L8 Innate Behaviours Flashcards
What are innate behaviours?
Behaviours that are inbuilt into each species and which evolve across generations.
What are the four different types of innate behaviour?
- Reflexes
- Kineses
- Taxes
- Fixed Action Patterns (FAP)
What is a reflex?
A stereotyped form of response that occurs whenever a particular stimulus is presented.
The central nervous system (CNS) plays a large part in regards to reflexes.
True or False
False
No CNS involvement is required for reflexes
Describe the physiology behind how reflexes work.
A signal comes in from receptors to the spinal cord via input fibres, across a little inter-neurone and
then out via motor fibres to effector devices (e.g. muscles).
Why are reflexes important in paediatrics?
The presence of certain reflexes at birth is an indicator of healthy development.
The persistence of primitive reflexes too long (over 6 months) can be an indicator of developmental problems.
Define tropism
The turning of all or part of an organism in a particular direction in response to an external stimulus.
What are Kineses (kinesis)?
Reflexes involving the whole body of an organism.
(kinesis is a sub-category of tropisms)
What are ‘taxes’ (taxis)?
Directional behaviour of the whole body in response to a stimulus
What are ‘fixed action patterns’ (FAPs)?
A very narrow range of behaviour which has certain specific characteristics which suggest they are evolved.
What are the 6 specific characteristics that fixed action patterns consist of?
a) All members of the species produce them
b) They are adaptive
c) Activated only in specific contexts by specific, species-specific stimulus
d) The form of the response is identical within the species
e) The responses occur automatically when the key stimulus is present
f) The behaviour has evolved within a specific environmental context for a specific evolutionary purpose.
How did Niko Tinbergen in his book The Study of Instinct argue what the best way to demonstrate the existence the existences of FAPs were?
a) Look for species-specific behaviour that seems to have some adaptive value.
b) See whether the behaviour could be automatically triggered or ‘released’ by a particular stimulus.
What did Niko Tinbergen in his book The Study of Instinct name the stimulus or significant environmental characteristic that generates the FAP response?
the sign- or the releasing stimulus
Greylag geese retrieving eggs that roll out of the nest by reaching beyond the egg and bringing the beak in while making small lateral movements to keep the egg upright is an example of what innate behaviour?
Fixed Action Patterns
Knee-jerking when being tapped by a hammer
Pulling away when touching a hot surface
What type of innate behaviour are these two examples of?
Reflexes
Maggots moving away from a bright light
Moths being attracted to lights
What type of innate behaviour are these an example of?
Taxes
Animals stay stationary when placed in moist conditions
Animals in dryland tend to keep moving in an effort to find water
What type of innate behaviour are these two examples of?
Kinesis
What type of experiment is used to test for innate behaviours?
Deprivation experiments
What does a deprivation experiment that tests for innate behaviours involve?
Taking animals out of their natural habitat and environments at birth, raising them in isolate and seeing whether natural behaviours still emerge.
How did Reiss (1954) test for whether female rats building nests before birth was an innate or learned behaviour?
What were the results?
He did a deprivation experiment.
He took the rats away from birth and then saw that the mother rats still tried to build a nest just before giving birth.
It was a FAP that a hormone is released that triggers a gene which signals the pattern of behaviour required.
What did the Eibl-Eibesfeldt’s Squirrel Study’s show?
That squirrels in a lab when would still try to dig holes for their nuts even when deprived of soft ground to dig and when out of the elements. FAP behaviour.
Describe how Zing-Yang Kuo (1930s) tested whether cats have a tendency to kill rats.
What did he conclude?
There were 3 groups of cats that were taken from birth
Group 1: Cat was alone away from other cats but in the presence of a rat pup.
Group 2: Raised alone exposed to neither rats nor cats
Group 3: Raised with rats and cats in a normal rat-killing environment
Conclusions: Rat-killing is not an innate behaviour, none of group 1 and only half of group 2 killed rats and all of group 3 killed rats.
What are the two criticisms of deprivation experiments for testing innate behaviour?
- The absence of instinctive behaviour could be due to the animal being ‘damaged’ in some way by being raised or kept in isolation.
- You can’t always assume that isolated animals are incapable of learning.
Human babies grabbing hold of long slender objects like fingers; babies sucking on nipple-shaped objects placed in their mouth; humans imitating yawning behaviour are examples of what type of innate behaviour?
Fixed Action Patterns
What are displacement behaviours?
An inborn pervasive behaviour triggered by common circumstance, that occurs in conflict situations and seems to be unrelated to the conflict itself.
What is a conflict situation?
When an animal has to choose between two courses of action and where one action prevents the other from happening (e.g., fight or flight)
What are some human examples of displacement behaviours?
Yawning, fidgeting, scratching, drumming fingers etc. when nervous
How did Falk (1930s) explain the existence of displacement behaviour?
Due to the animal’s desire to delay its next response as either choice is undesirable.
(e.g., run away from nest vs attacking predator)
How did Konrad Lorenz in his hydraulic model argue for the existence of FAPs?
When animals are faced with certain critical circumstances energy potentials build up in the brain due to hormonal changes.
These build up until the critical releasing stimulus is encountered and then the energy pours out and the FAP sequence is released automatically.
What did Lorenz in his hydraulic model argue why displacement behaviour happens?
In conflict situations, the animal is faced with more than one releasing stimulus and so each inhibits the other.
In this situation, the energy potential is eventually released and goes into whatever behaviour can be performed at the time.
On what grounds has Lorenz’s hydraulic model of FAP behaviour been challenged?
Animals don’t tend to produce just any behaviour.
Andrew (1956): Displacement drinking occurs because animals get a dry throat
The hydraulic model has largely been discredited and more genetic explanations been advanced.
What is imprinting?
A bond or attachment formed between young animals and a particular class of objects experienced during a critical phase of early development.
Young ducks following the first moving object they see once they learn to walk is called ___
It is an example of what type of learning?
- *Filial Imprinting**
- *Exposure learning** as the animal has to learn which stimulus it attaches to. It is also innate because the behaviour is hardwired into the animal.
What is the critical or sensitive period in regards to imprinting?
The short period in the animal’s development that when combined with certain stimuli the innate imprinting behaviour will occur.
What is the purpose of imprinting?
a) Ensure species recognition
b) The animal learns what object it should direct critical responses to (e.g., feeding, safety etc.)
c) To ensure the animal sexually imprints on their own species so it is attracted to its own and can reproduce
What did Harlow (1960) discover with his experiment on rhesus monkeys on the effects of depriving a monkey of its mother?
What did this mean in regards to humans?
Monkeys who had been deprived of a mother displayed autistic tendencies (savage, unfeeling, treated young poorly).
There is an approximate form of imprinting in primates (humans) that influence its capacity to nurture its young.
What is habituation?
The tendency for responses to get progressively weaker in response to a repeated stimulus.
What is an orienting response?
A response that signifies that attention is on a certain object.
No longer hearing a train after living near train tracks after a few weeks is what type of conditioning?
Habituation
What are 3 things about how habituation works that Spencer (1960) discovered?
- It occurs more rapidly when the stimulus is not all that strong anyway
- The effect is strongest initially and then reaches the asymptotic level fairly quickly.
- A stimulus can become important again if exposure is reduced altogether for a period
