Philosophical Psychology

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Dynamical systems in development: Review essay

of Linda V. Smith & Esther Thelen (Eds) a dynamics
systems approach to development: Applications

Cliff A. Hooker

To cite this article: Cliff A. Hooker (1997) Dynamical systems in development: Review essay of
Linda V. Smith & Esther Thelen (Eds) a dynamics systems approach to development: Applications ,
Philosophical Psychology, 10:1, 103-112, DOI: 10.1080/09515089708573209

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PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY, VOL. 10, NO. 1, 1997 103

Dynamical systems in development: review

essay of Linda V. Smith & Esther Thelen
(Eds) A dynamics systems approach to
development: applications

C U F F A. HOOKER

ABSTRACT This book focuses on showing how the ideas central to the new wave oj dynamic systems
studies may also form the basis for a new and distinctive theory of human development where both
global order and local variability in behaviour emerge together from the same organising dynamical
interactions. This also sharpens our understanding of the weaknesses of the traditional formal,
structuralist theories. Conversely, dynamical models have their own matching set of problems, many
of which are consiously explored here. Less readily acknowledged, the youthfulness of this field means
that many of the studies presented here struggle to pass beyond speculative metaphor. Nonetheless, the
field is shown to be one of vigour, intelligence and great promise.

A companion volume to A dynamics systems approach to the development of

cognition and action (Thelen & Smith, 1994), this book focuses on showing how the
ideas central to the new wave of dynamic systems studies may also form the basis for
a new theory of human development. The book comprises two parts; Part I is
devoted to modelling motor development dynamically and begins with a substantial
over-view of pattern formation in dynamic systems, while Part II, which begins with
a short informative review of the issues raised in trying to apply dynamic systems
models to development more generally, includes seven chapters on modelling
perception, emotion, cognition and social interaction. The book concludes with a
brief summative review of issues and progress. I should declare my hand at the
outset; I am trained in physics and philosophy, not developmental psychology, and
I am a long-term proponent of the replacement of structural models by non-linear
dynamical systems models, especially the replacement of formal logical models by
dynamical models in the theory of both individual and social cognition [1].
We are today, I believe, at the beginning of an important and fundamental
revolution in the conceptual foundations of all the sciences, one with important
consequences also for the professions: the shift from linear, reversible and composi-
tionally reducible mathematical models of dynamics to non-linear, irreversible and

Cliff A. Hooker, Department of Philosophy, University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia.
Email: plcah@cc.newcastle.edu.au

0951-5089/97/010103-10 © 1997 Journals Oxford Ltd

104 CUFF A. HOOKER

functionally irreducible complex dynamic systems models, especially for complex

adaptive systems (which include all living systems). Esoteric as little as a decade ago,
today there is a veritable explosion of new literature pursuing these ideas in every
field from irreversible thermodynamics and chaos theory in physics through engin-
eering control theory and complex adaptive systems theory in computer science,
self-organisation and hierarchy theory in biology, and dynamical neural net theory
and genetic algorithms in neurophysiology and cognitive psychology, to evolutionary
economics and international relations, with increasing cross-application among
these.
For all its value and conceptual importance, the ideas deriving from this
revolution have as yet scarcely touched philosophy and psychology. For the most
part, philosophers and psychologists still model rational agents (explicitly or by tacit
presumption) in terms of simple formal, typically logical, structure, and the whole of
science likewise. Individual rational psychology and rational scientific method alike,
for example, are standardly seen as reducible to logical inference of some kind; the
psychology and sociology (economics and politics) of decision making are at best
formally irrelevant, merely part of the "implementation" of the formal programme;
at worst are the source of causally interfering factors reducing rationality. One thinks
here of the Piaget of stage theory (emphatically not Piaget the biologist [2]), formal
models of concept formation, induction and knowledge revision, "expert systems"
and standard theories of science [3]. But those who think in these terms are effect-
ively locked into the dominant analytic philosophy paradigm—philosophy as logical
analysis—inherited from the positivists and logicists early this century, and ex-
pressed in the artificial intelligence (AI) formal computation model of cognition
from the 1960s.
Smith and Thelen declare their own hand in support of this position by
developing their own list of criticisms of the structuralist, formalist approach to
theoretical modelling in their introduction to Part II. The problem which they see
as central to psychological understanding is the integration of the regular global
structure of behaviour with the idiosyncrasy of individual real-time performance.
Many times each day we hear and comprehend the word "and", and reach for a cup
of tea or coffee; in each case there is a relevant sense in which it is the same action
being performed and yet in each case our precise inner condition is in some degree
unique to that occasion. The structural paradigm for relating these two, according
to Smith and Thelen, is to postulate an underlying fixed or static global structure
which is the explaining source of what is common across individual performances
while the variability in performance is to be explained by the way these structures are
accessed and the results executed: a generalised competence/performance distinc-
tion. "This divorce between the global order of behaviour and its local variability—
this separation of underlying knowledge structures from the processes that turn
them into individual behaviours—is fundamental to the structural approach and the
foundation of its failure" (pp. 152-153). Smith and Thelan go on to make six
criticisms of the structural approach to development, four of these claim explanatory
inadequacy for structuralist theories (1, 2, 4, 5) and two claim inadequacies in the
treatment of supporting data (3, 6). In stating these inadequacies below, I have
 REVIEW ESSAY 105

