Developmental Frame Research Articles

A collaborative autoethnographic journey of collective storying: Transitioning between the ‘I’, the ‘We’ and the ‘They’

The story we share here is about lessons learned during a three-year, collaborative autoethnographic journey beginning in January 2020. Our story is one of conducting a meaningful inquiry into our shared lived experience amid the changes brought about by COVID-19 lockdowns. Our insights speak to how we collaboratively reflected and researched across institutions, countries, disciplines, and career stages. More importantly, in making our process explicit, we highlight the way storying was experienced within our collective space. In doing so, we explore insights about how stories are adapted and transformed through a process of navigating the development of, and transitions between, pre-public and public spaces. Using an Arendtian lens, we explore the question, How are autoethnographic collaborative stories crafted for research in an academic context? Our insights present a cyclical and developmental frame within which to process collaborative storying and indeed collaborative academic work.

Nothing to see here: developmental frames and discontent in Chinese glacier tourism

“Nothing to see here: developmental frames and discontent in Chinese glacier tourism” is an exploration of placemaking, visuality, and tourist disappointment in the Sino-Tibetan borderlands that speaks to the contradiction between developmentalism and environmentalism in an age of observable climate change. The study is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in Sichuan Province, China, between 2018 and 2021. This includes a seven-month period of 2019 volunteering as a tour guide at Hailuogou National Glacier Forest Park, as well as the tourism shutdown following the initial outbreak of COVID-19. This work provides new insights on China’s domestic tourism and heritage in conversation with the politics of place.

The complexity of childhood gender dysphoria.

To explore a developmental understanding of childhood gender dysphoria and to compare it to the prevailing paradigm, gender-affirming care. Viewing gender dysphoria through a contemporary developmental frame generates a different understanding of the nature of the phenomenon and its treatment and raises ethical questions about our current gender-affirming approach.

Framing the Future: On Local Planning Cultures and Legacies

ABSTRACTThis paper considers the influence of established local planning cultures and legacies on the trajectory of contemporary local development policies. Local and sub-regional planning cultures are interpreted as overall ‘developmental frames’ which set the context for local planning approaches both through more concrete territorial, developmental and policy forms and through cognitive structures, assumptions and values. These frames then exert significant influence on how planning policy is conceived and enacted, with potentially major implications for local development outcomes. Three illustrative case studies are presented from sub-regional growth areas in the South East of England.

Polymorphisms in predator induced defences of coexisting Daphnia pulex and D. longispina

A comparison of juvenile predator-avoidance polymorphisms of Daphnia pulex and D. longispina in a shallow water body of Northern Italy is reported. The presence of the Chaoborus larvae resulted in juvenile adaptive predator-avoidance cyclomorphosis in both species. The frequency of induced morphotypes was higher in the small-sized D. longispina than in the large-sized D. pulex. Relative tail-spine size was higher in D. longispina than in D. pulex. D. longispina displayed much more responsiveness to Chaoborus than D. pulex. Both species showed at least 6 different defensive morphotypes that were classified according to the neckteeth number, the neckteeth position and the thickness of occipital epithelia under neckteeth. The frequencies of different morphotypes varied significantly between species. The developmental responses of Daphnia to the presence of predators are regulated at various levels, according to specific timelines of kairomone sensitive phases and developmental frame of defense trait formation. Variation of a specific timeline might be linked to flexibility in developmental responses of Daphnia to Chaoborus and seasonal variation in the frequencies of various morphotypes. Cyclomorphosis should not only be due to changes in environmental factors that directly affects risk, but also to ones that act as proxy signaling changes in predation risk.

The story of Lucy: lessons learned, lessons taught

ABSTRACTThis article provides an extended case example highlighting the value of a supportive approach to practice, in addition to the importance of holding a psychodynamic developmental frame of reference. Concepts of repetition compulsion, the holding environment, and object constancy are applied to the clinical material. The case is underscored for its value as a teaching tool.

