Animal behavior: The modern synthesis

Most behaviors contain innate or inherited components and can be modified.

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.

Classifying Behavior

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)

Historical view of the FAP or “Hydraulic model”

Released behavior (the FAP)

Innate releasing mechanism(neural template)

Neural energy

Sign stimulus (the environmental cue)

FAP: The behavior must be stereotyped, species specific, appear in animals that have been raised in isolation and unlearned.

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 TinbergenThe 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

Problem: releasing value should be a 0/1 effect.Note: This experiment is very similar to psychophysical studies of perception

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

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 perspective1. 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. Watson3. B.F. Skinner

"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)

John B. Watson: Father of behaviorism and of Operant conditioning

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.”