David C Witherington
Biographic Data
| ID | 1463694 |
|---|---|
| NAME | David C Witherington |
| GIVEN NAMES | David C |
| FAMILY NAME | Witherington |
| SIGNATURE | WITHERINGTON D C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of New Mexico |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1944-5128 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 28 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
The Nature of Horror
Given its clinical significance, horror should occupy a prominent place within emotion theory. However, conceptualizations of horror within psychological science are relatively underdeveloped and conceptually confused. Through conceptual analysis of the disparate literature on the emotion, we seek to establish horror as a qualitatively distinct mode of engagement with the world and to remedy its over-intellectualization, as evident in many prior …
Making Sense of Process in Developmental Science
Introduction to the Special Issue
No abstract, as this is an introduction to a special issue and effectively serves as an editorial
What Taking Development Seriously Means for Evolutionary Theory
Proponents of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) emphasize the critical role that organisms and their development play in the process of evolution. This framework explicitly rejects the genocentric focus that once dominated interpretations of the Modern Synthesis in evolutionary theory. In place of genocentrism, EES highlights processes like niche construction, developmental constraint, and extragenetic inheritance as central to any unders…
Embracing variability and complexity and the explanatory reductionism of scientific realism
We agree with Arocha’s criticism of psychological science’s reliance on statistical procedures that factor out intraindividual variability and the complex dynamics inherent to behavior, as well as with his call for the adoption of a metatheoretical framework that embraces such variability. However, we disagree that scientific realism provides such a framework, given its reductive privileging of certain forms of explanation over others. We advocat…
Enacting the Spirit of Transdisciplinarity within Developmental Science
Evolving evolutionary psychology
Which evolutionary theory can best benefit psychological theory, research, and application? The most well-known school of evolutionary psychology has a narrow conceptual perspective (a.k.a., "Narrow Evolutionary Psychology" or NEP). Proponents of NEP have long argued that their brand of evolutionary psychology represents a full-fledged scientific revolution, with Buss (2020) recently likening NEP's scientific impact to that of a Copernican or Dar…
Prelims
Contents Vol. 63, 2019
Making Sense of Microdevelopment, Macrodevelopment, and Their Interrelation
Embracing Agency in All of Its Explanatory Complexity
Conceptualizing the Dynamics of Development in the 21st Century
Developmental Dynamics
At the end of the 20th century, as new tools and techniques from the interdisciplinary field of nonlinear dynamics began enjoying increased application to the study of development, interest in dynamics flourished in the developmental sciences. In the eyes of many prominent dynamics thinkers of the time, these new dynamics approaches – by virtue of their grounding in time and variability – not only established a thoroughgoing process orientation t…
Metatheory and the Primacy of Conceptual Analysis in Developmental Science
The practice of science entails more than just repeated cycles of theory construction, hypothesis generation, and empirical investigation. Broader, metatheoretical levels of conceptualization necessarily condition all aspects of the research process, establishing the very meaning and sensibility of science’s empirical and theoretical activities. When debate arises at these metatheoretical levels, it is the subject of conceptual analysis, not empi…
On the Explanatory Value of Individuals and Stages
Towards a Truly Developmental Epigenetics
Conceptual and empirical advances across the biological and psychological sciences have made it increasingly clear that genetic and environmental factors cannot be meaningfully partitioned when attempting to explain development. This should be a major theme within the contemporary field of epigenetics. However, the field has yet to fully extricate itself from reductionist tendencies in its conceptualization of developmental relations. Epigenetics…
Transcending the Nature-Nurture Debate through Epigenetics
Integrating Development and Evolution in Psychological Science
New attempts in psychological science at integrating developmental (individual-level) and evolutionary (population-level) accounts of phenotypic stability and variability have achieved increasing prominence of late. Foremost among such attempts is the field of evolutionary developmental psychology (EDP). EDP proposes that selective pressures in evolution inform psychological development through a synthesis of the Darwinian/neo-Darwinian selection…
Posttraumatic Distress and Growth Among Guatemalan War Orphans in Adulthood
Psychological sequelae of war and genocide can potentially persist into adulthood for child survivors of such tragedies. However, few studies have investigated child survivors’ particular experiences with such sequelae in adulthood, and fewer still distinguish between orphaned and nonorphaned child survivors’ experiences. The present study examined the experiences of posttraumatic distress and psychological growth among a sample of adults ( N = 4…
Serendipitous Relations as Self-Organization through Reflective Engagement
In his astute and insightful article, Christopher Napolitano [this issue] presented a theory of serendipitous relations to address what remains an underexplored arena of transaction and transformation in development: those person-environment relations in which individuals intentionally act to both promote and take advantage of unexpected life events, establishing novel developmental pathways of adaptive organization in the process. As an integrat…
Taking Emergence Seriously
The dynamic systems (DS) approach has emerged as an influential and potentially unifying metatheory for developmental science. Its central platform – the argument against design – suggests that structure spontaneously and without prescription emerges through self-organization. In one of the most prominent accounts of DS, Thelen and her colleagues [Spencer, Dineva, & Schöner, 2009a; Thelen & Smith, 1994, 2006] have extended the argument against de…
