Development of early expressive and communicative action: Reinterpreting the evidence from a dynamic systems perspective.

Communication of smiling and laughter in mother-infant play: Research on emotion from a dynamic systems perspective

“…The psychological system is never thought of as hardwired. In psychological systems, regularities arise from the "soft" assembly of self-organization, and because this is dynamic there is always variability and change (Fogel and Thelen, 1987;Thelen and Smith, 1994).…”

“…Selforganization occurs as constituents act together to constrain the multiple possible actions of other constituents so that the complex system organizes into stable relational patterns called attractors (Fogel and Thelen, 1987;Kugler, Kelso, and Turvey, 1982;Prigogine and Stengers, 1984). The relational attractors involve the brain and central nervous system, but there is no reason to assume that the brain is the executive or controller of an emotional process: it is only one constituent of the self-organizing process (Fogel and others, 1992;MeSSinger and others, 1997;Mischel, Camras, and Sullivan, 1992).…”

“…The brain, although of crucial importance in any emotional process, is only one constituent in the system. Research in emotional development shows that both behavior and development often appear to be led or regulated by one or another constituent of the system (Fogel and Thelen, 1987;Fogel and others, 1992). While a neural constituent may lead the self-organization of an emotion process at one moment, a motor or social constituent may lead at another time.…”

“…While a neural constituent may lead the self-organization of an emotion process at one moment, a motor or social constituent may lead at another time. Dynamic systems perspectives recognize that there are emotion constituents not only in the brain but also in the motor system, the social system, and the physical and cultural environment: all of these are essential to the creation and maintenance of relationships via self-organization (Fogel and Thelen, 1987).…”

“…Our goal is to describe the studies that have evolved from our research group and to explain how these studies have been informed by dynamic systems thinking. Reviews of our dynamiC systems approach to emotional development can be found in the following works: Dickson, Fogel, and Messinger (forthcoming) ;Fogel and others (1992) ;Fogel, Nwokah, and Karns (1991) ;Fogel and Thelen (1987);and Messinger, Fogel, and Dickson (1997). Additional theoretical discussions of dYnamic systems approaches applied to emotion can be found in Camras (1992), Haviland and Kahlbaugh (1993), Lewis (1993Lewis ( , 1995, and Wolff (1987).…”