Experiential canalization of behavioral development: Theory.

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Abstract
Waddington's (1942) notion of canalization has been widely invoked in developmental psychology to conceptualize species-typical regularities in behavioral development as genetically determined. In contrast, a developmental systems view, such as the one described in the present article, sees the genes as only one component in a hierarchy of influences, all of which contribute to canalize behavioral development. A key issue is that genetic activity does not by itself produce finished traits; differentiation occurs as a consequence of events above as well as below the cellular level, necessarily involving factors in addition to genetic influences to canalize behavioral development. In exploring the possible experiential canalization of development, it was found that the mallard duck embryo's contact call plays a canalizing role in species-speci fic perceptual development {Gottlieb, 1991). Thus, normally occurring experience, in concert with genetic and other activities, can canalize behavioral development. The concept of canalization has been utilized in several dif- ferent ways in the psychological literature. Canalization was originally put forward by Holt (1931) to call attention to prena- tal conditioning as a factor in narrowing down the initially diffuse or random nature of motor activity in the embryo or fetus. Holt saw the motor activity of the fetus and the infant as becoming organized through spatial and temporal contiguity learning that narrowed down originally diffuse neural path- ways to a definite neural reflex arc. Thus, for Holt, canalization referred to the development of specific sensorimotor pathways out of an original multiplicity of such pathways; it was a label to capture the developmental-behavioral phenomenon of progres- sion from diffuse to ordered or organized motor activity, with contiguity conditioning as the experiential mechanism whereby organized motor activity was achieved. Although Holt's concept of neural reflex circles to account for the develop- ment of grasping in the fetus and infant was an ingenious exam- ple of his point of view, it has remained an entirely speculative theoretical solution of primarily historical interest. Subsequent empirical studies in behavioral embryology have kept open the possibility that motor movements in the embryo and fetus of some species are patterned from the start, whereas in other species they appear to be random (see reviews in Gottlieb, 1970; Hamburger, 1973; Oppenheim, 1974).

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