The Dynamic Interplay of Theory and Method through Time
Review Articles| June 24 2010 The Dynamic Interplay of Theory and Method through Time: Essay Review of Dynamic Process Methodology in the Social and Developmental Sciences Edited by Jaan Valsiner, Peter C.M. Molenaar, Maria C.D.P. Lyra, and Nandita Chaudhary 1 Subject Area: Psychiatry and Psychology , Women's and Children's Health David C. Witherington; David C. Witherington University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N. Mex., USA Search for other wor…
Body Size Stereotyping and Internalization of the Thin Ideal in Preschool Girls
Systems and Dynamic Systems
As we enter the 21st century, developmental psychology still constitutes a field in search of ontological identity and uniformity [Witherington, 2007]. New commitments to variability in development – across instances of real-time action, across contexts, individuals, cultures, and historical epochs – have underscored the need for a metatheoretical framework that embraces the developmental process in all its dynamic complexity [e.g., Baltes, 1987;…
The Development of Affect Specificity in Infants' Use of Emotion Cues
This study examined the emergence of affect specificity in infancy. In this study, infants received verbal and facial signals of 2 different, negatively valenced emotions (fear and sadness) as well as neutral affect via a television monitor to determine if they could make qualitative distinctions among emotions of the same valence. Twenty 12‐ to 14‐month‐olds and 20 16‐ to 18‐month‐olds were examined. Results suggested that younger infants showed…
Body Size Stereotyping and Internalization of the Thin Ideal in Preschool Girls
Mothers' Behavior Modifications During Pretense and Their Possible Signal Value for Toddlers
An important issue for understanding early cognition is why very young children's real-world representations do not get confused by pretense events. One possible source of information for children is the pretender's behaviors. Pretender behaviors may vary systematically across real and pretend scenarios, perhaps signaling to toddlers to interpret certain events as not real. Pretender behaviors were examined in 2 experiments in which mothers were …
Locomotor experience affects self and emotion
Two studies investigated the role of locomotor experience on visual proprioception in 8-month-old infants. Visual proprioception refers to the sense of self-motion induced in a static person by patterns of optic flow. A moving room apparatus permitted displacement of an entire enclosure (except for the floor) or the side walls and ceiling. In Study 1, creeping infants and prelocomotor/walker infants showed significantly greater postural compensat…
Evolving evolutionary psychology
Which evolutionary theory can best benefit psychological theory, research, and application? The most well-known school of evolutionary psychology has a narrow conceptual perspective (a.k.a., "Narrow Evolutionary Psychology" or NEP). Proponents of NEP have long argued that their brand of evolutionary psychology represents a full-fledged scientific revolution, with Buss (2020) recently likening NEP's scientific impact to that of a Copernican or Dar…
Travel Broadens the Mind
The onset of locomotion heralds one of the major life transitions in early development and involves a pervasive set of changes in perception, spatial cognition, and social and emotional development. Through a synthesis of published and hitherto unpublished findings, gathered from a number of converging research designs and methods, this article provides a comprehensive review and reanalysis of the consequences of self‐produced locomotor experienc…
Probabilistic Epigenesis, Experience, and Psychological Development in Infancy
The Development of Anticipatory Postural Adjustments in Infancy
Efficient voluntary action requires postural adjustments that compensate for potential balance disturbances before they occur. These anticipatory postural adjustments have been widely investigated in adults, but relatively little is known about their development, especially during infancy. This study examined the early development of anticipatory postural activity in support of pulling action while standing. A total of 34 infants between 10 and 1…
Mothers' Behavior Modifications During Pretense and Their Possible Signal Value for Toddlers
An important issue for understanding early cognition is why very young children's real-world representations do not get confused by pretense events. One possible source of information for children is the pretender's behaviors. Pretender behaviors may vary systematically across real and pretend scenarios, perhaps signaling to toddlers to interpret certain events as not real. Pretender behaviors were examined in 2 experiments in which mothers were …
Dynamical systems approaches to emotional development
The Development of Prospective Grasping Control Between 5 and 7 Months
By 7 months, infants, when reaching for an object, visually guide their grasp by preorienting their hands to match the object's orientation. Evidence at earlier ages, however, for prospective grasp control via anticipatory hand orientation is mixed. This study examined longitudinally the development of anticipatory hand orientation in 15 infants, seen every 3 weeks between 5 and 7.5 months. On each visit, infants were given 8 trials of reaching f…
Avoidance of Heights on the Visual Cliff in Newly Walking Infants
Work with infants on the “visual cliff” links avoidance of drop‐offs to experience with self‐produced locomotion. Adolph's (2002) research on infants' perception of slope and gap traversability suggests that learning to avoid falling down is highly specific to the postural context in which it occurs. Infants, for example, who have learned to avoid crossing risky slopes while crawling must learn anew such avoidance when they start walking. Do newl…
The Dynamic Systems Approach as Metatheory for Developmental Psychology