Archive in the State of Emergency: Realizing Film Preservation in cold war South Korea

This article examines South Korea’s formation of a film archive in the 1970s and 1980s. Founded as a governmental institution, the Korean Film Preservation Center (KFPC) was not intended to be a nationally representative archive for Korean films but rather to facilitate cultural diplomacy by becoming a member of FIAF, a global network of film archives. However, KFPC faced obstacles to joining FIAF, not only because of the regime’s myopic approach to archives, but also because of the cold war bifurcation between East and West and between developed and developing countries. In addition to the political dispute over South Korea’s FIAF membership instigated by North Korea, the process was troubled by the ‘developmental frame’ used by international organizations such as UNESCO and its links to the making of the ‘Third World’. FIAF, reflecting UNESCO’s attention to preservation in postcolonial countries, increasingly prioritized these nations’ film preservation capacity in an effort to help them catch up with the ‘advanced’ Western archives. By historicizing the developmental frame and geopolitical conflict in this example of the South Korean film archive, this essay provides one plausible vantage point from which to understand the cold war system and its impact on the local/global cultural scene.

Application of an empowerment perspective among military-connected adolescents in public school settings

ABSTRACTMinimal work has applied the perspective of empowerment on the subset of those military-connected adolescents that are thriving in public school settings. Military-connected adolescents are at a critical stage in their life development and are engaging in opportunities that can have a bearing on their future. Feelings of empowerment can have a positive impact on their well-being, easing their transition into adulthood, and increasing the likelihood of successful academic and social outcomes. This conceptual article applies a developmental contextual frame and an adolescent empowerment model that could shed light on the nuanced experiences of this unique population. We propose that the core components of the military-connected model are similar to the extant model, with the difference being the underlying reasons associated with responses to overcoming threats in public school settings. The model has the potential to guide future research to inform evidence-based interventions that support healthy development in military-connected youth and families.

T9 - Combining Autism And Intellectual Disability Exome Data Implicates Disruption Of Neocortical Development In Both Disorders

Background Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and intellectual disability (ID) are known to be highly co-morbid, but whether their genetic risk converges on a common neurodevelopmental process is unknown. Integrative approaches using genetic evidence and brain co-expression data have proven useful in pinpointing specific developmental epochs and, within them, discrete neural circuits where risk for ASD maps. These analyses have shown that the strongest signal occurred in the neocortex, specifically in the prefrontal cortex and primary motor-somatosensory cortex (PFC), during mid-fetal development. However, it is unknown how ASD and ID risk intersect at this critical spatio-temporal window for neurodevelopment. These findings motivate a genetic analysis that contrasts and combines discoveries and leverage genetic evidence to shed light on the neurobiology underlying shared risk. Methods We used a statistical method called TADA (Transmission And De novo Association) to identify likely risk genes in ASD, ID and both disorders in 4,216 ASD and 1,479 ID families, as well as 869 ASD cases and 2,829 ancestry-matched controls. We integrated the genetic scores derived from the TADA analyses in ASD with the gene co-expression data from the BrainSpan mid-fetal PFC. The resulting DAWN network was evaluated to identify tightly integrated, functionally-related gene communities. We also conducted an analysis of single-cell RNA-sequencing data from single cells laser-microdissected from human neocortex specimens at 12 and 13 weeks post-conception (apical progenitors in the ventricular zone, subventricular basal progenitors, and neurons in the cortical plate). Results Using TADA, we defined genes associated with risk for ASD and ID (referred to as tASD, tID to denote TADA-implicated genes). Within the DAWN network built on the TADA scores in ASD and gene co-expression in the mid-fetal PFC, we identified two functionally related gene communities: the ‘chromatin modification’ and the ‘transcription factor’ community. Both communities were significantly enriched for tID genes, with the ‘chromatin modification’ community having the strongest enrichment. Notably, many of the transcription factors connected in the community belong to tightly regulated cascades that control the specification of laminar fate identity in progenitors and neurons. Protein-protein interaction analyses corroborated these conclusions, with two linked modules related to synaptic transmission, and another two related to chromatin modification. Within this critical spatio-temporal nexus for risk, apical (ap) and basal progenitors (bp), and neurons (n) are all strongly expressing for tASD genes, with a steady increase in the enrichment from types ap to bp to n. A milder and more symmetrically distributed enrichment was observed for tID genes. Discussion Our analyses of gene expression of mid-fetal neocortical cells and tissue-level co-expression implicate developmental disruption of cortical projection neurons in the etiology of both ASD and ID. Our analyses suggest that mutations in ASD risk genes prominently affect processes relevant to postmitotic neurons, while ID risk might extend to processes preceding acquisition of neuronal differentiation. Within these developmental frames, chromatin remodeling and transcriptional networks were reaffirmed as prominent pathways in both ASD and ID.

