Editorial: Resources for developmental ecological psychology: organicism, epigenetics, relational development, dynamic systems

Phenomenology, exemplified, for example, by Colwyn Trevarthen's (1978) and Dan Zahavi's (2015) work.It is now widely accepted that the frameworks guiding theory and research in developmental science have shifted from Cartesian split-mechanistic paradigms to process-relational systems frameworks over recent decades (Budwig & Alexander, 2021;Lerner, Agans & Hershberg, 2014;Overton, 2013Overton, , 2015;;Witherington, 2017;Witherington, Overton, Lickliter, Marshall, Narvaez, 2025). This shift is due to the influence of the developmental approaches listed above. These approaches are metatheoretical frameworks that accommodate various theories and research practices. Although they mostly developed independently and emphasize different aspects, they generally align with ecological thinking, even if not explicitly labeled as such. In this context, the ecological perspective acts as a highlevel approach or worldview.Previously, we examined the emerging "coalition" of ecological-relational developmental approaches (Szokolszky & Read, 2018), and through this Research Project, we continue that exploration. First, we discuss core concepts of ecologically focused approaches: interaction/coupling and mutuality. Then, we review the influential theoretical frameworks mentioned earlier, which are also cited as theoretical backgrounds in the collection's papers. Next, we introduce the papers, focusing on how they embody an ecological perspective.We can analyze ecologically oriented approaches by examining how they incorporate the theoretical ideas of interaction/coupling and mutuality into their ontological-epistemological frameworks. Interaction refers to any reciprocal influence or action between entities-such as organisms, variables, or systems. It highlights the exchange of effects. The concept of interaction suggests that the organism and environment exist separately but interact through exchanges that happen at specific moments. Contextualist approaches often adopt this view when exploring how individuals connect with the physical, cognitive-emotional, and socio-cultural aspects of their environments. 2 The doctrine that behavior is the joint function of both context/situation ("outside") and person ("inside", including dispositions, agency, and intentionality) implies that potential causes of behavior can be classified into two exhaustive and mutually exclusive categories (Schweder, 1991). Preserving fundamental developmental dichotomies this way prolongs the Cartesian mechanistic worldview in developmental science.The concept of organism-environment mutuality indicates a more profound interdependence or co-constitution, where each party's identity or function emerges through the connection itself (Dewey, J., & Bentley, A. F., 1949;Costall, 2001;Gibson, J. J., 1979;Overton, 2015;Read and Szokolszky, 2020). Mutuality ensures a core ontological and epistemological inseparability of the organism and its surround 3 . The organism and its evolutionary and developmental surround mutually shape one another; they are fundamentally interconnected. Mutuality encompasses interdependence, co-regulation, co-determination, and co-evolution in the connection between the organism and its surround. J.J. Gibson (1966Gibson ( , 1979) ) developed a theory of action and perception based on mutuality. He showed that in perceiving and acting, organism and environment do not need to be "conjoined," especially not through some form of code or mental image (cf., J. Gibson, 1982, p. 256). This underpins the concept of direct perception, claiming that meaningful action is possible because the environment provides richly structured arrays that are directly 2 Please note that here we use the term "interaction" in a strict sense, as the interaction between disjunct context/situation and person. In many scientific papers the term "interaction" is used to refer to what we call "mutuality" in this paper. These usages entail, however different metatheoretical assumptions, awareness of which is important. 3 Within the mutuality approach we prefer to use the words "surround" instead of "environment", which is a term that is too broad and abstract. The term "surroundings" refers to the embeddedness of the perceiving-acting organism in the sense of mutuality, incorporating the inseparable, dynamic totality of factors present in the existence of the organism. accessible to the perceiving organism (J. J. Gibson, 1967;1979/2014;Shaw, Turvey & Mace, 1982;Still & Good, 1998;Read & Szokolszky, 2020). Mutuality offers a deeper ontological and epistemological basis for developmental science than the interaction framework because if organisms and their surround are fundamentally inseparable, the unit of development is the organism-in-its-surround, not an organism interacting with its environment. Pointing out mutuality as a foundational principle is all the more important, as it is rarely applied in psychology.foot_1 Researchers (e.g. Budwig & Alexander, 2021;Witherington, 2007;Overton, 2007) have repeatedly argued that conceptualizations at the metatheoretical level shape every aspect of theory, research, and practice. Therefore, careful and