A4 Behaviour Flashcards
Define behaviour.
Any observable action by a living organism.
Define innate behaviour.
An instinctive response that is developmentally fixed – it is independent of environmental context and has a genetic basis. They are inherited from parents. It develops at a slow pace via natural selection.
Define learned behaviour.
The process of acquiring new knowledge or skills that can be improved with practise. It is as a result of environmental conditions that the organism experiences and it can disappear over time without regular usage. It improves an organisms survival prospects because they can adapt to environmental changes. Eg. imprinting and habituation.
What affects learned behaviour?
Learned behaviour is modified by experiences and thus requires memory to recall and process this information. As this is needed to adapt behaviour to the new situation.
Describe a reflex.
A rapid, unconscious automatic response to a stimulus involving a small number of neurons and a CNS processing point. This circuit is referred to as a reflex arc. They do not involve the brain – sensory information is directly relayed to motor neurons within the spine. This results in a faster response, but one that does not involve conscious thought or deliberation.
Describe the pain withdrawal reflex.
The pain stimulus is detected by the receptor. A nerve impulse is initiated in a sensory neuron which sends electrical impulses to the spinal cord. These are passed to relay neurons which synapse with motor neurons that carry the impulse to the muscle. This causes it to contract and remove the limb from the pain stimulus. This all occurs within a fraction of a second.
Define imprinting.
When an organism learns a response to a stimulus during a sensitive age period. It does not require reinforcement to develop. Eg. filial imprinting (bonding to a parent) and sexual imprinting (developing sexual preferences).
Define conditioning/associative learning.
A process of behaviour modification whereby desired behaviours become associated with unrelated stimuli.
Describe classical/reflex conditioning and the experiment used to prove this.
Classical conditioning is when a behaviour that was normally triggered by a certain stimulus becomes triggered by a substitute stimulus which had previously had no effect on behaviour.
It first described by Ivan Pavlov who experimented on dogs.
Dogs normally salivate (unconditioned response) in anticipation of being fed (unconditioned stimulus). Pavlov sounded a bell (neutral stimulus) prior to feeding dogs. After many repetitions, the dogs came to associate the bell with food and began to salivate to the bell (conditioned response).
Describe operant conditioning.
Operant conditioning is a form of learning which consists of trial and error. It involves associating a particular behaviour with a specific consequence (either reward or punishment).
It was first described by B. F. Skinner who experimented on rats. By trial and error, the rats learned to press the lever in response to the different environmental contexts.
Describe the role of innate and learned behaviour in the development of birdsong.
Birds will use songs as a means of communication – either signalling courtship or establishing territorial boundaries.
Most birds are born with a crude template song that is genetically inherited (innate behaviour). Whilst young, fledglings learn to expand and refine their song by listening to, and mimicking, the adult version of the birds in their area (learned behaviour). Birds from different areas have different songs.
Birds raised in isolation will lack the necessary song complexity that develops through social interaction.
Define memory.
The faculty of the mind by which information is encoded, stored and retrieved. It can be stored as a short term memory (short recall duration) or long term memory (indefinite recall period). Information that is not stored as a memory will be forgotten and will have to be re-learned.
