changes during development from first dyadic exchanges, to the immediate
social group, to a more abstract system or third person perspective, to set of
relations and values defining all human beings. The ability to handle such
complex understandings of emotion and to apply them toward continued ex-
amination and reconstruction of the self appears to increase well into middle
adulthood. However, as discussed in the following, later life may bring a sim-
plification of these high levels of affect complexity as intellectual and social
resources become restricted.
Processes of Degradation in Development
Thus far we have assumed that development proceeds in a context of well-
regulated emotions in such a way that the individual is protected from too ex-
treme levels of activation, levels that would result in disruption and even dis-
organization of behavior. This is an idealized assumption, of course, that is
not always realistic. Even so, it provides a useful framework for discussing
less ideal forms of development and behavior, since these can be described as
deviations from more well-integrated forms. In the remainder of this chapter,
we outline general features of such well-integrated or degraded forms of inte-
gration and development. We then apply these features to a description of
two major cases: less-than-optimal paths that result from regulatory failures
that may be acquired early in development, and adaptive restrictions that ap-
pear to be related to resource restrictions related to aging.
Features of Degradation. The dynamic integration principle implies that
if activation is at extreme levels, behavior and cognition can become thor-
oughly disorganized and dysfunctional. But what if activation is at a more in-
termediate level, neither sufficiently slight to support good integration nor
extremely disruptive? A number of authors suggest that in this case the indi-
vidual, while responding to a situation of some salience and even emergency,
still is able to engage in fairly coherent action and to construct moderately
adaptive representations. Nevertheless, that coherence is less than in well-
integrated cases, as thinking and behavior become restricted to aspects that
are most relevant to the individual’s survival. Tucker (1992) has referred to
this aspect of selective simplification as graceful degradation. Such forms of
degradation of cognitive-affective responses remain adaptive in the sense that
they enhance the individual’s chances of survival and optimize his or her pos-
itive affect.
Since integration is the result of the collaboration of the two processes, op-
timization and differentiation, it is possible to distinguish two different ways
of maintaining relatively graceful degradation. First, the individual can err
on the side of optimization, sacrificing differentiation and complexity in an
252 LABOUVIE-VIEF AND GONZÁLEZ