Transcript Organismal Biology/51B

CHAPTER 51
BEHAVIORAL BIOLOGY
Section B: Learning
1. Learning is experienced-based modification of behavior
2. Imprinting is learning limited to a sensitive period
3. Bird song provides a model system for understanding the development of
behavior
4. Many animals can learn to associate one stimulus with another
5. Practice and exercise may explain the ultimate bases of play
Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings
1. Learning is experience-based
modification of behavior
• 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
Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings
• Learning versus maturation.
• Maturation is the situation in which a behavior
may improve because of ongoing developmental
changes in neuromuscular systems, for example,
flight in birds.
• As a bird continues to develop its muscles and
nervous system, it is able to fly.
• It is not true learning.
Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings
• 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).
Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings
2. 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.”
• Lorenz isolated geese after hatching and found
that they could no longer imprint on anything.
Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings
• 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
Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings
Fig. 51.9
3. Bird song provides a model system for
understanding the development of behavior
• Some songbirds have a sensitive period for
developing their songs.
• Individuals reared in silence performed abnormal songs,
but if recordings of the proper songs were played early in
the life of the bird, normal songs developed.
Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings
Fig. 51.10a
• Canaries exhibit open-ended learning where they
add new syllables to their song as the get older.
Fig. 51.10b
Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings
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 is a type of associative
learning.
Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings
• Pavlov’s dog is a good example.
• 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.
Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings
• 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.
Fig. 51.11
Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings
5. Practice and exercise may explain the
ultimate bases of play
• Play as a behavior has no apparent external goal, but
may facilitate social development or practice of
certain behaviors and provide exercise.
Fig. 51.12
Copyright © 2002 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Benjamin Cummings