Study Guide Test 1

Question 1

C. Darwin

Answer 1

Charles Robert Darwin,(12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to evolutionary theory. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding.

Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species,

His five-year voyage on HMS Beagle established him as an eminent geologist whose observations and theories supported Charles Lyell’s uniformitarian ideas, and publication of his journal of the voyage made him famous as a popular author.

In 1871 he examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. His research on plants was published in a series of books, and in his final book, he examined earthworms and their effect on soil.

Question 2

I. Pavlov

Answer 2

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov;(1849 –1936) was a famous Russian physiologist. He won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1904.

The concept for which Pavlov is famous is the “conditioned reflex” he developed jointly with his assistant Ivan Filippovitch Tolochinov in 1901. He had come to learn this concept of conditioned reflex when examining the rates of salivations among dogs. Pavlov had learned then when a buzzer or metronome was sounded in subsequent time with food being presented to the dog in consecutive sequences, the dog will initially salivate when the food is presented. The dog will later come to associate the sound with the presentation of the food and salivate upon the presentation of that stimulus. Tolochinov, whose own term for the phenomenon had been “reflex at a distance”, communicated the results at the Congress of Natural Sciences in Helsinki in 1903. Later the same year Pavlov more fully explained the findings, at the 14th International Medical Congress in Madrid, where he read a paper titled The Experimental Psychology and Psychopathology of Animals.

As Pavlov’s work became known in the West, particularly through the writings of John B. Watson, the idea of “conditioning” as an automatic form of learning became a key concept in the developing specialism of comparative psychology, and the general approach to psychology that underlay it, behaviorism. Pavlov’s work with classical conditioning was of huge influence to how humans perceive themselves, their behavior and learning processes and his studies of classical conditioning continue to be central to modern behavior therapy. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell was an enthusiastic advocate of the importance of Pavlov’s work for philosophy of mind.

Pavlov’s research on conditional reflexes greatly influenced not only science, but also popular culture. Pavlovian conditioning was a major theme in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World, and also to a large degree in Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow.

It is popularly believed that Pavlov always signaled the occurrence of food by ringing a bell. However, his writings record the use of a wide variety of stimuli, including electric shocks, whistles, metronomes, tuning forks, and a range of visual stimuli, in addition to the ring of a bell.

It is less widely known that Pavlov’s experiments on the conditional reflex extended to children, some of whom underwent surgical procedures, similar to those performed on the dogs, for the collection of saliva.

Question 3

Charles Henry Turner

Answer 3

Charles Henry Turner (February 3, 1867 - February 15, 1923) was a prominent research biologist, educator, zoologist, and comparative psychologist born in Cincinnati, Ohio.

In 1892, Turner became the first African American to receive a graduate degree at the University of Cincinnati.

In 1907, he became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Despite his doctorate, Turner chose to teach at high schools. Most sources attribute this career move to a desire to devote more time to the observation of insects, but Charles I. Abramson, in his 2003 article on Turner for American Bee Journal, claims that Turner was unable, rather than unwilling, to get an appointment at the University of Chicago, and that the Tuskegee Institute could not afford his salary.

Turner published 49 papers on invertebrates, including Habits of Mound-Building Ants, Experiments on the Color Vision of the Honeybee, Hunting Habits of an American Sand Wasp, and Psychological Notes on the Gallery Spider. In his research, Turner became the first person to prove that insects can hear and can distinguish pitch. In addition, he first discovered that cockroaches can learn by trial and error and that honeybees can see color.

Besides his scientific work, Turner was active in the struggle to obtain social and educational services for African Americans in St. Louis, Missouri. After his death, a school for disabled African American children was named in his honor.

Question 4

B.F. Skinner

Answer 4

Burrhus Frederic “B. F.” Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher.

Skinner invented the operant conditioning chamber, also known as the Skinner Box. He was a firm believer of the idea that human free will was actually an illusion and any human action was the result of the consequences of that same action. If the consequences were bad, there was a high chance that the action would not be repeated; however if the consequences were good, the actions that lead to it would be reinforced. He called this the principle of reinforcement.

