Intsint, Learning and Motivation Flashcards
When was the word instinct first used in psychology?
By Wilhelm Wundt in 1870s
Defined it as any repeated behaviour
How did William James (1890) describe instinct?
Inherited tendency to seek a particular goal
When did study of instinct start up again after behaviourist era?
When ethology became popular in the 1950s and allowed the focus of study of animals under natural conditions to come back
What is instinctive behaviour?
Behaviour produced without learning - innate
Genetically predetermined
Stereotyped - similar on all occasions, in all individuals
Deprivation study: Grohman
Prevented young pigeons from moving wings but they flew as proficiently as other birds when constraints were removed
So, it was concluded that practice is not necessary for normal development of flight
This is a deprivation experiment as we take away certain stimulus to see the effect that this has
Evidence proving some experience is necessary to develop things that might have been thought of ‘instincts’
kittens deprived of light have abnormal depth perception and then do not avoid a drop, they used visual cliff experiments and showed no fear at the drop, which shows depth perception possibly is not innate in cats
Hailman,1966 - problem with instinct definition
pecking accuracy in Laughing Gull chicks, parents coach the chicks to improve and their accuracy improves over time
This is an issue with instinct definition as the behaviour should be performed perfectly straight away but it was not
Appetitive behaviours
Seek, find, approach etc.
Consummatory response
Eating, drinking etc.
Hall et al. (2000)
found that rats who were deprived of water drank more water than rats who had not previously been deprived of water when they were deprived again
When does experience begin? - Grier et al.
exposed incubating eggs to sound or no sound, found that all chicks showed an interest in the sound but the chicks who heard the sound showed a preference for the sound
When does experience begin? - Schaal et al. (2000)
a study where women either ate or did not eat a diet which included anise during pregnancy, at a few hours old the babies were exposed to swabs their either smelled of anise or were blank and the babies behaviours were recorded
Shorter duration of negative facial expression if baby had already been exposed to anise compared to baby who had not been exposed to it
Babies also showed more mouthing activity if their mothers had ate anise compared to babies who’s mothers had not
When does experience begin? - Ronca et al.
took rat pups to space where they did not experience gravity and as they did not have the previous experience of gravity they did not initially have the righting response but once they were back on earth they developed this after around 1 week
Issues with instinct
Difficult to test – endless number of deprivation experiments
Behaviour produced without learning should be perfect the first time? Pecking accuracy
When does experience begin?
What did Freud argue about incest avoidance?
as children, siblings naturally lust after one another so societies need to create incest taboo to inhibit these feelings
What did Westermarck (1891) argue about incest avoidance?
argued the reverse of Freud – sexual disinterest/ aversion in other children one is raised with = sexual negative imprinting, which has a cascade effect on society
Inbreeding depression
inbred individuals have poor health and fertility due to higher frequency of recessive, deleterious traits in homozygous form when close relatives breed
What does the superb fairy wren do to avoid inbreeding?
They divorce their partners and leave the territory to avoid inbreeding with her son when the father dies and the son takes his mate and territory
How can we test sexual negative imprinting?
Evidence from Israeli Kibbutz, Spiro (1958) and Shepher (1983) – children raised together from birth to adolescence in peer groups of 6-8, they found that 2769 marriages in 211 Kibbutz, only 20 within-Kibbutz marriages, no marriages between individuals living in the same peer group for the first 6 years
What can we conclude about how attitudes to incest are determined?
determined by co-residence, non-conscious, attitudes not fixed, its strength varies with experience, not a sensitive period but perhaps a sensitive gradient
Human leukocyte antigen
Genes in major histocompatibility complexes (MHC) that help code for proteins that differentiate between self and non-self and play a significant role in disease and immune defence
What does MHC stand for?
Major histocompatibility complex
Major histocompatibility complex (MHC)
Group of genes that code for proteins found on the surface of cells that help immune system recognise foreign substances
Found in all higher vertebrates
In humans called human leukocyte antigen (HLA)
Is smell important for partner choice?
Animals and humans are said to use MHC and HLA to help choose their mate
MHC-heterozygosity means offspring will be more resistant to many forms of infectious disease
This can be detected through odours and females use this odour to pick a mate with MHC dissimilar to their own
Kallman syndrome
Genetic disease, discovered a post-mortem of a 40-year-old man that had a specific set of characteristics and they were due to one gene which led to these characteristics
What specific gene led to Kallman Syndrome?
Gene Kal-1 on the X chromosome ( two other unidentified genes on other chromosomes also influence the condition = polygeny)
How does KAL-1 gene lead to Kallman Syndrome?
