The Developing Person: An Experiential Perspective

Abstract

This chapter explores how flow experiences, or episodes of deep engagement, facilitate lifelong learning and development. Optimal experience (flow) theory describes how experiential feedback can be used to negotiate an optimally arousing, person-environment fit. Such a pattern of healthy self-regulation, referred to as psychological complexity, instigates development by allowing the person to actively respond to aversive experiential states (e.g., boredom and anxiety) in ways that enhance their intrinsic motivation and full engagement. The theory examines how the capacity to regulate experience, and the likelihood of finding flow, are affected by socialization and the levels of support and challenge children receive in family and school contexts.

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