Ontogenetic development of behavior: The cricket visual world

Publisher Summary This chapter lies within such a theoretical framework— that is, constructivist, systemic, and self-organizing with respect, necessarily, to a limited behavioral target: the ontogenic construction of the visual world of the cricket. At first, the chapter deals with the developmental changes of some psychophysiological conditions controlling the selection of visual information; these factors are only parts of the various interacting elements within the individual subsystem. Then it is studied, from the same ontogenetic viewpoint, some complex, interactive, and highly variable ecological conditions within the environmental subsystem. Of course such an approach cannot be exhaustive. However, it is considered that the eventual involvement of new factors of a psychophysiological or environmental nature, which remains possible at any time, would affect only slightly the general processes of behavioral ontogeny. In the third part, the history of a number of behavioral emergents within such a developing visual world is reported. Finally, an attempt is made to derive the consequences of model by drawing several possible general rules governing the behavioral changes in the course of individual development. In this chapter, the deductive principles are presented first by stating the theoretical framework of the research; thereafter the research is presented.