taken the liberty of reformulating them somewhat in my own terms so as to bring out
more sharply what I take to be the central issues involved [4]. The six criticisms are:
1. Structural accounts are inherently incomplete because they do not explain
the particularities of real-time performance. (Earlier, in Chapter 2, Goldfield charac-
terised structural theories of motor behaviour as "Air theories" because they
postulate mental structures for motor acts that would exist in the child even if the
child were suspended in air and had no surfaces on which to act.)
2. But correlatively, without an explanation of performance there is equally no
possibility of explaining the cross-performance similarities which are the basic
evidence for postulating fixed global structures. Real cats, the editors note, walk
backward, forward, over varied terrain, side step objects, walk when one limb is in
a cast and so on] since the same global walking order of alternating limbs is present
in all these cases while the variability of execution is enormous, requiring quite
different neuro-muscular patterns to maintain it, its constancy cannot be primarily
explained by a constant central pattern walking generator.
Putting criticisms 1 and 2 together, we see that there are two kinds of variability
which need explanation, the actual variability across performances, and the converse
capacity to produce essentially similar performances under variable circumstances.
The basic claim is that structural theories cannot explain either variability on the
basis of their fixed internal structures and to the extent that these variabilities are
prominent, to that extent their explanatory capacity is diminished.
3. Structural theories do not adequately explain developmental change. There
are two obvious alternatives available, that the fixed structures change (competency
change) or that their relation to performance changes (performance change).
Though mixtures of the two explanations may be used, all structural innatists, like
Chomsky and Fodor, are committed to at least some appeal to the second model,
as are all those who appeal to formal learning processes (since formal symbol
manipulation is uncreative). The first alternative is rejected because our "usual
notions of learning—the gradual shaping of behaviour by its consequences or ideas
by hypothesis testing—just do not offer easy accounts of qualitative change in
knowledge structures." But the second alternative appeals to factors which precisely
lie outside the scope of structural theory so, whatever its success, it cannot
contribute to the explanatory power of structuralism.
4. Since structural accounts can always attribute unexplained variability to
performance factors, and even attribute the failure to generate positive evidence for
structures to the failure to engage appropriate performance factors, structural claims
are difficult to genuinely test (i.e. to make face the genuine possibility of dis-
confirmation) and correspondingly easy to dogmatically defend. Smith and Thelen
put this objection in terms of structural accounts being able to "choose their own
data" because they can select which data will count as confirming and disconfirming
according to whether it is attributed to performance or competence. They had also
earlier complained (under 3) that structuralists focus primarily on group means in
performance at various ages because they are only concerned with finding global
order, and tend to ignore other kinds of developmental data, e.g. concerned with
trajectories of change in individual children or the magnitude of between-subject
106 CUFF A. HOOKER

