Learned Behavior in Animals

9 Key excerpts on "Learned Behavior in Animals"

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  Canine and Feline Behavior for Veterinary Technicians and Nurses

  • Julie K. Shaw, Debbie Martin, Julie K. Shaw, Debbie Martin, Julie Shaw, Julie Shaw, Debbie Martin(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  For example, parent birds feed baby birds that display the red interior of their mouths. Cats exhibit a pattern of predatory behavior after seeing or hearing a prey animal. Behaviors can be thought of as being on a continuum from innate to learned, with behaviors being either innate, learned, or a combination of the two (Lorenz, 1965). Behaviors generally believed to be reflexes can be affected by the environment through chemical or contextual input. Environmental influences do not always mean learning; they can be nutritional or chemical influences. • Behaviors can be thought of as being on a continuum from innate to learned, with behaviors being either innate, learned, or a combination of the two (Lorenz, 1965). Although it would be orderly for all behaviors to be adaptive, this cannot be the case. The basis for evolution is a large number of diverse offspring from which the environment selects the fittest individuals using natu- ral selection (Darwin, 1859). Skinner (1966) discussed how behaviors may appear, although they are counter- productive for an animal. These behaviors are less likely to be passed on to future generations, but they may be passed on if the animal has enough adaptive behaviors to survive long enough to reproduce. It is this capabil- ity, reproduction, which judges whether the animal is fit, as in the survival of the fittest, not aggression and not hierarchical placement. • It is this capability, reproduction, which judges whether the animal is fit, as in the survival of the fittest, not aggression and not hierarchical placement. Expressed behaviors may appear the same in different animals, but they can still be formed through differ- ent combinations of conditioned and unconditioned learning (Krushinskii, 1960). These behaviors although developed in a variety of ways, still appear the same when elicited.

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  Psychological Foundations of Education

  Learning and Teaching

  • B. Claude Mathis, John W. Cotton, Lee Sechrest(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  Animals can be taught to find their way through a complex maze in order to obtain food; this behavior can be thought of as the manifestation of acquired information about the maze. However, no sub-human animal appears to approach the information-storing capacity of man. Consequently, other aspects of animal behavior necessarily have received greater attention. Biologists have been most interested, perhaps, in largely unlearned behavior specific to certain species, such as the pouncing, swatting, and biting which cats will do even when raised in zoo incubators and deprived of a mother to copy (28). Psychologists have been more concerned with so-called conditioning processes. In conditioning, an animal learns to make a certain response whenever a certain stimulus appears (classical conditioning, or Skinner's type S); or he learns to make the response as a means of increasing the frequency with which he obtains food or some other desired stimulus (instrumental conditioning, or Skinner's type R). Surely conditioning must be important in human beings as well as in animals. It would seem possible that information could be acquired pas-sively just by listening to the radio or keeping one's eyes open while traveling. But what makes people go to lunch about noon, go surfing at the beach, or pay money to go to the movies? These responses depend much less upon what one knows than upon how one has been conditioned to act. If someone has been rewarded for surfing, he continues to surf; if not, he gives it up. Teachers will recognize that much of their job is to condition children to make certain responses. It is not enough to give children information or even to teach them skills such as reading. For example, children rewarded for reading newspapers will probably continue to do so—and at the very least will have a basis for intelligent voting in adulthood.

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  An Introduction to Animal Behaviour