The "Globularization Hypothesis" of the Language-ready Brain as a Developmental Frame for Prosodic Bootstrapping Theories of Language Acquisition.

In recent research (Boeckx and Benítez-Burraco, 2014a,b) have advanced the hypothesis that our species-specific language-ready brain should be understood as the outcome of developmental changes that occurred in our species after the split from Neanderthals-Denisovans, which resulted in a more globular braincase configuration in comparison to our closest relatives, who had elongated endocasts. According to these authors, the development of a globular brain is an essential ingredient for the language faculty and in particular, it is the centrality occupied by the thalamus in a globular brain that allows its modulatory or regulatory role, essential for syntactico-semantic computations. Their hypothesis is that the syntactico-semantic capacities arise in humans as a consequence of a process of globularization, which significantly takes place postnatally (cf. Neubauer et al., 2010). In this paper, I show that Boeckx and Benítez-Burraco's hypothesis makes an interesting developmental prediction regarding the path of language acquisition: it teases apart the onset of phonological acquisition and the onset of syntactic acquisition (the latter starting significantly later, after globularization). I argue that this hypothesis provides a developmental rationale for the prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis of language acquisition (cf. i.a. Gleitman and Wanner, 1982; Mehler et al., 1988, et seq.; Gervain and Werker, 2013), which claim that prosodic cues are employed for syntactic parsing. The literature converges in the observation that a large amount of such prosodic cues (in particular, rhythmic cues) are already acquired before the completion of the globularization phase, which paves the way for the premises of the prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis, allowing babies to have a rich knowledge of the prosody of their target language before they can start parsing the primary linguistic data syntactically.

Modernisation of Graphic design: the Possibilities and Challenges of digitalisation

As inventions go, the contrivance of design as a dynamic, fluid, operational vehicle of human technology has always been subject to arguments and debates. The digitalisation of graphic design is a comparatively new field of research, a progressive process that evolves with technological developments. Undoubtedly, the evolution of design practices has transformed the entire design process in ways not deemed possible in the past. The advantages of digitalisation are particularly tangible in the range of possibilities generated by computer-based design tools. The main argument for the increase in “design capital” has been the accessibility of modern art tools to both design practitioners and the wider society, through mass digital culture absorption and the emerging technologies of production and reproduction. In presenting the fundamentals of digitalisation in design practices, this paper retraces the key cornerstones in the evolution of graphic design as an aesthetic medium from the 19th - to 21st -century, while pointing out the expanding, reflexive relationships between design and our environment. The researcher’s aim is to connect the socio-historical developmental frames of social progress and the practical uses of digitalisation in art and design today. The innovations in computer-mediated design work today grew from experimental platforms in the 20th -century, inasmuch as technological diffusion in the 21st -century Information Age derived from the widespread global embrace of the World Wide Web, multimedia and graphical computing systems. As a result of this development of the technological ‘canvas’, the production of design, aesthetic and cultural objects has shifted from the traditional artist-craftsman-specialist paradigm to reflect a more encompassing, diverse scope of ideas fostered by the exposure to different facets of creative capital and inspirations.

Emergence of bursting activity in connected neuronal sub-populations.

Uniform and modular primary hippocampal cultures from embryonic rats were grown on commercially available micro-electrode arrays to investigate network activity with respect to development and integration of different neuronal populations. Modular networks consisting of two confined active and inter-connected sub-populations of neurons were realized by means of bi-compartmental polydimethylsiloxane structures. Spontaneous activity in both uniform and modular cultures was periodically monitored, from three up to eight weeks after plating. Compared to uniform cultures and despite lower cellular density, modular networks interestingly showed higher firing rates at earlier developmental stages, and network-wide firing and bursting statistics were less variable over time. Although globally less correlated than uniform cultures, modular networks exhibited also higher intra-cluster than inter-cluster correlations, thus demonstrating that segregation and integration of activity coexisted in this simple yet powerful in vitro model. Finally, the peculiar synchronized bursting activity shown by confined modular networks preferentially propagated within one of the two compartments (‘dominant’), even in cases of perfect balance of firing rate between the two sub-populations. This dominance was generally maintained during the entire monitored developmental frame, thus suggesting that the implementation of this hierarchy arose from early network development.

