamic properties of resilience in individual time series in realistic performance contexts and throughout athletes’ careers. We expect this research agenda to result in in-depth knowledge about, and understanding of, the process of how individuals adapt to adverse events. Furthermore, practitioners might benefit from the dynamical systems approach by being able to detect early warning signals of critical transitions (e.g., critical slowing down; Scheffer et al., 2012) and take preventive actions before breakdowns in performance occur.

Neumann, N., Van Yperen, N. W., Brauers, J., Frencken, W., Brink, M., Lemmink, K. A. P. M., Meerhoff, R., & Den Hartigh, R. J. R. (in press). Non-Ergodicity in Load and Recovery: Group Results Do Not Generalize to Individuals. International journal of sports physiology and performance.

The study of load and recovery gained significant interest in the last decades, given its important value in decreasing the likelihood of injuries and improving performance. So far, findings are typically reported on the group-level, whereas practitioners are most often interested in applications at the individual-level. Hence, the aim of the present research is to examine to what extent group-level statistics can be generalized to individual athletes, which is referred to as the “ergodicity issue”. Non-ergodicity may have serious consequences for the way we should analyze, and work with, load and recovery measures in the sports field. Methods: We collected load, i.e., rating of perceived exertion (RPE) * training  duration, and total quality of recovery (TQR) data among youth male players of a professional football club. This data was collected on a daily basis across two seasons and analyzed on both the group- and the individual-level. Results: Group- and individual-level analysis resulted in different statistical outcomes, particularly with regard to load. Specifically, standard deviations within individuals were up to 7 times larger than standard deviations between individuals. In addition, at either level, we observed different correlations between load and recovery. Conclusions: The results suggest that the process of load and recovery in athletes is non-ergodic, which has important implications for the sports field. Recommendations for training programs of individual athletes may be suboptimal, or even erroneous, when guided by group-level outcomes. The utilization of individual-level data is key to ensure the optimal 80 balance of individual load and recovery.

Jonker, L., Elferink-Gemser, M. T., Tromp, E. Y., Baker, J., & Visscher, C. (2015). Psychological characteristics and the developing athlete: The importance of self-regulation. In Routledge handbook of sport expertise (pp. 343-354). Routledge. 

Although the use of effort declined for all athletes between 12 and 17 years of age, athletes who spent more time on training per week and were performing at a higher competitive level showed a less steep decline in the development of effort. 

Jonker, L., Huijgen, B. C., Heuvingh, B., Elferink-Gemser, M. T., & Visscher, C. (2019). 22 How youth football players learn to succeed. Football Psychology: From Theory to Practice, 297-312.

Elite youth football players need to develop multiple performance characteristics to be successful, such as physical, technical, tactical, and psychological skills. To become a professional football player, young players need to invest large numbers of training hours over a prolonged period of time to increase their chance of developing a successful career. In this context, self-regulation of learning is supposed to favour learning efficiency. Previous research states that young players with good selfregulatory skills were found to excel over those with poor self-regulatory skills during career development. Self-regulation of learning refers to the extent to which individuals are metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviourally proactive participants in their own learning process. Skills such as reflection and planning (i.e. metacognitive skills), but also effort and self-efficacy (i.e. motivational aspects) are part of the self-regulatory process. In this chapter, we give an insight into the career pathway of 525 elite youth football players in Dutch football academies and relate their chances of becoming professional football players to their development of selfregulatory skills.

We recommend coaches to assess the history of players before selecting them for their football academy. The significant predictive value of football experience, specifically at a younger age (Table 22.1) may refer to the phenomenon that scouts and coaches frequently struggle with distinguishing between ‘real talent’ and just more experience at a young age (Ankersen, 2015). Coaches should be aware of this phenomenon as getting selected for football academies, especially academies of higher level, predicts your future career chances. More specifically, this sheds light on the discussion whether early selection is a good or a bad thing by knowing that for many performance characteristics we are not able to predict future performance level already at a young age. On the other hand, football academies are afraid of missing future professionals and have optimised their talent developmental programmes to such an extent that not getting selected decreases the chance of becoming a professional player. We do not consider solving this ethical discussion How youth football players learn to succeed 309 as part of this book chapter; however, we are delighted to know that the Dutch FA has started a scientific study on the selection process in very young players in cooperation with football academies, coaches, and scientists in the 2017/2018 competitive season. Furthermore, we recommend coaches involve their football players in the process of goal-setting and feedback from a young age and develop their reflective thinking. Nowadays many coaches try to impose their performance standards on the players, but their job is to make players aware that skills need to be developed and to stimulate their learning by goal-setting, feedback, and reflection. In this perspective, we recommend football federations, such as the Dutch FA, to develop courses and training sessions for coaches and scouts in which they start developing their own self-regulatory skills and how to develop the self-regulatory skills of their players. Specifically, self-regulatory skills may help elite youth players heading towards the age-related transition to professional football (MacNamara & Collins, 2010). One way of stimulating the self-regulatory skills of elite youth players is by making expectations and progress visible. As a coach you can also rely on an ‘asking type’ of coaching to make players aware of their reflective behaviour and progress. Intervention studies showed that questions like ‘How do you think you can develop your skills? What do you need from me and your teammates?’ and ‘Think of what you want to develop. How do you think you can establish it? What are the hard parts and with what should we start?’ are helpful in the development and use of self-regulatory skills (Jonker, 2017; Peters & Kitsantas, 2010; Veenman, Kok, & Blöte, 2005). Furthermore, it is important to make them aware of the fact that learning and improving, even after making your debut, is a necessity and that even the greatest players need to keep on improving their performance.