  • Aubrey Manning, Marian Stamp Dawkins(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  It covers something of the context and the phenomena associated with learning in molluscs and insects, fish and amphibians, as well as the more familiar studies with birds and mammals. Thorpe defines learning as, ‘that process which manifests itself by adaptive changes in individual behaviour as a result of experience’. This definition draws attention to two important features. Firstly, learning normally results in adaptive changes and, as we discussed in Chapter 2 , learning and instinctive behaviour are both ways for equipping an animal with a set of adaptive responses to its environment. Normally both are found in combination and logically they have much in common. In the one case, we have adaptation by genetic modifica-tion within a population of animals biasing them to respond in a particular way. If it is successful it will be passed on to following generations. With learning, it is individ-uals which select and retain the best responses over the course of their own lifetime. Offspring cannot inherit any specific learnt response but only the more general ability which enables them, in their turn, to benefit from experience. Another important point arising from Thorpe’s definition is that, strictly speaking, learning is a process which we cannot usually observe directly; we measure what has been remembered as a result of learning. This ability to benefit from experience is a link to our non-human fellow creatures because they so obviously share this striking behavioural capacity with us. Animal learning and memory differ from ours both quantitatively and qualitatively, but there remain many features in common and we can make useful comparisons. In fact, because we can communicate so easily with human subjects, they are in many respects better material for learning studies than animals. For instance, in the laboratory, it is possible to test our memory in two ways: ‘recall’, i.e.

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  The First Century of Experimental Psychology

  • Elliot Hearst, Eliot Hearst, Elliot Hearst, Eliot Hearst(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The study of the linguistic capacity of apes is in the tradition of comparative psychology. It attempts to throw light on the evolution of human intelligence. One can glimpse the possibility that the work will lead to a new attack on the problem of levels of functioning—a problem that very much concerned the early comparative psychologists. The findings to date suggest that the intellectual gulf between man and ape is not as great as was once thought. At the same time the findings remind us forcefully that higher animals have capacities for processing information that are far beyond those in the rat or pigeon—the animals on which much of behavior theory has been based.

  IX. CRITICS

  In relatively recent years the animal learning and behavior theory tradition has come under critical attack from two quite different sources: the ethological approach to animal behavior, and new concepts in the cognitive psychology of human information processing.

  A. Ethology

  For the tradition of animal learning and behavior theory, the ethological concept of greatest importance is that learning is genetically programmed and shows evolutionary specialization (for a general discussion of ethology, see Gottlieb, Chapter 4 , this volume).

  Lorenz (1965) wrote extensively about the relation of evolutionary processes to learning. His basic theme is that there is a genetically determined plan for adaptation that has both relatively closed and relatively open parts (Mayr, 1974). Consummatory fixed-action patterns, and innate perceptual organizations involved in their release, are blueprinted phylogenetically and, according to Lorenz, are unmodifiable or closed. They provide reinforcing feedback, and in this way they serve as “innate teaching mechanisms” that ensure that learned modifications of behavior are generally adaptive. In contrast, the search patterns of appetitive behavior and of certain of the releasing mechanisms are relatively open; they are subject to modification through learning. A genetic plan determines what segments of behavioral adaptation are open to learning. An adaptive function carried by a phylogenetically closed mechanism in one species may be left open for ontogenetically acquired information in another.

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  The Principles of Learning and Behavior

  • Michael Domjan(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  These are referred to as developmental changes. We will also consider how learning helps animals adapt to their environment and increase their success in reproducing and passing along their genes to future generations. These issues involve the adaptive significance of learning. Most scientists agree that learning mechanisms evolved because they increase reproductive fitness. The contribution of learning to reproductive fitness is often indirect. By learning to find food more efficiently, for example, an organism may live longer and have more offspring. However, learning can also have a direct effect on reproductive fitness. Studies of sexual conditioning have shown that learning can increase how many eggs are fertilized and how many offspring are produced as a result of a sexual encounter (Domjan et al., 2012). Methodological Aspects of the Study of Learning There are two prominent methodological issues that are important to keep in mind when considering behavioral studies of learning. The first of these is a direct conse- quence of the definition of learning and involves the exclusive use of experimental research methods. The second methodological feature of studies of learning is reliance on a general-process approach. Reliance on a general-process approach is a matter of intellectual preference rather than a matter of necessity. Learning as an Experimental Science Studies of learning focus on identifying how prior experience causes long-term changes in behavior. At the behavioral level, this boils down to identifying the critical compo- nents of training or conditioning protocols that are required to produce learning. The emphasis on identifying causal variables necessitates an experimental approach. Level of investigation Type of learning mechanism Behavioral Neural system or network Molecular, cellular, and genetic Whole organism Neural circuits and neurotransmitters Neurons and synapses FIGURE 1.5 Levels of analysis of learning.

