ABSTRACT
Applied developmental science is scholarship that seeks to significantly advance the integration of developmental science with actions that address the pressing human problems of individual, family, and community life besetting our nation and world. Hebb's use of developmental theory to benefit understanding of, and potentially interventions for, brain-injured people had implications for the health and development of these individuals. Changes within one level of organization, for instance, developmental changes in personality or cognition within the individual, are reciprocally related to—integrated with—developmental changes within other levels, for instance, involving changes in caregiving patterns or spousal relationships within the familial level of organization. Human development within this ecology involves organized and successive changes—that is, systematic changes—in the structure and function of interlevel relations over time. From a developmental systems perspective such as developmental contextualism, to best promote positive development all individuals, groups, and institutions in the context should integrate their resources.
