Ideally, we would like to measure changes on a range of timescales ranging
from seconds to years. MacIntyre developed a set of measures based on
physiological indicators, such as skin resistance and heart rate, that appear to
vary with variables like anxiety and willingness to communicate. By com-
bining the physiological indicators with post-hoc viewing of the session with
the participant he was able to link spikes in the signals with emotional
events. This method provides many data points, so allowing for advanced
statistical analyses.
Most of the recent research on motivation uses the CDST perspective to
gather and analyze data. There are some attempts to move to more quanti-
tative data, but these are still being developed. In 2014, Dörnyeiet al.pub-
lished an anthology with research papers that had been carefully selected for
CDST methodology and concepts. In the same year, they organized an
international conference on the dynamics of motivation that attracted some
175 participants from 30 different countries, which points to the growth of
the dynamic turn in research on motivation.
8.7 CDST and timescales
Dynamics is about change over time. But time is not easily defined. While in
daily language use we have, buy, lose and win time, we have no organ to
measure the passing of time.“In so far as time is something different from
events, we do not perceive time as such, but changes or events in time”(Le
Poidevin 2010: 1). The timescales we use in our studies of developmental
processes define what we will see.
The grand sweep of development seems neatly rule-driven. In detail,
however, development is messy. As we turn up the magnification of our
microscope, we see that our visions of linearity, uniformity, inevitable
sequencing and even irreversibility break down. What looks like a
cohesive, orchestrated process from afar takes on theflavor of a more
exploratory, opportunistic, syncretic and function-driven process in its
instantiation.
(Thelen and Smith 1994: xvi)We can look at events at different timescales from the millisecond to the
life span. No timescale is absolute, since there is no absolute stable reference,
so time is dynamic rather than static.
In a CDST perspective, what we observe is defined by the timescales we
use to gather data. Each timescale has its own unique picture of events.
Timescales interact, so what happens on the timescale of days has an impact
on what happens on the hours or week scales. This adds to the complexity
of phenomena. Not only do various factors defining it play a role in the
development over time, but these factors all have an impact on their own
timescale. An example could be the development of motivation over time
Trends III 101