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  Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science

  • Hayes, Steven C., Wilson, David Sloan(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Context Press

    (Publisher)

  Adaptation is at the level of the phenotype” (p. 8). Given the central role of selection in both evolution and learning science and the increased emphasis on learning, language, and cultural influences on human evolution, it is clear why CBS wants to situate the behavioral sciences under the cover of evolution science. There is an inherent reciprocal relation between the two disciplines. Learning, symbolic behavior, and culture are themselves evolu- tionary processes and should be understood and investigated in the larger context of evolution science. In addition to being inheritance systems in their own right, learning, symbolic behavior, and culture clearly influence evolution, and a deeper understanding of these processes is critical to advancing evolution science. A Contextual Science of Learning A contextual science of learning situated within evolution science would have much to gain and much to offer. Given the increasingly recognized importance of behavioral, symbolic, and cultural dimensions of evolution, it is clear that a devel- oped understanding of human learning and language is critical to the advance- ment of human evolution science. Indeed, if Ginsburg and Jablonka’s (2010) contention that contingency learning is one of the key factors that drove the so- called “Cambrian explosion,” then it follows that operant conditioning itself is a Evolution & Contextual Behavioral Science 26 key factor of evolution. Conversely, if learning and language processes are them- selves evolutionary adaptations, then it is critical that they be understood within an evolution science context. An excellent example of a potential contextual behavioral science contribu- tion to evolution science is the increasingly supported contextualistic theory of language and cognition called relational frame theory (RFT) (Hayes, et al., 2001; Dymond & Roche, 2013).

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  The Epigenesis of Mind

  Essays on Biology and Cognition

  • Susan Carey, Rochel Gelman, Susan Carey, Rochel Gelman(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  I BIOLOGICAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO COGNITION Passage contains an image

  1	Lessons From Animal Learning for the Study of Cognitive Development

  C. R. Gallistel

  University of California, Los Angeles

  Ann L. Brown

  University of California, Berkeley

  Susan Carey

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  Rochel Gelman

  University of California, Los Angeles

  Frank C. Keil

  Cornell University

  Why open a book on cognitive development with a chapter on animal learning? It is not to argue that an account of cognitive development should use animal models of learning. Rather, it is to take advantage of developments in this area that provide insight into the question of how to characterize cognitive development. We argue that any account of cognitive development is incomplete if it attempts to explain both the what and how of learning solely in terms of general processes—be they associations, prototype abstraction, hypothesis testing, induction, analogical reasoning, assimilation, generalization, or differentiation. We argue that there are reasons for also postulating domain-specific determinants of the nature of cognitive structures. These determinants guide leaning, creating structures with their own rules of organization. These ideas about cognitive development have been in the air for sometime; what we offer here is a fleshing out of them. We are emboldened to do so in part because of what we have learned from considering cases of learning in species other than the human. The message of this chapter is that much learning in animals is best thought of as the product of behavioral mechanisms with elaborated internal structure that have evolved to guide learning of species-relevant features of the environment.

  Specification of the conditions under which learning occurs has been a central goal of experimental psychology since its inception as a natural science. A major research agenda from this tradition has been to delineate general laws of learning that hold across species and problems (domains). It was this fundamental commitment to general laws that led major learning theorists (e.g., Thorndike, Hull, Skinner, and Watson) to the behavior of man with laws derived from animal models. Indeed, it has been argued that the main agenda of experimental animal learning was not to explain animal learning but to understand human learning (Schwartz, 1981). From this position, animal-specific solutions are not only irrelevant, they are a positive nuisance in the march towards understanding the general laws of learning that explain human behavior. Animal models, if they are to elucidate human behavior, must assume commonality.