The gene encodes anosmin-1 (cell adhesion protein) which effects neurons in the brain that have effects on the olfactory bulb cells which leads to problems with smell
Also due to effect of neurons in the brain,the hypothalamus fails to secrete GnRH (gonadotropin releasing hormone) which leads to issues with gonad development and then this means the testes release less testosterone so libido is effected
3 Pleiotropic effects of KAL-1 gene
Bobrow, Money & Lewis (1971) - Kallman’s Syndrome
5 patients with Kallman’s Syndrome
Social development and participation were delayed
Dating behaviour was limited before and after treatment for all the patients, and sexual interest was low even for the 3 that were married
Potential treatment of testosterone but some developmental aspects can not be altered
X-linked recessive
Genes on the X chromosome
Less effect on females
Females can often be carriers
Y linked
Gene on Y chromosome
Only males affected
All sons of a man with this disorder will be affected
Autosomal recessive
Requires two copies to develop disorder
Have 1 copy and you are a carrier
Autosomal dominant
1 copy sufficient to develop disorder
Men and women affected equally
Children of those with disorder have 50% chance of developing it too
Heritability
a statistic used in the fields of breeding and genetics that estimates the degree of variation in a phenotypic trait in a population that is due to genetic variation between individuals in that population
Heritability (h)
proportion of variation due to genetic variation between individuals
Example – height: if people differed in height due to differences only in their genotype, h = 1 and if people differed in height due to differences in only their environment, h = 0
What did study find about heritability and socioeconomic status?
Study found that heritability increases with socioeconomic status (SES)
Impoverished families – 60% of the variance in IQ is accounted for by the environment, and the contribution of genes is close to 0
Affluent families – almost exactly the reverse
Is heritability the same as genetic influence?
No
Hebb’s analogy
It makes no sense to ask: ‘How much of the area of a field is due to its length and how much is due to its width?’
There is a single area that us the product of both
This is the same with behaviour it is the product of both genotype and environment
So instead, we try to discover how genes and environment influence behaviour?
Delay discounting
Tendency to choose smaller sooner rewards over larger later ones
Heuristic
Mental shortcut, allows quick problem solving and judgement making
Ways to disentangle genes and the environment:
- Twin studies – known variation in genome, monozygotic twins and dizygotic, these studies assume the environment is identical but is it?
- Adoption studies – monozygotic twins reared apart; can we quantify all of the environmental differences?
- More flexibility with non-human animals: cross-fostering studies – manipulated developmental history, babies with same/ similar genome will be split and reared differently
Maturation
changes in behaviour due to physical changes in neural and muscular systems for example with a baby from crawling to walking
Example of maturation
the increased pecking accuracy with the gull chicks, it was found that even those reared in the dark still improved which suggests they did not need to observe the behaviour they just needed to mature the muscles/ neural system
Discrimination (learning)
Narrowing the range of stimuli that elicit a response
Example of learning discrimination
Example: Human language
• 4–6-month infants – respond to subtle phonetic (sound) differences between syllables in unfamiliar languages and own languages
• 10-12-month infants – discrimination narrowed with experience, responds differently only to different sounds commonly used in own language
Generalisation (learning)
Broadening the range of stimuli that elicit a response
Example of learning generalisation
Polecats attack a stationary rat only after experience with a moving rat
Aposematism
Coloration/ markings serving as a warning
Sensitive periods
Some early experiences must occur within a certain time window to influence development
For example imprinting in ducks and geese must occur in first few hours
Language development as a sensitive period
Sensitive period for first exposure to language, in order for it to develop normally
Up to age 6, after this the ability declines
Rare after puberty
Findings from natural experiments
Case study: Isabelle
At 6.5 years she and her mute mother escaped silent imprisonment in grandfathers house
Unable to speak but her hearing was intact
9 days – first vocalisation, ‘buh’ for ball
10 days later – increase in vocabulary
2 months later – simple sentences ‘open your eyes’
1 month later – more complex sentences ‘I don’t want you to go home’
Finally at 8 years – full language
Case study: Genie
At 13.5 years she was released from horrific confinement
Sensory an emotional deprivation
Permanently incapable of full grammar
4 months on – spontaneous use of words: yellow, balloon
12 months – 3–4-word sentences: want more soup
2 years – complex sentences
Very communicative, bur never mastered grammar, had semantic ability but could not learn syntax
What likely causes the sensitive period?
Synaptic pruning and channelling
Synaptic pruning
process of synapse elimination that occurs between early childhood and the onset of puberty in many mammals, including humans
After acquisition synaptic pruning saves metabolic cost by reducing neural tissue
Channelling
Possible routes for development are increasingly constrained over time
Self-regulation
Modifying behaviour to compensate for environmental change
Examples of self-regulation
Compensatory feeding in rats after food deprivation
Compensating with extra play for loss of social contact as kittens
Compensating for cognitive decline in humans – found that 71.4% of over 65-year-old drivers reported sometimes or always avoiding certain driving situations – drivers with cognitive impairment reported more self-regulation
Compensating chronic illness in humans – found 4 types of self-regulatory behaviours: faith, diet, rest and emotional expression
Equifinality
Many developmental routes that reach the same end
Mechanisms of plasticity and self-regulation
Example of equifinality
Case study: 26-year-old man in 1970s, very intelligent, large head and movement mildly uncoordinated, brain scan was not normal due to hydrocephalus in early life but he still reached the same end through equifinality and brain reorganisation
Non-associative learning
result merely of exposure to stimulus for example, mere exposure and liking, imprinting, habituation and song learning