viability and changes in that variability with task and age. In short, there are multiple
problems of selective bias in the treatment of data by structuralists.
5. "The cause of behaviour is an abstract description of the behaviour itself. ...
sucking is explained by an innate sucking reflex, walking by an innate central
[walking] pattern generator, the syntax of language by an innate grammar. In each
case an abstract and sometimes truly elegant description of behaviour itself is
claimed as the cause of the behaviour." (p. 159). Essentially similar to earlier
pre-formationist explanations of embryological development, these structuralists
accounts offer pseudo-explanations of performance, not because they appeal to
inner causes, but because they introject into those causes the very global order to be
explained in the performance. (That the origin of these structures can be "kicked
back in time" by appeal to evolutionary selection does not, without a more specific
supporting rationale, diminish the criticism.)
6. Particular non-structuralist theories are better supported by the available
data. Smith and Thelen cite Gottlieb's- work in support of the view that there
may be no fixed developmental sequences (epigeneses), in particular for linguistic
development, and on this basis reject even the appeal by structuralists to selectionist
accounts for it. They conclude that "post-natal developmental process,
just like the pre-natal development we call embryology, may bear qualitatively
new forms, new global structures, through a series of complex and cascading
interactions between the properties of the organism itself and the environment."
(pp. 160-161).
These six criticisms, or rather the issues of explanatory and evidential adequacy
which they raise, also provide a framework against which to evaluate the alternative
dynamical systems modelling program. The editors are well aware of this and they
argue that the program, although still in its early stages, shows every promise of
meeting these tests.
There is no question that dynamical systems models offer a very different
paradigm for explaining development and behaviour. Non-linear dynamical systems
show a very rich variety of patterns, from simple stable regularity to chaos, with
exquisitely complex and sensitive regularities in between, and they have a natural
historicity to them, in which their subsequent dynamical constraints and possibilities
are a function of their preceding sequence of dynamical states. Within these models
all of developmental change, current global order in behaviour, and current varia-
bility in behaviour arise from the operation of the same set of underlying non-linear
dynamical interactions. In structuralist terms, all of development, competence and
performance have a single unified treatment. In particular, global order is the
product of underlying dynamical processes, not their cause. Thus this paradigm
also rejects the simple psychology/implementation dichotomy characteristic of
structuralist theory [5].
A simple intuitive model which illustrates these points is that of convection rolls
(technically, Bénard cells) in a heated liquid or gas: under low heat the system forms
conduction layers but as the heat is increased first convection rolls form, then
"wobbly" rolls, and finally, with enough heat, turbulence. (Roughly, think of the
various conditions of a pot of water on the stove, from warming through smoothly
 REVIEW ESSAY 107

and violently rolling boiling, to turbulent boiling.) The organisational transitions

here represent dynamic responses of the system to changing environmental condi-
tions (the heat applied) and is the analogue of development, the general similarity of
convective rolls across various heatings and various samples is the analogue of
internal global organisation, while the particular variability both from sample to
sample and from roll to roll is the analogue of performance variability. The model
also incidentally illustrates how small changes in circumstances at crucial places can
issue in complex interactions between global organisation and local variability (here
the appearance of "wobble" in the convection rolls).
Clearly, the dynamical systems paradigm has the potential to offer explanatorily
powerful models, ones that address objections 1 to 3, if they can be shown to be
justified in a principled way by the evidence (objections 4, 6). But this latter presents
a much more difficult task than it did for structuralist theories, irrespective of
whether these are the correct models, because the systems concerned (human
beings) are so fantastically complex (many millions of times more complex than we
can presently hope to handle in any detailed way). This complexity presents a
double methodological challenge: on the one hand how to abstract from detail in
order to develop any usable explanatory models at all ("finding the order parame-
ters" in Smith and Thelen's terms) and, on the other hand, how to do this in a
principled way so that these models are genuinely confronted by data (rather than
being adjusted through an almost unlimited access to parameters so as to suit the
available data-methodologically, an equivalent failing to objection 5). These prob-
lems are not, after all, very different from those confronting structuralist theories
and, from this point of view, we may regard structuralist theories as a first crude
attempt to resolve them.
There is a further problem for the dynamical systems paradigm not dwelt
on by Smith and Thelen: how to properly conceptualise the underlying processes
(the semantic equivalent of objection 5). Structuralist theories specify structures
in the same cognitive terms as the cognitive behaviours they wish to explain—
if that is an explanatory weakness, it has the advantage of not requiring explanations
in sub-conceptual terms. By contrast, precisely because the dynamical systems
approach wishes to explain the formation of global order by underlying interaction
processes among more local components, its description of those components
cannot be at the same conceptual level as the global order to be explained. The issue
is clearly visible, for example, in the analysis of dynamical neural net models
of associative formation, whether of concepts or principles. It is the global
patterning in the inputs and outputs of the net that are psychologically significant
and described in psychological terms while the dynamics of the net itself requires
appeal to a more detailed numerical characterisation of net states in order to
explain how input is transformed into output and interesting net structure is
formed in the net's hidden layers. But these numerical features have no corre-
sponding psychologically assignable significance, they are conceptually sub-
psychological [6]. This is not as simple a problem as its virtual absence from
this book would suggest because it involves developing new conceptual structures
for relevantly characterising the underlying dynamnical interactions and processes.
108 CUFF A. HOOKER

