Executive Summary

This chapter addresses changes in weather and climate events relevant to extreme impacts and disasters. An extreme (weather or climate) event is generally defined as the occurrence of a value of a weather or climate variable above (or below) a threshold value near the upper (or lower) ends (‘tails’) of the range of observed values of the variable. Some climate extremes (e.g., droughts, floods) may be the result of an accumulation of weather or climate events that are, individually, not extreme themselves (though their accumulation is extreme). As well, weather or climate events, even if not extreme in a statistical sense, can still lead to extreme conditions or impacts, either by crossing a critical threshold in a social, ecological, or physical system, or by occurring simultaneously with other events. A weather system such as a tropical cyclone can have an extreme impact, depending on where and when it approaches landfall, even if the specific cyclone is not extreme relative to other tropical cyclones. Conversely, not all extremes necessarily lead to serious impacts. [3.1]

Many weather and climate extremes are the result of natural climate variability (including phenomena such as El Niño), and natural decadal or multi-decadal variations in the climate provide the backdrop for anthropogenic climate changes. Even if there were no anthropogenic changes in climate, a wide variety of natural weather and climate extremes would still occur. [3.1]

A changing climate leads to changes in the frequency, intensity, spatial extent, duration, and timing of weather and climate extremes, and can result in unprecedented extremes. Changes in extremes can also be directly related to changes in mean climate, because mean future conditions in some variables are projected to lie within the tails of present-day conditions. Nevertheless, changes in extremes of a climate or weather variable are not always related in a simple way to changes in the mean of the same variable, and in some cases can be of opposite sign to a change in the mean of the variable. Changes in phenomena such as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation or monsoons could affect the frequency and intensity of extremes in several regions simultaneously. [3.1]

Introduction

A good method for obtaining an idea of what a scientific discipline – developmental psychology in this particular case – entails is to browse through introductory student handbooks (Berger, 2003; Bukatko & Daehler, 2001; Cole & Cole, 1993; Kail, 2001; Newman & Newman, 2006; Sigelman & Rider, 2006; Seifert & Hoffnung, 1991; Vasta, Haith, & Miller, 1995). The consulted handbooks either focus on childhood to adolescence or on the human life span. The first chapters typically provide an overview of the “perspectives” on development and comprise a selection of theories ranging from psychodynamically (Freudean) inspired via learning theory to theories of Piaget and Vygotsky. Most handbooks address the nature–nurture problem, discussing the effect of genes and environment on development and present some sort of interactionist or trans-actionist approach. The main chapters are divided according to two dimensions. One is a content or domain dimension and comprises physical, cognitive, and social aspects of development. The other dimension refers to age and amounts to a distinction in phases or “ages.” The standard children-and-youth division encompasses prenatal development and birth; infancy (0–2 years); preschool years (2–6), childhood (6–12), and adolescence (12–21). For each phase or stage, typical developments are described, such as the development of attachment in the first year of life, the development of theory of mind at around 3 years, the emergence of logical thinking (including conservation and other Piagetian themes) around age 5, and so forth.

INTRODUCTION

Language is a human capacity that is typically transmitted from one generation to another (one speaks about one's mother tongue, for instance). However, what does transmission mean in this regard? The concept of transmission is well defined in fields like physics or the mathematical theory of information, where it relates to deep principles of the organization of matter, such as entropy. To what extent do we understand transmission if language is concerned? How does it relate to claims about language as an innate capacity? How does intergenerational transmission relate to the emergence or evolution of language over many generations? This chapter discusses these questions from the point of view of dynamic systems theory, which provides a general approach to understanding processes of change and emergence.

A TALE OF HEAT AND ORDER…

Since the early 1990s, developmental psychologists have been exploring a new approach to describing, explaining, and understanding developmental pro-cesses – namely, dynamic systems theory (Thelen & Smith, 1994, 1998; van Geert, 1994, 2003). Dynamic systems theory offers a natural and intuitive approach to such processes. It emphasizes the actual development as it takes place in real time. It explicitly accounts for each step in the process as the direct outcome of the preceding step. It focuses on mutual interactions between variables – that is, forces or components that affect one another. A major feature of dynamic systems thinking is its emphasis on the ubiquitousness of self-organization (Lewis & Granic, 1999).

Overview

Human development and education can benefit from a framework that analyzes behavior and brain change as involving dynamic systems processes. Dynamic systems researchers build specific models focusing on processes of change in learning and teaching, beginning with individual growth patterns and including in mathematical models multiple layers and scales of casual interaction. These models shift the focus of research and assessment to individual behavior, fluctuations in time, and the combination of gradual change with periodic abrupt changes in performance and brain patterns. Dynamic systems models explain and predict important properties of learning and teaching such as non-linear change and self-organization (spontaneous increase of order and information). They readily combine apparently opposite processes in the same theory and model, such as gene versus environment or individual versus context/culture, a characteristic called superposition. Measurements should involve the kind of assessment that teachers and schools do every day in the classroom – repeated measures of individual behavior. The models then provide ways of analyzing common educational phenomena, such as variability in performance, ambiguity of behavior, and context specificity. A dynamic approach promises to provide useful tools for understanding the complex individual changes that occur during education and child development.

