Multivariate analysis as tool for the study of behavior.

Abstract

Crucial feature of emergent phenomena is that, even if basic processes are fully elucidated and/or described, they may be impossible to predict. This idea perfectly fits with the evidence that, concerning behavioral studies, reductionistic descriptions (durations, per cent distributions and so on) of isolate events are far to be representative of the whole behavior. This last can be exhaustively understood only if inter-relations among events are taken into account. It is exactly here that traditional descriptive approaches to behavioral study give way to multivariate analysis. In fact, an important characteristic of multivariate techniques dwells in the possibility to analyze relationships between the elements of a behavioral sequence.