Neurobiological correlates of object relations theory: The relationship between neurobiological and psychodynamic development

The author proposes a general developmental frame that integrates the psychoanalytic theory of development, rooted in psychoanalytic object relations theory, with neurobiological aspects of the development of social cognition, the theory of mind, and the complex issue of empathy. It represents the next step in the integration of the author's earlier work on the developmental hierarchy of motivational systems with recent findings on affective neuroscience. A general conclusion relates to the parallel and mutually influential development of neurobiological affective and cognitive systems, ultimately controlled by genetic determinants, and psychodynamic systems, ultimately corresponding to both reality and motivated distortions of the internal and external relations with significant others. From the point of view of the psychoanalytic treatment of severe psychopathology, with fixation at the level of identity diffusion, the concepts of interpretation and mentalization as well as structural change are reformulated.

Human exceptionalism

How the unique capacities of human cognition arose in evolution is a question of enduring interest. The difficulty of finding the best allometric and developmental frame for brain evolution and growth, however, leads researchers to routinely identify predictable features of the human brain as exceptional.

Successful ageing and development: the contribution of generativity in older age

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the contributions that generativity in older age may make to the concept of successful ageing. To this end, two perspectives on successful ageing are described: successful ageing as a set of clinical criteria, and successful ageing as the application of adaptive processes aimed at achieving efficient functioning. After showing the limitations of the first perspective, particularly from a developmental point of view, the paper argues that the adaptive version of successful ageing helps to put ageing into a developmental frame, but needs to be complemented by identifying specific content and goals that guide these adaptive processes and establish new feasible gains for older people. Generativity in older age could play that role and provides a conceptual framework that enriches the concept of successful ageing, both by emphasising the social context in which people age and by highlighting a personal growth component.

Role of the vesicular transporter VGLUT3 in retrograde release of glutamate by cerebellar Purkinje cells

In the cerebellum, retrograde release of glutamate (Glu) by Purkinje cells (PCs) participates in the control of presynaptic neurotransmitter release responsible for the late component of depolarization-induced suppression of excitation (DSE), as well as for depolarization-induced potentiation of inhibition (DPI). It might also participate in the depolarization-induced slow current (DISC) in PCs, although this contribution was later challenged. We also know that both DPI and DISC are soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor attachment protein receptor (SNARE)-dependent processes, although the molecular nature of the vesicular transporter was not determined. In PCs, VGLUT3 is the only known vesicular glutamate transporter identified and is expressed during the same developmental frame as when DPI, DISC, and the Glu-dependent component of DSE are observed. We therefore tested the hypothesis that all these processes depend on the presence of VGLUT3 by comparing the Glu-dependent component of DSE, DPI, and DISC in nearly mature (2- to 3-wk-old) wild-type and VGLUT3 knockout mice. Our data demonstrate that, in nearly mature mice, the slow component of DSE occurs through vesicular release of Glu that involves VGLUT3. This Glu-dependent component of DSE is no longer present in fully mature mice. This study also establishes that, in nearly mature mice, DPI also depends on the presence of VGLUT3, whereas this is not the case for DISC. Finally, the unusually large basal paired-pulse facilitation observed in nearly mature VGLUT3(-/-) mice but not in adult ones suggests that some basal retrograde release of Glu occurs during development and contributes to basal concentrations of extracellular Glu.

The quest for the ganglioside functions; what did we learn more from «evo-devo» or signaling of long-term maintenance?