He innovated his own philosophy of science called radical behaviorism and founded his own school of experimental research psychology—the experimental analysis of behavior. His analysis of human behavior culminated in his work Verbal Behavior, as well as his philosophical manifesto Walden Two, both of which have recently seen enormous increase in interest experimentally and in applied settings. Contemporary academia considers Skinner a pioneer of modern behaviorism along with John B. Watson and Ivan Pavlov.

Question 5

K. Lorenz

Answer 5

Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (7 November 1903 – 27 February 1989) was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. He is often regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, developing an approach that began with an earlier generation, including his teacher Oskar Heinroth.

Lorenz studied instinctive behavior in animals, especially in greylag geese and jackdaws. Working with geese, he rediscovered the principle of imprinting (originally described by Douglas Spalding in the 19th century) in the behavior of nidifugous birds. In later life, his interest shifted to the study of humans in society.

Before the outbreak of World War II he joined the Nazi Party, many of whose views he shared. During the war he worked as a military psychologist doing studies of racial hygiene in occupied Poland. In 1944 he was sent to the Eastern Front where he was captured and spent 4 years as a Soviet prisoner of war. After the war he regretted his membership of the Nazi party, although he continued to espouse views in his writings that have been described as anti-democratic and having racist overtones.

He wrote numerous books, some of which, such as King Solomon’s Ring, On Aggression and Man Meets Dog became popular reading. His last work “Here I Am - Where Are You?” is a summary of his life’s work and focuses on his famous studies of greylag geese.

Question 6

N. Tinbergen

Answer 6

Nikolaas “Niko” Tinbergen (15 April 1907 – 21 December 1988) was a Dutch ethologist and ornithologist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz for their discoveries concerning organization and elicitation of individual and social behavior patterns in animals.

He is well known for originating the four questions he believed should be asked of any animal behaviour, which were:

Proximate mechanisms:

1. Causation (Mechanism): what are the stimuli that elicit the response, and how has it been modified by recent learning? How do behaviour and psyche "function" on the molecular, physiological, neuro-ethological, cognitive and social level, and what do the relations between the levels look like? (compare: Nicolai Hartmann: "The laws about the levels of complexity")
2. Development (Ontogeny): how does the behaviour change with age, and what early experiences are necessary for the behaviour to be shown? Which developmental steps (the ontogenesis follows an "inner plan") and which environmental factors play when / which role? (compare: Recapitulation theory)

Ultimate mechanisms:

3. Function (Adaptation): how does the behaviour impact on the animal's chances of survival and reproduction?
4. Evolution (Phylogeny): how does the behaviour compare with similar behaviour in related species, and how might it have arisen through the process of phylogeny? Why did structural associations (behaviour can be seen as a "time space structure") evolve in this manner and not otherwise?*

In ethology and sociobiology causation and ontogeny are summarized as the “proximate mechanisms” and adaptation and phylogeny as the “ultimate mechanisms”. They are still considered as the cornerstone of modern ethology, sociobiology and transdisciplinarity in Human Sciences.

Question 7

S. Arnold

Answer 7

look up in lectures

Question 8

R. R. Hoy

Answer 8

look up in lectures

Question 9

P. Marler

Answer 9

look up in lectures

Question 10

Jane Goodall

Answer 10

Dame Jane Morris Goodall, (born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall on 3 April 1934) is a British primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and UN Messenger of Peace. Considered to be the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her 45-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania. She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute, and she has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. She has served on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project since its founding in 1996.

Question 11

E.O. Wilson

Answer 11

Edward Osborne “E. O.” Wilson (born June 10, 1929) is an American biologist, researcher (sociobiology, biodiversity), theorist (consilience, biophilia), naturalist (conservationist) and author. His biological specialty is myrmecology, the study of ants, on which he is considered to be the world’s leading authority.