critical attention to metatheoretical assumptions is crucial, as is aligning metatheoretical perspectives that share similar commitments. Despite their differences, the explicit or implicit ecological commitments of theories that can be considered as ecological -relational justify treating them as related by family resemblance (Wittgenstein, 1953(Wittgenstein, /2019)). They all contribute to ecological thinking in developmental science and provide theoretical reference points for research and further theorizing.Next, we briefly review the theoretical developmental approaches we mentioned in the first section (see Table 1), focusing on how they contribute to ecological theory in developmental science, even when they do not label themselves as ecological.foot_2 These approaches also serve as theoretical reference points in the collection of papers -a point we will revisit in the next section. Developmental Ecological Psychology was an early, pioneering, and influential alternative to Cartesian developmental psychology, building upon J.J. Gibson's ecological approach to psychology. Core to Ecological Psychology is the idea that perception results not from sensory stimulation, but from structured, specific, directly accessible, and meaningful ambient arrays for an actively engaged organism, tuned by its evolution, development, and situated intentions. Likewise, actions are meaning-oriented intentional acts of the organism as an agent and are not reducible to motor movements. This provides a basis for describing the mutual relationship of an organism and its surround in terms of concepts such as affordances and optic flow, which depend on direct perception. Developing agents actively seek and create new functional relationships within their structured social and physical surround because they can perceive the layout of surfaces and changing events around them. Infant development is driven by active exploration, which helps the child better detect invariant structures that specify affordances, relative to the child's body, skills, and intentions (E. Gibson, 1988;Gibson & Pick, 2000. This approach has generated valuable insights into key developmental questions in early childhood, such as perceptual learning, the role of affordances, and other topics (e.g., Adolph & 2013;Dent-Read & Zukow-Goldring, 1997;Jacobs & Michaels, 2007;Heras-Escribano, 2019;Raczaszek-Leonardi, et al., 2018;Szokolszky, Read, Palatinus & Palatinus, 2019). Drawing from the ontology and epistemology of Ecological Psychology, DEP offers a mutuality-based theoretical framework for understanding the fundamental, inseparable aspects of development: action and perception. However, less attention has been paid within this approach to addressing issues related to overall organism-environment mutuality during life-course development. The concept of affordances still holds untapped potential for analyzing developmental experiences. As an emerging field, DEP needs to broaden its scope and methodology (Costall, 1995;Kiverstein and Artese, 2023;Read & Szokolszky, 2018, 2025).In his early ecological approach, Urie Bronfenbrenner (1979), influenced by Roger Barker, described systems of environmental influences at increasingly complex levels-micro, meso, exo, and macro-as multiple layers of context that affect human development throughout life. This framework emphasized mapping contextual influences on development, viewing them as engagement embedded within existing systems. Later, Bronfenbrenner (2001) expanded his theory into the Bioecological Model by including four defining properties: process, person (biological and genetic traits), context, and time (chronosystems). Between the 1970s and 1990s, this approach was known as "Ecological Systems Theory." The updated and final framework is called the "Bioecological Model of Human Development" (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). Development is seen as resulting from the reciprocal influence of the model's contextual factors. The model incorporates many aspects of related perspectives, such as lifespan psychology and cultural theory. Its distinctive feature is an interdisciplinary and integrative focus on childhood and adolescence, along with an interest in applications to policies and programs that promote youth and family development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). The model sparked extensive research, though initially it faced criticism for being mostly descriptive and static, and for assuming passivity in the developing individual. Though regarded as more aligned with developmental systems approaches, the bioecological model was still viewed as lacking in dynamics and theoretically underdeveloped (Lerner, 2006). It was also critiqued for lacking an ecological stance on ontology and epistemology (Szokolszky and Read, 2018). Additionally, many studies cite the model but only use it superficially, focusing solely on specific contextual variables (Tudge et al., 2009).The psychobiological systems approach, originally developed by Gilbert Gottlieb (1971Gottlieb ( , 1991Gottlieb ( , 1992Gottlieb ( , 2007)), played a key role in moving beyond genetic determinism, mechanistic environmentalism, and the nature-nurture dichotomy. 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