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  The Behavior of Animals

  Mechanisms, Function, and Evolution

  • Johan J. Bolhuis, Luc-Alain Giraldeau, Jerry A. Hogan, Johan J. Bolhuis, Luc-Alain Giraldeau, Jerry A. Hogan(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  People are endlessly curious about people and the sheer number of disciplines devoted uniquely to the study of human beings is eloquent testimony to this fact (e.g., medi-cine, anthropology, psychology, sociology, criminology). Animal behavior can provide the study of animal behavior 9 insight into human behavior in two ways. More conventionally, phenomena observed in animals can be generalized, although often in some modified way, to humans. For example, just as a new antibiotic drug that cures an infection in some nonhuman pri-mate can also be used, perhaps in a slightly modified way, to cure infections in humans, so can knowledge about how an animal learns be extended and applied to human learning. The second way, however, involves generalizing an approach rather than a result. For instance, can we learn anything new about human behavior by applying an evolutionary cost–benefit analysis to the things we do? This is what an area known as evolutionary psychology does (Chapter 17). SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The study of the behavior of animals has grown into a highly diverse set of approaches and disciplines. Its subject area ranges from molecules and neurons to individuals and populations. One of Tinbergen’s major contributions to the study of animal behavior has been to make its goals explicit and clarify four types of questions that can be asked of behavior: causation, development, survival value, and evolution. In this book we strongly advocate Tinbergen’s position that behavior can only be understood through research on all four questions. In addition, we suggest that it should be made clear which of Tinbergen’s questions is addressed when a behavioral problem is investigated: a problem in one domain should not be investigated with concepts from another. The early chapters in this book examine primarily causal, mechanistic, and developmental questions, while the lat-ter chapters examine survival value and evolution issues.

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  Animal Cognition

  • H. L. Roitblat, H. S. Terrace, T. G. Bever(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  Quite apart from the criticisms that Skinner and others have made of the merits of a science of animal feelings, one can ask why Griffin, and his predecessors Washburn and Bierens de Haan put so much faith in communicative behaviors as “ambassadors” of mind. Surely other behaviors, even those commonly studied in learning laboratories, can be used to infer the presence of thoughts, memories, and emotions in animals. Consider these astute observations of E. G. Boring (1950) as they relate to analogical and functional inferences based upon, not obviously communicative, but conditioned responses:

  You can work out the laws of color vision easily with a human subject who is not color-blind, who uses your own language, who is intelligent and honest. He “describes his consciousness” to you, that is to say, he tells you what he sees. An animal can also tell you what he sees, but you have to build up with him a special language of conditioned responses before he can report to you (p. 621 ).

  When an animal learns to avoid…shock, he is using his new-found language of conditioned response — not purposely, it is true, yet he is using it — to tell you that he does not like the shock, that he knows it is coming, that he knows how to avoid it. His movements are a one-way language. His discriminations are his words (p. 621 ).   Conditioning is an objective substitute for introspection, a form of language which enables an experimenter to know what discrimination an animal can make, what it does and does not perceive. Conditioning is, in fact, a kind of language, which the experimenter provides so as to enable an animal to communicate with him, but the phenomena of communication occur entirely on the objective level of stimuli, nerve-action and secretion, without any need for assuming consciousness as an entity (p. 637 ).

  As comparative psychologists, we must be prepared to receive any and all of those behaviors that are the “ambassadors” of animals’ minds. We must recognize that these behavioral “ambassadors” exist entirely in the world of objectivity; yet they may be interpreted in objective terms or in terms of our own subjective experiences. Finally, these “ambassadors” — be they salivary secretions, button presses, waggle dances, or gestural signs — are all exceedingly valuable in helping us to determine the nature of animal intelligence and to compare that alien intellect to our own (also see Mason, 1976; Ullman, 1978). I see no strong justification for considering some kinds of behavioral evidence to be special or superior to others (see Griffin, 1981, pp. 166–167 for the contrary opinion).

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