Wilson is known for his scientific career, his role as “the father of sociobiology”, his environmental advocacy, and his secular-humanist and deist ideas pertaining to religious and ethical matters.[3]

He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and a New York Times bestseller for The Social Conquest of Earth and Letters to a Young Scientist.

Question 12

Comparative Psychology

Answer 12

A branch of psychology involving the study and comparison of the behaviors of diverse animal species, often under controlled laboratory experiments, in order to discover general principles of behavior.

Question 13

Ethology

Answer 13

The branch of zoology that studies the behavior of animals in their natural habitats

Question 14

Ethospecies

Answer 14

The concept of categorizing organisms in species based on their behavior which is responsible for the maintenance of their genetic isolation.

Question 15

Group Selection

Answer 15

A form of natural selection in which characteristics that may be disadvantageous to an individual can persist or increase in the population if they contribute to the survival and reproduction of the group as a whole.

Question 16

Individual fitness

Answer 16

The fitness of an individual, especially its probability of survival (in contrast to its probability of reproduction).

Question 17

Genotype

Answer 17

the genetic constitution of an organism, esp. as distinguished from its phenotype; all of the genes present in an organism or species; the specific alleles present at a given locus.

Question 18

Phenotype

Answer 18

The sum total of the observable characteristics of an individual, regarded as the consequence of the interaction of the individual’s genotype with the environment; a variety of an organism distinguished by observable characteristics rather than underlying genetic features.

Question 19

Songbird brain nuclei

Answer 19

Check lecture slides

Question 20

Polygenic control

Answer 20

Check lecture slides

Question 21

Behavioral genomics

Answer 21

the branch of molecular biology concerned with the structure, function, and evolution of genomes….check lecture for complete def..

Question 22

Fixed-action-pattern (FAP)

Answer 22

Apparently stereotyped behaviour, exhibited or capable of being exhibited by all members of a species or higher taxonomic group, which may be used to achieve more than one objective, which may be innate or learned, and whose acquisition may be affected by environmental factors. Examples include the calls of certain birds: these are influenced by sounds heard by the birds early in their lives, but once acquired the songs are performed in a stereotyped way.

Question 23

Kinesis

Answer 23

An undirected movement of an organism that occurs in response to a particular kind of stimulus

Question 24

Taxis

Answer 24

The reaction of a free organism to external stimulus by movement in a particular direction.

Question 25

Sign stimulus

Answer 25

The component or characteristic of an external stimulus which is effective in initiating a particular innate behavioural response in an animal perceiving it, regardless of the presence or absence of the remainder of the stimulus.

Question 26

Releaser

Answer 26

Check lecture notes

Question 27

Habituation

Answer 27

An aspect of learning in which repeated applications of a stimulus result in decreased responsiveness. For example, the escape response of a guppy (Poecilia reticulata) to a shadow passed overhead diminishes progressively if the stimulus is presented every 2 min. Eventually the fish does not respond at all.

A common feature of habituation is that the habituated response reappears if the stimulus is withheld for a long period of time. Thus the guppy escape response reappears if no shadows are presented for about a day after the response has habituated. Usually, a response habituated to one stimulus shows generalization to another similar stimulus. Thus, if a new stimulus is similar to one to which the animal has already habituated, then habituation will be more rapid. The recovery of a response upon presentation of a new stimulus is called dishabituation.

Habituation is a widespread phenomenon in the animal kingdom. Its survival value lies in counterbalancing the advantages and disadvantages of responding to stimuli of uncertain significance. No animal should ignore potentially dangerous stimuli. On the other hand, over-responsiveness is a waste of time and energy.

