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Animal behavior: The modern synthesis
Most behaviors contain innate or inherited components and can be modified.
Classifying Behavior
Behavior sciences have classically be dichotomized into 2 schools of
thought:
• Innate: Fixed action patterns (Classic Ethology).
1. The behavior must be stereotyped and constant in form
2. It must be characteristic of the species (species specific)
• It must appear in animals that have been raised in isolation from
others (genetically encoded).
3. It must be expressed in full form by animals, which have been
prevented from practicing it. (unlearned & uninterruptable)
• Learned: (Comparative psychology/Behaviorism).
1. Behavior can be innate (or reflexive) in origin but modified/modifiable
in form.
2. Can be associative or non-associative in nature.
Historical Points: Ethology
•Prior to the 1900’s there was little systematic study of animal behavior
•Published work was typically:
•anecdotal (e.g. Darwin)
•anthropomorphic (e.g. the animal was described as angry, sad even
contemplative).
• embellished for the readers pleasure (lacked objectivity)
•Konrad Lorenz Nico Tinbergen: Formalized the scientific study of Ethology.
•Developed the notion of the (Fixed Action Pattern)
FAP: The behavior must be stereotyped, species specific, appear in animals that
have been raised in isolation and unlearned.
Historical view of the FAP or “Hydraulic model”
Sign stimulus (the
environmental cue)
Innate releasing mechanism
(neural template)
Neural energy
Released behavior (the FAP)
Example: egg rolling in the graylag goose.
Problem: if the egg experiment is repeated many times
the behavior eventually fades.
• This is called habituation
• Habituation does did not fit the FAP model
Experimental Ethology: Nico Tinbergen
The Bee Wolf Wasp and the bee hunting FAP
•Hunts honeybees using visual and olfactory cues
•Will approach and attack a fake bee but will not sting unless it is real
Concepts:
1. Dummy stimulus
2. Releasing value
3. Interlocking releasers
Problem: FAPs are supposed to run to completion, the wasp should sting.
Landmark learning in the Bee Wolf
•This is an innate learning ability (it was classified as a FAP but it requires
some interaction with the environment).
Releasing value and interlocking stimuli in the herring gull
1. Nestling sees beak with red spot and pecks it
2. Pecked parent regurgitates
3. The likelihood of a dummy stimulus eliciting a peck depends on its
similarity with the true sign stimuli
Problem: releasing value should be a 0/1 effect.
Note: This experiment is very similar to psychophysical studies of perception
Ethology moves to the center: George Barlow (1968)
Attacked the notion of the Fixed action pattern
• A FAP must meet the following rigid set of criteria:
1. A fixed action pattern has a causal factor that is different from other fixed
action patterns.
2. The stimulus to elicit the fixed action pattern, once delivered has no further
control over it.
3. Components of the fixed action pattern appear in a predictable sequence in
time.
• Conclusion: behaviors rarely fit the FAP model
Reformulates the FAP to MAP (modal action pattern).
MAP: A spatio-temporal pattern of coordinated
movement, a pattern that clusters around some mode
making it recognizable as a distinct behavior pattern.
Ivan Pavlov: Conditioned reflexes.
•Instinctive behaviors can be elicited by novel environmental cues
Comparative Psychology/Behaviorism: Historical perspective
1. E.L. Thorndike: the puzzle box. The Law of Effect: Responses to a
condition that are followed by a positive consequence are strengthened
while those that are followed by a negative consequence are weakened.
2. J.B. Watson
3. B.F. Skinner
John B. Watson: Father of behaviorism and of Operant conditioning
"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to
bring them up and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to
become any type of specialist I might select--doctor, lawyer, merchant-chief,
and yes, even beggarman and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants,
tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors." (1930)
Emphasized the study of “observable behavior”
Rejected the notion that one could by study of
behavior understand brain function or the mind.
http://www.culturewars.com/CultureWars/1999/torches.html
Burrhus F. Skinner: The Watsonian extremist.
“Everything we do and are is shaped by our experience of punishment
and reward.”
“The mind [as opposed to the brain] and other such subjective
phenomena are simply matters of language; they don’t really exist.”