Lesson 9: Introduction to Behaviour

Question 1

Behaviour

Answer 1

A behaviour of an animal is an action carried out by muscles under control
of the nervous system in response to a stimulus.

Behaviour of animals can be divided into two categories:

Innate Behaviour – has a
genetic basis

Learned Behaviour – results
from the experience of the
animal.

Question 2

Innate Behaviour

Answer 2

Unaffected by the external influences experienced by the animal.

Animals behave in fixed, predictable ways in many situations. This is known
as a fixed action pattern (FAP)

An FAP is a sequence of unlearned acts directly linked to a simple stimulus.

Innate behaviours include:

Reflexes

Kinesis

Taxis

Question 3

Reflexes

Answer 3

Several innate behaviours work to increase the survival of the organism.

Reflexes are the simplest type of behaviour.

Examples of human reflexes are the withdrawal response to pain and the palmar grasp reflex of infants.

Question 4

Kinesis

Answer 4

The rate of random movements of an animal in
response to the intensity of a stimulus.

A common example is the slower movement, with
more frequent turning of insects such as a woodlouse,
when moved from a drier to a more damp
environment.

Question 5

Taxis

Answer 5

A movement in response to the direction of a
stimulus.

Movement towards the stimulus is positive while
movement away from the stimulus is negative.

An example is the movement of insects such as a
woodlouse, away from light.

Question 6

Learned Behaviour

Answer 6

The acquisition of new patterns of behaviour based on experience.

Learned behaviour is influenced by environmental conditions.

There are many types of learning in animals

Imprinting

Associative learning

Spatial learning and cognitive maps

Operant conditioning

Problem Solving

Question 7

Imprinting

Answer 7

First studied by Konrad Lorenz

Includes both learned and innate
components.

Imprinting is the formation at a specific stage
in life of a long lasting behavioural response
to a particular individual or object.

The sensitive or critical period is the time
over which this learning can occur.

The young imprint on their parent and learn
the basic behaviours of their species while
the parent learns to recognize its offspring.

Question 8

Associative Learning

Answer 8

Animals associate one stimulus with another.

Animals learn to associate a stimulus such as colour with another such as taste and alters its behaviour to either
seek or avoid the stimulus.

In classical conditioning an arbitrary stimulus such as the sound of a bell may be associated with the arrival of
food.

Researched by Ivan Pavlov

Question 9

Operant Conditioning

Answer 9

A type of associative learning in which an animal learns to associate a behaviour with reward or punishment.

The animal tends to repeat behaviours associated with reward and avoid behaviours associated with punishment.

Research performed by B.F. Skinner

Question 10

Spatial Learning and
Cognitive Maps

Answer 10

The establishment of a memory that reflects the environment’s spatial
structure

A sophisticated form of spatial learning is cognitive mapping.

A cognitive map is a representation in the nervous system of the spatial
relationships between objects in an animals surroundings.

Question 11

Problem Solving

Answer 11

The most complex forms of learning require cognition.

Cognition is the process of knowing that involves awareness, reasoning,
recollection and judgement.

The information processing ability of the nervous system can also be revealed in problem solving.

Problem solving is the cognitive ability of devising a method to proceed from
one state to another in the face of real or apparent obstacles.