ABSTRACT
In this chapter we shall try to identify the significant points of contact between research in habituation at the animal-neurophysiological level and the develop mental level. Of course, generalization from animal behavior and simplified preparations to the behavior of intact humans has always been problematic. However, we might gain hope for this enterprise from the work of Thompson and his associates (Thompson & Glanzman, Chapter 2, this volume) and Kandel and his associates (Castellucci & Kandel, Chapter 1, this volume) and others who have been strikingly successful in delineating parallels between the behavior of neurons and the behavior of the intact organism. One might suppose that the distance along the generalization continuum from neuron to intact rat or cat is at least as great as the distance from rat or cat to man. Given this perspective, there is good reason to expect that comparison of habituation research on children and habituation research on infrahumans can yield significant returns for both endeavors, particularly in view of the relative simplicity of the behavioral process at issue. The procedures used at the two levels are at least superficially similar; a stimulus is repeatedly presented and a decrement in response is recorded. Although parallels at these two levels of analysis are not sufficient to establish similarities in underlying mechanisms, each approach may be instructive to the other. On the one hand, the detailed analysis available to the animal-neuro physiological researcher enables a theoretical and parametric framework that is difficult to attain at the human developmental level. On the other hand, the research of the developmentalists should impress the animal-neurophysiologists with the behavior complexities their molecular analyses must ultimately handle.
