L'éthologie éclaire-t-elle sur des conditions de vie sociales qui répondraient mieux aux spécificités de l'espèce humaine

Ecological factors in the broadest sense of the word (stimuli from the whole outside environment) have an important influence on the behaviour and on the « physiology of defence and adaptation ». The whole of the outside environment, both ecological and social, must be taken into account in order to understand what enables the child to answer the questions this environment asks him in an appropriate (adapted) fashion. The writer and his team have for years dissected behaviour into motor units and then into sequences of units and have begun to identify the role outside environment plays in the organization, nonorganization or disorganization of the young child's communication behaviour and « defence physiology ». This etho-physiology provides ecology, sociology and médecine, with information about the ways in which individuals come into contact with their environment ; it also detects what unbalances the organism and helps to form a society that « converses » with its environment.