(Its absence is what prompts Aslin to ask, in his closing Commentary, whether the
dynamical approach only models performance data and does not seek to reveal inner
process.)
Smith and Thelen do not discuss these difficulties, but they do add a further
practical and methodological issue, namely that effective discriminating evidence
typically requires very large data runs across time, but not only are these runs much
harder to collect in comparison with the simple performances of structuralist theory,
the focus on structuralism has meant that they have in general not thus far been
collected.
Thus far the meta-theoretical framework. When it comes to assessing the
dynamic systems approach as presented in this book, by far the most direct and
precise studies are those of Part I, devoted to motor performance and development.
Here many of the system constraints (e.g. gravity, limb length) and task criteria (e.g.
grasping an object) can be specified precisely and experimentally. This part opens
with a broad, well-informed review of the basic features of global pattern formation
in non-linear dynamic systems by Kelso, Ding and Schöner (Chapter 1), followed by
papers on control factors in dynamical models of the development of crawling
(Goldfield, Chapter 2), walking (as a limit-cycle system, Clark, Truly and Phillips,
Chapter 3), and hopping (Roberton, Chapter 4). Finally, that proper confrontation
between theoretical model and data requires delicately sensitive methodology is
nicely illustrated in Chapter 5 by Robertson, Cohen and Myer-Kress who look for
evidence of chaos in early behavioural movements. Nonetheless, I shall say no more
here about this "neatest" area for application of dynamical models, and focus instead
on Part II which seeks to extend the approach to wider, more complex features of
human development, doing so only because in a brief space it is easier to reveal issues
through an examination of these unavoidably bolder and less well supported exten-
sions. I have already examined the argumentation with which the editors introduce
this section, so I proceed directly to the individual chapters.
In Chapter 6, Butterworth examines interactions between perceptual and motor
development in infancy and assembles a variety of evidence in support of his core
idea that the infant nervous system contains a single dynamical structure appropriate
to the dynamical transitions in sensory arrays and extractable directly from them,
and from this inter-sensory co-ordination and sensori-motor control capacity imme-
diately flows. Both static representations in various sensory modes, and cognitive
representations proper are considered later, more sophisticated achievements.
"Dynamic transitions giving rise to a total flow of the visual array serve to specify the
movement of self and babies use this to gain control of the succession of postures and
motor milestones in the first eighteen months of life." (p. 180). Similarly, Bertenthal
and Pinto, Chapter 8, provide an elegant description of the nature of dynamic
interactions in the production of particular bodily motions and in the perception of
those same motions, for example in terms of sets of phase relations among limbs.
They argue that correspondences between these descriptions suggest that perception
of bodily motion and production of bodily motion might be coupled systems.
This interactional, constructivist approach is generally Piagetian overall (see
note 2) but more Gibsonian in its recognition of the importance of the dynamical
 REVIEW ESSAY 109

