Lecture 8: Human and animal

Question 1

What is ontogeny?

What is the traditional view about types of behaviour?

Answer 1

The change in an organism’s behaviour over its lifetime, this is analogous to changes in a species across evolutionary time.
There are two types; Genes and environment

Question 2

What is the historical divide between ethology and comparative psychology?

Answer 2

Europeans believed in ethology whereas comparative psychology was believed by North Americans. Ethology believes in instinct and evolution (measured via observation) whereas comparative believes in learning and development (measured via lab).

Question 3

Compare robust and plastic behaviours

Give an example

Answer 3

Robust believes that behaviour develops the same way in different environments whereas plastic believes that behaviour is altered by the environment. These two can interact though.
Tanning is plastic because melanin darkens your skin, there’s a trade-off between manufacturing vitamin D and UV damage.

Question 4

List the 5 conditions needed for the evolution of plasticity

Answer 4

1. Variation in environmental history
2. Different optimal phenotypes for different environments
3. There is consistent mapping of the above
4. Reliable predictive cues for environmental future
5. Cost of plasticity is outweighed by benefits

Question 5

Describe the idea of behaviours being due to instinct

Answer 5

It’s been a concept throughout history. For example, Descartes believed instinctive behaviours were formed by God to make behaviour adaptable. Darwin, Lorenz and Tinbergen where essential in the development of instinctive behaviours. There are innate-releasing mechanisms like a red belly in fish, recognising this is species-typical and unlearned and in response there’s a fixed action pattern that’s stereotyped and constant.
Tinbergen’s herring-gull pecking (1959), chicks have an innate mechanism to peck at a red spot on the mothers’ beak to get food, but the object that they peck can change due to environment (whether the mum gives food)- this is imprinting.

Question 6

What is developmental induction?

Answer 6

It’s when animals adapt their phenotypic characteristics to prevent predation. For example the size and shape of freshwaters snails’ shell vary because of this (Bronmark 2011).

Question 7

What is imprinting?

Describe two types

Answer 7

Irreversible learning characterised by the sensitive period. It’s innate but the object of imprinting isn’t, e.g. chicks following mother. Some models are better than others. The sensory/sensitive period is when birds learn their songs and humans develop.
Filial imprinting; It’s visual and olfactory, for example sheep licking their young when the smell placental smells.
Sexual imprinting; Facial preferences in humans, Japanese quail preferring certain colours of plumage.

Question 8

Discuss negative sexual imprinting

Answer 8

Quail, Kibbutzim. However, flexibility varies across species, for example, great tit and blue tit are known to cross foster.

Question 9

Why shouldn’t you use the term instinct to define behaviour?

Answer 9

Because it’s a very vague term as it encompasses innate, unlearned, species typical, inflexible, adaptive and genetic differences in behaviour, you should use specifics when describing behaviour.

Question 10

What is the learning theory?

Answer 10

A behaviourist theory that only looked at behavioural and physiological responses and ignored emotions and motives. It is anti-theoretical. It dominated psychology in the early 20th century.

Question 11

Describe non-associative learning

Answer 11

Habituation; decreased response to a repeated stimulus

Dishabituation; Used in developmental studies of infants (opposite effect).

Question 12

Discuss classical and operant conditioning

Answer 12

Classical conditioning involves: An unconditioned response, a conditioned response, an unconditioned stimulus and a conditioned stimulus.
Thorndike’s puzzle box is a classic example of operant, it’s a response followed by a reinforcer which strengths the association, the law of effect.

Question 13

Describe the similarities and differences between operant and classical conditioning

Answer 13

Similarities: It involves an association between stimulus
Differences: Operant involves a reward rather than an arbitrary stimulus, a new response is learned rather than a new stimulus, the animal is active rather than passive and it’s more ecologically valid.

Question 14

List and describe the three constraints of learning

Answer 14

1. Timing; Contiguity is often important but sometimes you need gaps, e.g. rats learning food aversion
2. Plausibility of the association; For example food preference in rats, Garcia 1996, they were given bright water and tasty water and were punished either via x rays (nausea- drank colourful water but not tasty water) or via shock, however, if they were shocked they would still drink the tasty water
3. Evolutionary preparedness; Cook and mineka 1988, wild monkeys fear snakes but reared ones don’t unless they see someone react fearfully to a snake, then they learn it immediately.

Question 15

Describe nature vs nurture debate in this day and age

Answer 15

It’s a false dichotomy, it doesn’t exist as nature and nurture interact. For example maze-bright vs maze-dull rats. Genes specify the plan and correspondence with the phenotype, aka the ingredients.

Question 16

Describe social learning

Answer 16

Behaviour that’s modified by conspecifics due to observations and interactions. E.g. macaques washing their sweet potatoes or titmice opening milk bottles.

Question 17

Give examples of why social learning is important

Answer 17

It’s important for psychological reasons and behavioural reasons
Psychological: Perspective taking, intelligence, cognition, innovation, tool use and culture
Behavioural: Foraging, mate choice, predator identification, social communication, social intelligence.

Question 18

List 5 mechanisms of social learning

Give an example study

Answer 18

1. Social facilitation; seeing other results in action
2. Local enhancement; Attention draw to the location of the action
3. Stimulus enhancement; Attention drawn to stimulus properties
4. Emulation; Coping results
5. Imitation; Copying the action
   Galef 1983, observer rats preferred food that the demonstrator took, this can result in cultural traditions.

Question 19

List the questions that imitation brings up

Answer 19

Do animals understand what is happening?
Do they intentionally copy?
Does this mean they have complex mental processing?
Or theory of mind?
Or consciousness?

Question 20

Give an example study of imitation

Answer 20

Whiten 1996 found that chimps often use the same technique as the demonstrator to get artificial fruit rather than alternative techniques.

Question 21

Describe the evolution of social learning

Answer 21

It’s beneficial as it avoids trial and error learning, however, others’ behaviours might be outdated or wrong. Learning is an adaptation itself because if the environment changes then social learning will peak and decrease, robust learning will just decrease but individual learning will increase.

Question 22

Describe the Baldwin effect

Answer 22

Learning can guide evolution, for example in the unlikely event that two mutations occur. Then a bottle nose will be able to produce a food call and the receiver will be able to respond. If the receiver learns to associate the call with food then they can succeed via natural selection, allowing complex behavioural systems to develop

Question 23

When is plasticity favoured?

What about social learning?

Answer 23

When the long term environment is changing but short term is stable.
When environmental change is intermediate and individual learning is costly.