Gangliosides are characteristic extracellular-facing plasma membrane determinants in vertebrate brain. The four major gangliosides (GM1, GD1a, GD1b and GT1b) dominate among more than one hundred glycolipid structures in nervous tissue. During brain development the expression of simple gangliosides shifts toward more complex ones, accompanied by a multiple increase in their total amount. The shift is precisely regulated and some specific structures represent well established neurodevelopmental milestones. From the evolutionary perspective, the ganglioside content in fish and amphibian brain is significantly lower than in mammalian brain, but the general variability is greater. More-polar structures, abundant in Antarctic fishes, are rare in higher vertebrates or expressed only in a narrow developmental frame. Reptiles, birds and mammals share identical common structures expressed in similar patterns with minor interspecies differences. On the contrary, fish and amphibian brains show significant interspecies differences in amount, structure and expression patterns. The initial assumption of evolutionary studies was that the variations in lipid content, particularly the glycolipid content, during temperature adaptations in ectothermic and hibernating heterothermic animals, represent an efficient molecular mechanism of the membrane function preservation. Studies of ordered lipid domains in the last decade verified the ganglioside-mediated regulation of membrane proteins (receptor kinases, neurotransmitter receptors and ion channels) as well as receptor-ligand interaction important for cell signaling.

The psychology of depression in young adolescents: A psychoanalytic view of origins, inner workings and implications

This paper addresses the phenomenology of childhood depression as understood from the perspective of psychoanalytic child psychotherapy within National Health Service (NHS) practice. Brief time-limited psychotherapy has a promising outcome in working with severely depressed young people when combined with support for parents and careful attention to the child's social and educational context. The currently planned IMPACT study (Improving Mood-Promoting Access to Collaborative Treatment) led by Professor I. Goodyer will provide an opportunity to explore both the effectiveness of short-term therapy for a large cohort of moderate to severely depressed youngsters and also to research models of underlying mental processes and some of the processes of change in psychotherapy (Fonagy, 2009; Rustin, 2009). Child psychotherapy theory and practice is rooted in both psychoanalytic and developmental frames of reference and has been deeply influenced by Bowlby's work. The importance of aggression and particularly aggressive thoughts, both conscious and unconscious, in understanding depression is also fundamental. Two clinical cases are discussed which are typical of those patients seen in NHS child psychotherapy, and of the type of patients who will be seen in the IMPACT trial. They share serious adverse life histories: one with a focus on childhood abuse and the other on neglect and abandonment. The different nature of these traumatic experiences shapes the nature of the depression which can be observed. The importance of attending to the depressive elements of the co-morbid presentation characteristic of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) patients also needs to be emphasized. Psychotherapy provides an opportunity for containment of unbearable emotion and for the development of mental function which can serve as a bulwark against further breakdown. The conceptualization draws attention to the loss of personal potency which accompanies depression and the consequent risk of life failure in both work and personal spheres.

Caring for the Anxious

ABSTRACT Practitioners of psychotherapy, pastoral care and counseling, mental health counseling, and spiritual direction, who work in an age characterized by great anxiety and uncertainty about the present and the future, are obligated to find compelling narratives of hope and consolation. The nature of postmodern anxiety is such that it requires from care-givers the intentional use of self in any given counseling session. Use of self, in this particular paper, is meant to convey the application of relevant and useful psychological and developmental frames of reference as well as compelling spiritual and theological narratives.

The Development of Intersubjectivity in Relation to Psychotherapy and its Importance for Pre-Therapy / Die Entwicklung der Intersubjektivität in Bezug auf Psychotherapie und ihre Bedeutung für die Prätherapie / El Desarrollo de la intersubjetividad en relación a la psicoterapia y su importancia para la pre terapia / Le développement de l'inter-subjectivité par rapport à la psychothérapie, et son importance pour

The goal of this article is to demonstrate the importance of intersubjectivity in relation to psychotherapy, especially to the application of Pre-Therapy. The article shows that intersubjectivity, and imitation as a particular kind of intersubjectivity, is an innate capacity, the development of which starts in the first hours of life by mutual imitation between mother and child. The mutual imitation of the mother and the neonate much resembles the application of pre-therapeutic interventions by the therapist. This leads to the thesis that Pre-Therapy, as promoted by Prouty, can be seen from a developmental frame of reference in which the success of the application of pre-therapeutic reflections, even with severely contact-disturbed adults, proceeds because of the innate potentialities we have since childhood. Research on mirror neurons, as published by Gallese, lays the neurobiological foundation for intersubjective development and is explicitly described.