Question 28

Classical conditioning

Answer 28

(conditioning that pairs a neutral stimulus with a stimulus that evokes a reflex; the stimulus that evokes the reflex is given whether or not the conditioned response occurs until eventually the neutral stimulus comes to evoke the reflex)

Question 29

Operant conditioning

Answer 29

Conditioning in which an animal forms an association between a particular behavior and a result that reinforces the behavior, its behavior being operant (or instrumental) in producing the result. For example, a bird that turns over dead leaves may find food beneath them, so it may come to associate turning over dead leaves with finding food. The process may be negative, as when an animal learns to associate a particular activity with an unpleasant result.

Question 30

Filial imprinting

Answer 30

The best-known form of imprinting is filial imprinting, in which a young animal acquires several of its behavioral characteristics from its parent

Question 31

Sexual imprinting

Answer 31

Sexual imprinting is the process by which a young animal learns the characteristics of a desirable mate. For example, male zebra finches appear to prefer mates with the appearance of the female bird that rears them, rather than that of the birth parent when they are different.

Question 32

Latent learning

Answer 32

Latent learning is a form of learning that is not immediately expressed in an overt response; it occurs without any obvious reinforcement of the behavior or associations that are learned.[1] Interest in latent learning arose largely because the phenomenon seemed to conflict with the widely held view that reinforcement was necessary for learning to occur.

Question 33

Observational learning

Answer 33

Observational learning is learning that occurs through observing the behavior of others. Albert Bandura, who is best known for the classic Bobo doll experiment, identified this basic form of learning in 1986. Bandura stressed the importance of observational learning because it helps people, especially children, acquire new responses by observing others’ behavior.

This form of learning does not need reinforcement to occur, but instead, requires a model. A social model can be a parent, sibling, friend, or teacher, but—particularly in childhood—a model is someone of authority or higher status. A social model is significantly important in observational learning because it facilitates cognitive process behavior. It helps the learner encode what they observe and store it in memory for later imitation.

Question 34

Insight learning

Answer 34

Insight Learning: This is an extension of the term, insight which was identified by Wolfgang Kohler while studying the behavior of chimpanzees. He said that insight learning is a type of learning or problem solving that happens all-of-a-sudden through understanding the relationships various parts of a problem rather than through trial and error.

Sultan, one of Kohler’s chimpanzes, learned to use a stick to pull bananas from outside of his cage by putting pieces of stick together. Given two sticks that could be fitted together to make a single pole that was long enough to reach the bananas, aligned the sticks and in a flash of sudden inspiration, fitted the two sticks together and pulled in the bananas. He didn’t do this by trial and error, but had a sort of sudden inspiration or insight.

Question 35

Animal cognition

Answer 35

read lecture slides

Question 36

Electrical senses

Answer 36

read lecture slides

Question 37

Lateral line organ

Answer 37

The lateral line is a system of sense organs found in aquatic vertebrates, chiefly fish, used to detect movement and vibration in the surrounding water. The sensory ability is achieved via modified epithelial cells, known as hair cells, which respond to displacement caused by motion, movement and transduce these signals into electrical impulses via excitatory synapses. Lateral lines serve an important role in schooling behavior, predation, and orientation. For example, fish can use their lateral line system to follow the vortices produced by fleeing prey. They are usually visible as faint lines running lengthwise down each side, from the vicinity of the gill covers to the base of the tail. In some species, the receptive organs of the lateral line have been modified to function as electroreceptors, which are organs used to detect electrical impulses, and as such these systems remain closely linked. Most amphibian larvae and some fully aquatic adult amphibians possess mechanosensitive systems comparable to the lateral line.

Question 38

Mechanoreceptors

Answer 38

A mechanoreceptor is a sensory receptor that responds to mechanical pressure or distortion. Normally there are four main types in glabrous skin: Pacinian corpuscles, Meissner’s corpuscles, Merkel’s discs, and Ruffini endings. There are also mechanoreceptors in hairy skin, and the hair cells in the cochlea are the most sensitive mechanoreceptors, transducing air pressure waves into nerve signals sent to the brain. In the periodontal ligament, there are some mechanoreceptors, which allow the jaw to relax when biting down on hard objects; the mesencephalic nucleus is responsible for this reflex.

