Functional Architectures for Complex Behaviors: Analysis and Modeling of Interacting Processes in a Hierarchy of Time Scales

Synergetics’ applications in the sciences of cognition and behavior have focused on instabilities leading to phase transitions between competing behavioral or perceptual patterns. Inspired by this scientific tradition, functional architectures are proposed as a general theoretical framework aiming at modeling the nonstationary, multiscale dynamics of complex behaviors, beyond the neighborhood of instabilities. Such architectures consist of interacting dynamical processes, operating in a hierarchy of time scales and functionally differentiated according to their mutual time scale separations. Here, the mathematical formalism of functional architectures is presented and exemplified through simulations of cursive handwriting. Then, the implications for the analysis of complex behaviors are discussed.