A Developmental-Interactionist theory of motivation, emotion, and cognition: Implications for understanding psychopathology

Abstract

Developmental-Interactionist theory defines motivation as potential for behavior built into a system of behavior control; emotion as the readout of that potential when aroused by a challenging stimulus; and cognition as knowledge: of terrestrial events, of other creatures, of internal bodily processes. Knowledge is both direct, immediate knowledge-by-acquaintance and knowledge-by-description that reflects information processing. Biologically based motivational-emotional systems, which are specialpurpose processing systems (SPPSs) structured over the course of phylogeny, interact with general-purpose processing systems (GPPSs) structured by individual experience during ontogeny, producing three sorts of emotional readout: bodily homeostasis and adaptation involving the endocrine and autonomic nervous systems (Emotion I); spontaneous communication involving expressive displays and preattunements to those displays (Emotion II ); and subjective experience involving central neurochemical systems (Emotion III). The child learns about subjective experience - labels, display rules - in an emotional education process involving spontaneous communication: the result is a greater or lesser degree of emotional competence. Studies of spontaneous communication include initial studies with rhesus monkeys by R. E. Miller and colleagues in the 1960s, and studies of adults, children, and patient groups using the slide-viewing technique. One result of these studies is evidence that psychopathology is associated with disruptions of emotional communication, leading to a lack of emotional competence. Psychotherapy is seen as a way of increasing emotional competence via emotional reeducation.