Moving toward a grand theory of development: in memory of Esther Thelen.

Dynamic Systems Theory and the Complexity of Change

 Esther Thelen, Ph.D. was professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Indiana University; fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Psychological Society; and President of the Society for Research in Child Development. I thank Emmanuel Ghent for his helpful comments and especially for his encouragement and patience. My research is supported...

Profile Movement Matters : The Contributions of Esther Thelen

Traditional theories of intelligence and its development concentrated on symbolic reasoning, paying little attention to the body and to the ways intelligence affects and is affected by the physical world. Esther Thelen (1941–2004) was a maverick who argued against that traditional view for the idea that intelligence is both made in and realized through physical actions on the world. This once s...

Chaotic Genetic Algorithm based on Explicit Memory with a new Strategy for Updating and Retrieval of Memory in Dynamic Environments

Many of the problems considered in optimization and learning assume that solutions exist in a dynamic. Hence, algorithms are required that dynamically adapt with the problem’s conditions and search new conditions. Mostly, utilization of information from the past allows to quickly adapting changes after. This is the idea underlining the use of memory in this field, what involves key design issue...

Development a Dynamical Systems Approach to Motor

A dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action.

Here is a book that is addressed to a rather small audience—researchers on child development in the first couple of years—which is nevertheless accessible to, and I believe important for, a much larger readership. It is a serious attempt to apply to psychology a recent scientific development variously known as chaos theory, nonlinear systems dynamics, and the sciences of complexity. It is the f...