Question 39

Slit sensilla

Answer 39

The slit sensilla is a small mechanoreceptory organ in the exoskeleton of spiders which detects strain due to forces experienced by the animal. As the name indicates, a slit sensilla is a small groove in the exoskeleton which deforms under stress, and these deformations are detected by neurons. Slit sensillae may occur singly, in widely spaced groups of varying alignment, or in tightly clustered parallel groups, with the last being called a ‘lyriform organ’.

Question 40

Sensory filtering

Answer 40

Sensory gating describes neurological processes of filtering out redundant or unnecessary stimuli in the brain from all possible environmental stimuli.[1][2] Also referred to as gating or filtering, sensory gating prevents an overload of irrelevant information in the higher cortical centers of the brain. The pulvinar nuclei of the thalamus play a major role in attention, and filter out unnecessary information.[3] Although sensory gating is largely automatic, it also occurs within the context of attentional processes. Though the term sensory gating has been used interchangeably with sensorimotor gating, the two are distinct constructs.[4]

The cocktail party effect illustrates how the brain inhibits input from environmental stimuli, while still processing sensory input from the attended stimulus.[5] The cocktail party effect demonstrates sensory gating in hearing, but the other senses also go through the same process protecting primary cortical areas from being overwhelmed.

Question 41

Neural command centers

Answer 41

Allows nervous system to prioritize behaviors
Command centers coordinate a specific behavior
Innate releasing mechanism
Central pattern generators
Multiple command centers communicate
Hierarchically organized
Can suppress conflicting activities

See lecture slides

Question 42

Biological clocks

Answer 42

A circadian rhythm /sɜrˈkeɪdiən/ is any biological process that displays an endogenous, entrainable oscillation of about 24 hours. These rhythms are driven by a circadian clock, and rhythms have been widely observed in plants, animals, fungi and cyanobacteria. The term circadian comes from the Latin circa, meaning “around” (or “approximately”), and diem or dies, meaning “day”. The formal study of biological temporal rhythms, such as daily, tidal, weekly, seasonal, and annual rhythms, is called chronobiology. Although circadian rhythms are endogenous (“built-in”, self-sustained), they are adjusted (entrained) to the local environment by external cues called zeitgebers, commonly the most important of which is daylight.

see lecture slides

Question 43

Neurohormones

Answer 43

A neurohormone is any hormone produced and released by neuroendocrine cells (also called neurosecretory cells) into the blood. By definition of being hormones, they are secreted into the circulation for systemic effect, but they can also have a role of neurotransmitter or other roles as autocrine (self) or paracrine (local) messenger.

The hypothalamus produces releasing hormones and neurohypophysial hormones in specialized hypothalamic neurons which extend to the median eminence and posterior pituitary. The adrenal medulla produces adrenomedullary hormones in chromaffin cells, cells which are very similar in structure to post-synaptic sympathetic neurons, even though they are not neurons they are derivatives of the neural crest.

Enterochromaffin and enterochromaffin-like cells, both being enteroendocrine cells, are also considered neuroendocrine cells due to their structural and functional similarity to chromaffin cells, although they are not derivatives of the neural crest. Other neuroendocrine cells are scattered throughout the body.

Question 44

Steroid hormones

Answer 44

A steroid hormone (abbreviated as sterone) is a steroid that acts as a hormone. Steroid hormones can be grouped into five groups by the receptors to which they bind: glucocorticoids, mineralocorticoids, androgens, estrogens, and progestogens. Vitamin D derivatives are a sixth closely related hormone system with homologous receptors, though they are technically sterols rather than steroids.

Steroid hormones help control metabolism, inflammation, immune functions, salt and water balance, development of sexual characteristics, and the ability to withstand illness and injury. The term steroid describes both hormones produced by the body and artificially produced medications that duplicate the action for the naturally occurring steroids

Question 45

Hormone effects

Answer 45

see lecture slides