Conceptual and methodological issues in examining behavioral development through environment-organism interactions

The importance of understanding behavior in terms of interactions between o rganismic and environmental variables has become more salient and calls for research focused on such interactions have been made. However, several con ceptual paths may encourage investigating and understanding behavior in ter ms of organism-environment interactions. One such path is the development a nd testing of constructs which cut across the traditional organism-environm ent dichotomy and conceptualize behavioral development as fundamentally an organism-environment interaction. In this paper, a metatheoretical framewor k for thinking about behavioral development as fundamentally an organism-en vironment interaction is presented. Issues involved in conceptualizing and examining behavior and behavioral development as fundamentally an organism- environment interaction are also examined by reviewing the concept of affor dances and some of the illustrative research that has been conducted. From the review, it is suggested that research which attempts to understand beha vior as inseparably a function of organism-environment interactions will be nefit if additional methodological avenues are developed. Marken's (1997, P sychological Methods, 2, 436-446) test for controlled variables is presente d as an example of one such method. Finally, suggestions for developing the ideas reviewed in this paper for other research domains (i.e., anxiety in children) are also presented. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights res erved.