Transcript classical conditioning

Innate behavior helps an individual to survive
to reproduce when there is a stable
environment and expected events occur.
Crying for a human baby or opening up the
mouth for a baby bird tells the parent that the
baby needs something.
Learned behavior helps an individual
to survive to reproduce when there is
an unstable environment and many
unexpected events occur.
This mother gull will feed her chick after it
pecks at a red spot on her beak. Both pecking
and feeding behaviors are innate
When these baby birds open their mouths
wide, the mother instinctively feeds them. This
innate behavior is called gaping.
Newborn turtles have the
instinct to return to the
water after hatching from
eggs on the beach.
Fixed action patterns are
behaviors that are genetically
determined and are performed
correctly the first time. They
continue to be performed in a
stereotyped fashion. The
particular stimulus that elicits a
fixed action pattern is the releaser.
In this example the fixed action
pattern is egg retrieval by the
goose; the releaser is any small,
round object outside of the nest
(it doesn’t need to be an egg!).
The behavior
of the
male
stickleback
fish
is an
example of
a FAP…Can
you explain
why?
Fig. 51.23
Imprinting is learning limited to a
sensitive period
• Imprinting is the recognition,
response, and attachment of young to
a particular adult or object.
• Konrad Lorenz experimented with
geese that spent the first hours of
their life with him and after time
responded to him as their “parent.”
– What is innate
in these birds is the
ability to respond
to a parent figure;
while the outside
world provides
the imprinting
stimulus.
– The sensitive period
is a limited phase in
an individual animal’s
development when learning
particular behaviors can take place
Fig. 51.9
Click here for bird songs
• Some songbirds have a sensitive period for
developing their songs.
• If they don’t get imprinted on a song at an early
age, they never will.
Fig. 51.10a
4. Many animals can learn to
associate one stimulus with another
• Associative learning is the ability
of many animals to learn to
associate one stimulus with
another.
• Classical conditioning and operant
conditioning are examples of
associative learning.
–Pavlov’s dog is a good example of
associative learning (classical
conditioning)
• Ivan Pavlov exposed dogs to a bell
ringing and at the same time sprayed
their mouths with powdered meat,
causing them to salivate.
• Soon, the dogs would salivate after
hearing the bell but not getting any
powdered meat.
Note: the apparatus attached to the dogs salivary glands to measure its saliva output
• Operant conditioning
– This is called trial-and-error learning - an
animal learns to associate one of its own
behaviors with a reward or a punishment.
This animal will
learn to avoid
porcupines after
then pain
received from
this experience.
Fig. 51.11
• Habituation
–This involves a loss of
responsiveness to unimportant
stimuli or stimuli that do not
provide appropriate feedback.
• For example, some animals stop
responding to warning signals if
signals are not followed by a
predator attack (the “cry-wolf”
effect).
Habituation is when an animal is presented
with a stimulus and responds to this stimulus, but
when the stimulus is presented repeatedly with
only a few minutes or seconds between it soon
stops responding to the stimulus because it has
learnt that it will not harm or benefit the animal so
it has learnt to ignore it.
An example of this is a snail moving
across a wooden surface and when
the experimenter taps on the
surface the snail withdraws into
its shell but after a few taps it
learns that it isn't going to harm
it and ignores the tapping.
• Observational Learning is
the modification
of behavior resulting from
specific experiences.
– The alarm calls of vervet
monkeys provide an
example of how animals
improve their
performance of behavior.
Fig. 51.8
Can you think of a time in your life when this
was especially true? Childhood, as you may have
thought, is a time when we learn all kinds of
behaviors by observation and imitation.
Sometimes called "modeling," such
observational learning occurs throughout our
lifetime.
• Kinesis and taxis.
• Kinesis is a change in activity rate in
response to a stimulus.
– For example, cockroaches scatter everywhere when you
turn on the light.
–Taxis is an automatic, oriented
movement to or away from a
stimulus.
–For example, a euglena will move directly
toward the light.
• Agonistic behavior is a contest involving
threats.
– Submissive behavior.
– Ritual: the use of symbolic activity.
– Generally, no harm is done.
Fig. 51.19
Agonistic behavior results in a
contest which involves both
threatening and submissive
behavior between contestants
who are competing for access to
the same resource, such as food or
a mate. Sometimes it involves
tests of strength or the
contestants engage in threatening
displays that make them look
large or fierce, often with
exaggerated posturing and
vocalizations, such as a dog
growling and bearing teeth or
when defeated, tucking in their
tail and looking away.
• Courtship behavior consists of
patterns that lead to copulation
and consists of a series of displays
and movements by the male or
female.
Insight learning
occurs when an animal solves
a problem or learns how to
do something new by
applying what it already
knows, without a period of
trial and error. Insight
learning is most common in
primates, such as gorillas,
chimpanzees, and humans
Social interactions depend on diverse
modes of communication
• Defining animal signals and communication.
– A signal is a behavior that causes a change in the
behavior of another animal.
– The transmission of, reception of, and response to
signals make up communication.
– Examples include the following:
• Displays such as singing, and howling.
• Information can be transmitted in other ways,
such as chemical, tactile, electrical.
– Pheromones are chemicals released by an
individual that bring about mating and other
behaviors.
These bees are
making a “bee
beard” due to
the application
of the queen
bee’s
pheromones on
the man’s face.
• The Dance of the
Honeybee.
– Bees forage to
maximize their food
intake.
– If an individual finds
a good food source,
it will communicate
the location to
others in the hive
through an
elaborate dance.
Fig. 51.27