information available in the sensory arrays. These are old issues reappearing in a new
guise. Butterworth, for example, gestures toward an account of cognitive develop-
ment in these terms, suggesting an account of representation in terms of anticipatory
feedforward mechanisms within this dynamic process. An account of this kind has
been developed in considerable detail by Bickhard and Terveen (1995) but is more
actively interactionist (Piagetian) than merely extractionist (Gibsonian). Unfortu-
nately, Butterworth never gets into any detailed dynamical modelling to back his
suggestive explorations; the idea remains at the level of metaphor. This is a pity; he
might usefully have deployed these models, for example, to explore the tension
between the interactionist and extractionist aspects of his account.
The difficulty of moving beyond metaphor is also illustrated in Wolffs study.
What causes the transitions between infant states: alert, drowsy, asleep, aroused? In
Chapter 7, Wolff proposes the idea that, contrary to the standard models, these
states are not entities with distinct boundaries that are turned on and off but rather
multiple points of stability within a single but complex and high-dimensional system.
However, Wolffs model of a number of nearby stable attractors does not in itself
answer this question—for it neither specifies the key perturbing parameters, nor does
it explain how the system surmounts the barriers between the attractors (see p. 167.)
Wolff cites some clinical support for the inference that "... the relative stability of a
behavioural state depends on the temporal organisation of its component state
parameters ..." (p. 195) and discusses two models "... to account for the invariance
of state sequences that do not invoke the notion of central neural clocks." (p. 197),
pointing out that they are in principle empirically distinguishable. This opens up
interesting questions but it still moves only a little way beyond metaphor. In this vein
Wolff also argues for the plausibility that emotional expressions should be "viewed
as emergent properties of spontaneous pattern formation at a local level, and
emotional states as emergent properties of spontaneous formation at a macroscopic
level ..." (p. 202) but recognises that such general metaphors are no substitute for
a detailed empirically based theory, for example, they do not in themselves provide
a "satisfactory explanation of why infants smile to the natural face but cry when the
face is masked ..." (p. 203).
According to Newtson, Chapter 9, streams of behaviour such as conversations
have both a local dynamic—what is happening at any point in time—and a global
dynamic. Newtson's scheme for the integration of local and global dynamics is to
model conversations as a system of interacting waves of complex and simple
movements, like vocalisations and gestures. At a very general level these descriptions
seem of little interest. Discovering that these waves tend to be 180° out of phase, for
example, is just a fancy (but also very crude) way of observing that only one speaker
at a time tends to talk. And it is conversely possible to go too fast into too much
detail. Newtson adds interest to his empirical studies by looking at the conversa-
tional "wave" differences between normal and antisocial boys. But, in an effort to
get at mutualism and like features of social interest, he throws a lot of complicated
non-linear ecological dynamical modelling at the data, which overwhelms it in detail
it cannot resolve. He is right to insist that the dynamical organisation of social
interaction can be a fundamental starting point for analysis (just think of the
110 CUFF A. HOOKER

dynamics of a city) and brave to start with such complex phenomena as conversation
(someone has to do it), but it will be a long haul toward the goal of meaningful
models.
In Chapter 10, van Geert pursues an interesting ecological model, the idea that
individual cognitive development can be modelled as the successive, competitive
population of a relatively isolated but contactable territory by a collection of
cognitive species: skills, knowledges and competencies. The ecological model is that
of island biogeography. Each cognitive species is independent but not a Fodor-like
module because each depends intimately on the nature of the others and the
qualitative properties of the cognitive system as a whole, van Geert presents a
mathematical formalisation of these ideas using the well-known logistic equation and
shows how it can explain the developmental trajectory of early word acquisitions. In
doing so, van Geert introduces rules as competing cognitive species to model some
data and, while he does not mention it, this model now shows interesting similarities
and differences with Holland's more formalist classifier system model, which has
been put to similar, but more extensive, use (Holland et al, 1986; cf. Hooker, 1995,
pp. 30-32). Again, it is difficult not to feel that the relatively little and superficial
data available are overwhelmed by the richness of the abstract mathematical
modelling.
Following empirical observation, Eckerman, Chapter 11, suggests that the
behaviour of doing what a peer just did (peer imitation) emerges spontaneously in
the real-time activity of toddlers with the right levels of attention, intent to com-
municate, and imitative skill, all of which develop on their own time scales. Once
peer imitation emerges, it feeds on itself and rapidly becomes a stable behaviour,
showing distinctively different increases in five different types of imitation. The
emergence occurs more sharply (non-linearly) in particular pair interactions than
across groups. While all this again suggests a dynamical developmental process, and
Eckerman's observables are somewhat more "direct" and circumscribable than, say,
Newtson's, they still represent gross external behavioural features which leave one
relatively blind to the internal processes, in particular to what the key parameters
might be that determine the point and manner in which a child develops imitating
behaviour (p. 341).
Tucker and Hirsh-Pasek, Chapter 12, also consider language acquisition as a
problem of the emergence of new forms in a complex system. They appeal broadly
and heavily to self-organisation to explain what other theories aim to explain. For
example, language development is marked by the emergence of new structures,
structures sufficiently complex and unique to language, and based on such relatively
small fragments of heard language, as to prompt many to invoke maturation of some
innate structure(s) to explain these developments. Tucker and Hirsh-Pasek, by
contrast, simply point to the occurrence of self-organised phase shifts in non-linnear
dynamic systems as an explanation that avoids innatism by yielding global rearrange-
ments from small, local initiating signals (here the available language fragments).
But while self-organisation can have the required properties, leaping to it does not
in itself resolve any issues. First, one needs some discriminating, experimentally
accessible evidential basis for prefering the dynamic systems model. This will not be
 REVIEW ESSAY 111