The dynamic systems perspective has been touted as an integrative metatheoretical framework for the study of stability and change in development. However, two dynamic systems camps exist with respect to the role higher-order form, once emergent, plays in the process of development. This paper evaluates these two camps in terms of the overarching world views they embody. Some dynamic systems proponents ground their conceptualization of development…
Frameworks for understanding emotions and their development
In recent years, both functionalist and dynamic systems approaches have assumed increasing prominence in the study of emotion and its development, but the similarities and differences between these perspectives remain largely unexplored and open to more systematic examination. In this article, the authors argue that both approaches share a systems view of emotion and regard emotion in relational, process terms. However, each approach adopts a dis…
The Development of Affect Specificity in Infants' Use of Emotion Cues
This study examined the emergence of affect specificity in infancy. In this study, infants received verbal and facial signals of 2 different, negatively valenced emotions (fear and sadness) as well as neutral affect via a television monitor to determine if they could make qualitative distinctions among emotions of the same valence. Twenty 12‐ to 14‐month‐olds and 20 16‐ to 18‐month‐olds were examined. Results suggested that younger infants showed…
Locomotor experience affects self and emotion
Two studies investigated the role of locomotor experience on visual proprioception in 8-month-old infants. Visual proprioception refers to the sense of self-motion induced in a static person by patterns of optic flow. A moving room apparatus permitted displacement of an entire enclosure (except for the floor) or the side walls and ceiling. In Study 1, creeping infants and prelocomotor/walker infants showed significantly greater postural compensat…
Systems and Dynamic Systems
As we enter the 21st century, developmental psychology still constitutes a field in search of ontological identity and uniformity [Witherington, 2007]. New commitments to variability in development – across instances of real-time action, across contexts, individuals, cultures, and historical epochs – have underscored the need for a metatheoretical framework that embraces the developmental process in all its dynamic complexity [e.g., Baltes, 1987;…
The Dynamic Interplay of Theory and Method through Time
Review Articles| June 24 2010 The Dynamic Interplay of Theory and Method through Time: Essay Review of Dynamic Process Methodology in the Social and Developmental Sciences Edited by Jaan Valsiner, Peter C.M. Molenaar, Maria C.D.P. Lyra, and Nandita Chaudhary 1 Subject Area: Psychiatry and Psychology , Women's and Children's Health David C. Witherington; David C. Witherington University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N. Mex., USA Search for other wor…
Body Size Stereotyping and Internalization of the Thin Ideal in Preschool Girls
Taking Emergence Seriously
The dynamic systems (DS) approach has emerged as an influential and potentially unifying metatheory for developmental science. Its central platform – the argument against design – suggests that structure spontaneously and without prescription emerges through self-organization. In one of the most prominent accounts of DS, Thelen and her colleagues [Spencer, Dineva, & Schöner, 2009a; Thelen & Smith, 1994, 2006] have extended the argument against de…
Serendipitous Relations as Self-Organization through Reflective Engagement
In his astute and insightful article, Christopher Napolitano [this issue] presented a theory of serendipitous relations to address what remains an underexplored arena of transaction and transformation in development: those person-environment relations in which individuals intentionally act to both promote and take advantage of unexpected life events, establishing novel developmental pathways of adaptive organization in the process. As an integrat…
Posttraumatic Distress and Growth Among Guatemalan War Orphans in Adulthood
Psychological sequelae of war and genocide can potentially persist into adulthood for child survivors of such tragedies. However, few studies have investigated child survivors’ particular experiences with such sequelae in adulthood, and fewer still distinguish between orphaned and nonorphaned child survivors’ experiences. The present study examined the experiences of posttraumatic distress and psychological growth among a sample of adults ( N = 4…
Integrating Development and Evolution in Psychological Science
New attempts in psychological science at integrating developmental (individual-level) and evolutionary (population-level) accounts of phenotypic stability and variability have achieved increasing prominence of late. Foremost among such attempts is the field of evolutionary developmental psychology (EDP). EDP proposes that selective pressures in evolution inform psychological development through a synthesis of the Darwinian/neo-Darwinian selection…
Towards a Truly Developmental Epigenetics
Conceptual and empirical advances across the biological and psychological sciences have made it increasingly clear that genetic and environmental factors cannot be meaningfully partitioned when attempting to explain development. This should be a major theme within the contemporary field of epigenetics. However, the field has yet to fully extricate itself from reductionist tendencies in its conceptualization of developmental relations. Epigenetics…
Transcending the Nature-Nurture Debate through Epigenetics
Metatheory and the Primacy of Conceptual Analysis in Developmental Science
The practice of science entails more than just repeated cycles of theory construction, hypothesis generation, and empirical investigation. Broader, metatheoretical levels of conceptualization necessarily condition all aspects of the research process, establishing the very meaning and sensibility of science’s empirical and theoretical activities. When debate arises at these metatheoretical levels, it is the subject of conceptual analysis, not empi…
On the Explanatory Value of Individuals and Stages
Prelims
Contents Vol. 63, 2019
Making Sense of Microdevelopment, Macrodevelopment, and Their Interrelation
Psychology (32 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Developmental psychology (18 works) · Epistemology (18 works) · Cognitive science (16 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Complex Systems and Decision Making (9 works)