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There has been significant interest and progress in understanding the role of caregiver unpredictability on brain maturation, cognitive and socioemotional development, and psychopathology. Theoretical consensus has emerged about the unique influence of unpredictability in shaping children’s experience, distinct from other adverse exposures or features of stress exposure. Nonetheless, the field still lacks theoretical and empirical common ground due to difficulties in accurately conceptualizing and measuring unpredictability in the caregiver–child relationship. In this paper, we first provide an overview of the role of unpredictability in theories of caregiving and childhood adversity and present four issues that are currently under-discussed but are crucial to the field. Focusing on how moment-to-moment and day-to-day dynamics are at the heart of caregiver unpredictability, we review three approaches aiming to address some of these nuances: Environmental statistics, entropy, and dynamic systems. Lastly, we conclude with a broad summary and suggest future research directions. Systematic progress in this field can inform interventions and policies aiming to increase stability in the lives of children.

The theme of safety holds a special place in Jacques Leplat's work, as it spans his entire career (Leplat, 1985, 2011; Leplat & Cuny, 1974). From the 1980s onward, it became closely linked to the concept of complexity, which has become essential for describing the world around us (Leplat & De Terssac, 1990; Morin, 2008; Woods, 1988). Leplat's work on complexity stems directly from his guiding model for activity analysis, based on coupling (Leplat, 1997, 2000b). This model emphasizes how individuals handle complex tasks by integrating their specific characteristics (Leplat, 1988). It has opened significant research pathways and new prevention perspectives focused on competencies (Leplat, 2000a, 2008; Leplat & de Montmollin, 2001). While new schools of thought and models have emerged (particularly around resilience engineering (Hollnagel, Woods, & Leveson, 2006)), this article revisits the unique contributions of Jacques Leplat’s work within the evolving and sometimes fragmented landscape of safety sciences. It is a programmatic and theoretical article that lays the groundwork for future research.

Greater unpredictability in childhood from the level of the caregiver-child dyad to broader family, home, or environmental instability is consistently associated with disruptions in cognitive, socioemotional, behavioral, and biological development in humans. These findings are bolstered by experimental research in non-human animal models suggesting that early life unpredictability is an important environmental signal to the developing organism that shapes neurodevelopment and behavior. Research on childhood unpredictability has surged in the past several years, guided in part by theoretical grounding from the developmental psychopathology framework (shaped largely by Dr. Dante Cicchetti’s innovative work). The current review focuses on future directions for unpredictability research, including probing intergenerational effects, the role of predictability in resilience, cultural and contextual considerations, and novel developmental outcomes that should be tested in relation to childhood unpredictability. We urge the integration of multidisciplinary perspectives and collaborations into future research on unpredictability. We also provide ideas for translating this research to real-world practice and policy and encourage high-quality research testing whether incorporating predictability into interventions and policy improves developmental outcomes, which would support further dissemination of these findings.

The influence of complexity theory on action research scholarship and practice has been kaleidoscopic. Further integrating ideas derived from the complexity sciences could enrich this research tradition, but there are choices to be made about what to prioritise. We distinguish complexity-informed approaches that privilege control from those adopting radical open-endedness. The former often aligns with managerialist assumptions, which tend to deny the messiness and moral dimensions of living and working. In contrast, ‘neo-complexity’ aims to reemphasise the most intellectually, politically, and emotionally radical implications of complexity science: embracing unpredictability, plurality, and practice-based ethics. An example of an action research coalition of Ethiopia, Mursi and UK researchers allows us to describe what this means in practice. La influencia de la teoría de la complejidad en la investigación-acción académica y la práctica ha sido caleidoscópica. Una mayor integración de las ideas derivadas de las ciencias de la complejidad podría enriquecer esta tradición de investigación, pero es necesario tomar decisiones sobre qué priorizar. Distinguimos los enfoques basados en la complejidad que priorizan el control, de aquellos que adoptan una perspectiva radicalmente abierta. Los primeros a menudo se alinean con los supuestos gerencialistas, que tienden a negar el desorden y las dimensiones morales de la vida y el trabajo. En contraste, la “neocomplejidad” busca volver a enfatizar los elementos más radicales intelectual, política y emocionalmente de la ciencia de la complejidad: la adopción de la imprevisibilidad, la pluralidad y la ética práctica. Un ejemplo de una coalición de investigación-acción de investigadores de Etiopía, Mursi y el Reino Unido nos permite describir lo que esto significa en la práctica.

An extensive and long-standing literature examines the amount of time people spend on their jobs and families. A newer literature, including this review, takes that older literature as background and focuses on the social processes that shape our schedules: how we manage our time, accepting, negotiating, or contesting our shifting obligations and commitments. Research shows that time management is increasingly complex because unpredictable schedules are pervasive, and that gender, class, and race inequalities influence our ability to manage and control them. That lack of control and the unpredictability that accompanies it not only affect individual workers but also spread. A change in one person's schedule reverberates across a set of linked others in what we call a web of time. This review surveys and integrates research on hours and schedules of both jobs and families and concludes with attention to the policies that seek to address these issues.