immediately obvious since both accounts will be designed to predict the same overall
transitions, it will instead have to be in subtle differences between maturation and
phase transition. The authors recognise this problem and briefly review some general
ideas about testing at the close of their paper, for example that one should look for
a control parameter whose changes invoke phase transitions with lots of variability
during the transition. But this kind of behaviour is equally open to the maturationist,
especially if maturation is regarded as a dynamical, rather than a formal, process.
And that makes the second point obvious: even if the dynamical account is correct
it does not remove all appeal to innate properties and structures, it just shifts them
to the interactional and structural constraints of the dynamical system in virtue of
which, remarkably, it goes through all and only those phase transitions that exhibit
increasing linguistic performance. (Alternatively: What is the underlying dynamical
competence?)
What these papers show is that the dynamic systems approach, even as meta-
phor, enables one to take a fresh approach to the data, ask new questions not
suggested by older theories, and indeed to construct new experiments that will yield
new kinds of data. All this is to the good. In raising more critical questions in my
commentary, then, I emphatically do not intend to reject the dynamical approach—
to the contrary. Both the editors and many of the authors themselves raise the same
issues—though I have remarked more on methodological similarities between dy-
namical and structural accounts where this book emphasises the differences. And in
a succinct and penetrating closing Commentary, Ashin raises many more such
issues—I recommend this piece to all would-be developmental dynamicists. What
I want to emphasise is that it is "early days" yet for a research programme that is
rich and promising. Meanwhile, this book provides an excellent, and honest,
introduction to its field.

Notes
[1] See Hooker (1995) and references. More recently, see Herfel and Hooker (1997) and Christensen
et al. (in preparation).
[2] For a dynamic systems reading of Piaget see Hooker (1994), supplemented by Hooker (1995,
Chapter 5).
[3] Many of the standard texts in non-linear dynamic systems find their way into various of the chapter
bibliographies in this book. Further references, across a wider range of disciplines see the *ed
bibliographical entries in Hooker (1995).
[4] These criticisms might be compared with those in Hooker (1995, pp. 22-34).
[5] Note that the performance/competence distinction is not the same as the psychology/implemen-
tation distinction to which structuralist theories are also committed; for structuralists both
competence and performance models typically occur wholly within the psychological level,
although performance variability is explained by both psychologically characterised variability and
by dynamically characterised disturbances to psychological structure originating in the implemen-
tation.
[6] Smolensky refers to these characterisations as "half-way" between the input-output psychological
characterisation and their dynamical implementation proper (see Smolenski, 1988), but this is just
to accept the dichotomy between cognitive theory and dynamical implementation which it is
precisely the point of the dynamical paradigm to reject. On these issues see, for example, Bechtel
and Abrahamson (1991), Hooker (1996) and references therein.
112 CUFF A. HOOKER

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