Ruy Jornada Krebs
Univeristy of Sant Catarina, Brazil
Citation
Jornada Krebs, R. (2009). Proximal processes as the primary engines of development. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 40(1), 219-227.
Abstract
The objective of this paper is to discuss proximal process as a key concept for the understanding of the bioecological paradigm, as well as to answer the comments regarding the use of the Bioecological Theory of Human Development as a theoretical framework for the field of sport psychology. In a similar vein with Gibson, who created the term affordance to explain environmental properties taken in reference with the person, Bronfenbrenner created the term proximal processes to describe the interaction between the person’s attributes, the characteristics of the environment, and the properties of time, as the primary engines of development. The order of the answer follows the sequence in which the comments were presented. In this reaction paper we try to clarify some weakness pointed in our major paper, related to the four components of Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Theory: proximal processes, biopsychological characteristics of a developing person, the parameters of the ecological context, and the dimension of time.
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