A rich collection of empirical findings accumulated over the past three decades attests to the diversity of traits that constitute the autism phenotypes. It is unclear whether subsets of these traits share any underlying causality. This lack of a cohesive conceptualization of the disorder has complicated the search for broadly effective therapies, diagnostic markers, and neural/genetic correlates. In this paper, we describe how theoretical considerations and a review of empirical data lead to the hypothesis that some salient aspects of the autism phenotype may be manifestations of an underlying impairment in predictive abilities. With compromised prediction skills, an individual with autism inhabits a seemingly “magical” world wherein events occur unexpectedly and without cause. Immersion in such a capricious environment can prove overwhelming and compromise one’s ability to effectively interact with it. If validated, this hypothesis has the potential of providing unifying insights into multiple aspects of autism, with attendant benefits for improving diagnosis and therapy. Significance Autism is characterized by diverse behavioral traits. Guided by theoretical considerations and empirical data, this paper develops the hypothesis that many of autism's salient traits may be manifestations of an underlying impairment in predictive abilities. This impairment renders an otherwise orderly world to be experienced as a capriciously “magical” one. The hypothesis elucidates the information-processing roots of autism and, thereby, can aid the identification of neural structures likely to be differentially affected. Behavioral and neural measures of prediction might serve as early assays of predictive abilities in infants, and serve as useful tools in intervention design and in monitoring their effectiveness. The hypothesis also points to avenues for further research to determine molecular and circuit-level causal underpinnings of predictive impairments.

Being able to control oneself in emotionally upsetting situations is essential for good relationship functioning. According to life history theory, childhood exposure to harshness and unpredictability should forecast diminished emotional control and lower relationship quality. We examined this in three studies. In Studies 1 and 2, greater childhood unpredictability (frequent financial, residential, and familial changes), but not harshness (low SES), was associated with lower emotional control in adolescents (N = 1041) and adults (N = 327). These effects were stronger during the participants’ reproductive years. Moreover, in Study 2, greater childhood unpredictability was indirectly associated with lower relationship quality through lower emotional control. In study 3, we leveraged the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (N = 160). Greater early-life unpredictability (ages 0–4) prospectively predicted lower relationship quality at age 32 via lower emotional control at the same age. This relation was serially mediated by less supportive observed early maternal care (ages 1.5–3.5) and insecure attachment representations (ages 19 and 26). Early unpredictability also predicted greater observed emotional distress during conflict interactions with romantic partners (ages 19–36). These findings point to the role of emotional control in mediating the effects of unpredictable childhood environments on relationship functioning in adulthood.

Using computational and mathematical modeling, this study explores the tension between too little and too much structure that is shaped by the core tradeoff between efficiency and flexibility in dynamic environments. Our aim is to develop a more precise theory of the fundamental relationships among structure, performance, and environment. We find that the structure-performance relationship is unexpectedly asymmetric, in that it is better to err on the side of too much structure, and that different environmental dynamism dimensions (i.e., velocity, complexity, ambiguity, and unpredictability) have unique effects on performance. Increasing unpredictability decreases optimal structure and narrows its range from a wide to a narrow set of effective strategies. We also find that a strategy of simple rules, which combines improvisation with low-to-moderately structured rules to execute a variety of opportunities, is viable in many environments but essential in some. This sharpens the boundary condition between the strategic logics of positioning and opportunity. And juxtaposing the structural challenges of adaptation for entrepreneurial vs. established organizations, we find that entrepreneurial organizations should quickly add structure in all environments, while established organizations are better off seeking predictable environments unless they can devote sufficient attention to managing a dissipative equilibrium of structure (i.e., edge of chaos) in unpredictable environments.

Exposure to early life adversity has long term consequences on cognitive function. Most research has focused on understanding components of early life adversities that contribute to later risk, including poverty, trauma, maltreatment, and neglect. Whereas these factors, in the aggregate, explain a significant proportion of emotional and cognitive problems, there are serious gaps in our ability to identify potential mechanisms by which early life adversities might promote vulnerability or resilience. Here we discuss early life exposure to unpredictable signals from the caretaker as an understudied type of adversity that is amenable to prevention and intervention. We employ a translational approach to discover underlying neurobiological mechanisms by which early life exposure to unpredictable signals sculpts the developing brain. First, we review evidence that exposure to unpredictable signals from the parent during sensitive periods impacts development of neural circuits. Second, we describe a method for characterizing early life patterns of sensory signals across species. Third, we present published and original data illustrating that patterns of maternal care predict memory function in humans, non-human primates, and rodents. Finally, implications are discussed for identifying individuals at risk so that early preventive-intervention can be provided.

Prey animals have evolved a wide variety of behaviours to combat the threat of predation, and these have been generally well studied. However, one of the most common and taxonomically widespread antipredator behaviours of all has, remarkably, received almost no experimental attention: so-called ‘protean’ behaviour. This is behaviour that is sufficiently unpredictable to prevent a predator anticipating in detail the future position or actions of its prey. In this study, we used human ‘predators’ participating in 3D virtual reality simulations to test how protean (i.e. unpredictable) variation in prey movement affects participants' ability to visually target them as they move (a key determinant of successful predation). We found that targeting accuracy was significantly predicted by prey movement path complexity, although, surprisingly, there was little evidence that high levels of unpredictability in the underlying movement rules equated directly to decreased predator performance. Instead, the specific movement rules differed in how they impacted on targeting accuracy, with the efficacy of protean variation in one element depending on the values of the remaining elements. These findings provide important insights into the understudied phenomenon of protean antipredator behaviour, which are directly applicable to predator–prey dynamics within a broad range of taxa.