The Editors

Human development constitutes a complex system. Rocha (1999) defines a complex system as “… any system featuring a large number of interacting components (agents, processes, etc.) … whose aggregate activity is nonlinear (not derivable from the summations of the activity of individual components) … and typically exhibits … self-organization …”.

Modelling and the representation of phenomena

In her book Life with Picasso, Françoise Gilot recalls a discussion about the portrait that Picasso painted of Gertrude Stein in 1906 (Gilot and Lake 1964). Many people first found that the portrait was not a very good likeness. Later, however, many began to think that, over the course of the years, Gertrude Stein had come to resemble the portrait. Picasso had predicted that although the portrait was not a very good likeness, Stein herself would become a good likeness of the portrait.

Gertrude Stein's portrait reminds us of a basic feature of what a model should be, namely the representation of what the modeller sees as the essence of the modelled phenomenon (Casti 1997). However, it also reminds us of the fact that resemblance runs both ways. If the model is powerful enough, it will come to dictate what the essence of the modelled phenomenon should be.

A model leaves out those aspects that are not considered essential or important and it exaggerates or idealizes what it considers characteristic. In that sense, what a model does not show, what it considers not characteristic, is about as interesting as what the model does show. The dictum that what must be left out of representation is more fundamental than what is actually displayed is probably more characteristic of traditional Japanese than of Western art, but it is nevertheless applicable to all forms of art, including the art of modelling.

One of the most striking findings of microdevelopmental studies is the existence of a considerable degree of variability in a person's performance levels (Crowley, Shrager, & Siegler, 1997; Fletcher, Huffman, Bray, & Grupe, 1998; Kuhn, Garcia-Mila, Zohar, & Andersen, 1995; Kuhn, 1995; Nakatani, 1995; Siegler, 1995). In addition, variability itself seems to vary between persons and conditions too (Alibali, 1999; Goldin-Meadow, Alibali, & Church, 1993). Still another finding is that individuals differ among one another in the way they reach a developmental outcome or in the way they show the psychological property under scrutiny (for instance, the use of a particular cognitive strategy) (Siegler, 1994, 1995, 1997; Siegler & Shipley, 1995; Siegler & Chen, 1998; Lautrey, 1993; Lautrey & Caroff, 1996).

The standard view on variability – which I shall confine to fluctuations in a person's level across time – is that it is more closely related to the notions of error and deception than to the idea of truth. The psychologist is like Narcissus, who looks at his face mirrored by the water of a pond that is touched by a gale of wind. The wrinkles he sees are those of the water, not of his face. If we study a property such as a person's level of skill, knowledge, intelligence – all alleged internal properties – we look at that property through some medium, for instance a test, an observation of spontaneous behavior, and so forth.

Dynamic system: a general definition

The phrase dynamic system contains the words dynamic – referring to the Greek “dynamikos,” which means “powerful” – and system – a word that stems from a Greek verb that means “to combine.” Thus, a dynamic system is a combination of things to which certain powers or forces apply. If a force is applied to something, it moves or changes (unless the force is counteracted). Defined in this way, the term dynamic system has an extremely broad meaning. For instance, a bunch of dry leaves blown by the autumn wind can already be considered a dynamic system. It consists of a collection of leaves all subject to the same external force, the wind.

In order to avoid such trivial applications, we should confine the term to something that is more conceptually appealing. Let us begin by confining the notion of system to collections of things that are related to one another in a way that corresponds with the notion of dynamic, that is force- or power-related. We shall call something a dynamic system if it consists of elements that exert specific influences or forces upon one another and, by doing so, change each other's and their own properties (for general, technical introductions to dynamic systems, see, among others, Beltrami, 1987; Jackson, 1991a, b).

In this chapter I shall adopt examples from different fields: physics, biology, and, of course, psychology. My point is to show that dynamic principles apply to systems, irrespective of those systems' actual form or nature. What matters are the relationships, not the content matter. Dynamic systems' thinking is basically a way of thinking about systems, not about psychology per se.

The maintenance, production, and transformation of stable organism-environment systems require an intricate organization of the organism's behavior. In man as in many other species, emotions are an essential part of the behavioral system. They play a crucial role as evaluative classifiers or categorizers of states and events, as signals to oneself or to conspecifics, all in the service of generalized appropriate action on the vagaries of an only partially predictable and manageable environment. Emotions are not just internal states. On the contrary, they should be viewed as internal reactions that an organism has learned to observe or detect within itself and within other organisms, in principle conspecifics and related species. Thus, the outward expression of emotions has important signal value. Especially in social species, where the maintenance of a successful organism-environment system depends on the regulation of action among members of a social group, emotional expressions are vital signals of the internal states of individuals.

A particular and biologically extremely important social bond is that between a young infant and its primary caregivers, simply because most neonates cannot survive without the care of their elders, and – in our own and related species – the care of the mother in particular.