Behavioral Development and Comparative Psychology

Abstract

Comparative psychology emphasizes similarities and differences between levels in both the abilities and the organization of behavior. Studies of the organization of species-typical behavior have lagged because of insufficient attention to organization-relevant problems in behavioral ontogenesis. They have also lagged because of a contemporary emphasis on specialized, molecular problems dictated by such positivistic doctrines as the Pavlovian, the Lorenzian, the Hullian, and the Skinnerian. Implications of instinctivistic concepts of behavior are discussed, especially the damping effect they have imposed on developmental research. As an antidote, logical steps are out-lined toward studying the "whole organism" in comparative psychology. To this end a developmental theory is advanced, centered on redefinitions of the concepts of "maturation" and "experience," and designed to suggest a widened range of hypotheses for developmental research, as well as to avoid the blind alleys of such traditional dichotomies as nature versus nurture and innate versus acquired. "Muturation and experience, as redefined in this article, denote factors that are fundamentally fused or coalesced in their developmental effects, and thus are separable only as abstractions. A concept of interactionism, therefore, that implies engagements of separate and disjunctive developmental entities seems invalid, at least for early stages. Investigations based upon this holistic "maturation-experience" theory are discussed. Maturation is not correctly expressed as an "unfolding" of functions; experience is not synonymous with conditioning and learning, which are vague terms for processes recognizable at advanced stages. Approach and withdrawal stand out as modes of behavior fundamental to environmental adaptations on all levels; hence these processes with their derivatives are central to a theory of behavioral development advanced for comparative psychology.

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