Habituation and Innate Behaviour Patterns Psychology 3306 Innate
Habituation and Innate Behaviour Patterns Psychology 3306
Innate behaviour • • Why talk about this in learning? Well, learning often involves innate behaviour Many of the rules are similar Gives some perspective, i. e. , not all behaviour is learned
Thermoregulation Set Effectors Point Gain: Vasoconstriction Controlled Variable Feedback Loss Dilation Shivering Sweating panting Feedback mechanisms can be + or – or both
Reflexes • Stereotypic in response to a stimulus • Sensory -> inter -> motor neurons • Some quite complex behaviour can come of such simple connections and in relatively simple animals
In a Moth’s Ear…. • Moth Ear basically has two neurons A 1 and A 2 • They are not frequency sensitive, but do not respond to low frequencies
Those would be some tiny Q tips…. .
Do Moths Have Ear Wax? • A 1 is responsive to intensity • More firing with closer bat • A 2 only fires with very loud sounds • A 2 fires, bat must be very close
Moths and Bats, Charts and Graphs • A 1 on the left fires, that wing beats faster • Moth’s course corrects to 180 degrees from bat • So very and totally cool • A 2, go crazy • 2 neuron ear can encode where a predator in in 3 dimensional space!!!
Examples • Its not just me that thinks this is way cool
Behavioural Sequences • • Fixed action patterns Everyone does it Not prior learning Rigid sequence
Examples • Dust bathing in Burmese Red Junglefowl – Ancestor of our KFC • Function of the behaviour is to clean out oil from the feathers and to get rid of parasites. • Some birds bathe in water, others in dust
Animal starts out by fluffing up some dust
Next is a bill scratch, which gets the dust up onto the neck
Lots of scratching goes on to work up a bit of a cloud really
Dustbathing • This is actually pretty complex beahaviour • Vestergaard, Hogan and Krujt (1990) found that junglefowl don’t need dust! • Hogan and Van Boxel (1993) found that dustbathing was already rhythmic at 14 days post hatch
Etholodgy is cool • Reaction chains are sequences of FAPs • You can tell it is a reaction chain and not an FAP if the animal can stop the behaviour • We have reduced all of ethology down to a few power point slides…….
Habituation • Decrease in the strength of a response after repeated presentation of a discreet stimulus • Getting used to it, sort of • NOT sensory adaptation or simply fatigue • Stimulus specific • Orienting response • Startle response
The rules • • Thompson and Spencer (1966) Gradual with time Withhold stimulus and response will reoccur Savings Intensity Overlearning and habituation below zero Stimulus generalization
RUN FOR YOUR LIVES
Pokin’ aplysisa • • Kendel et al Gill withdrawal Seonsory -> motor pretty much Decrease in Ca current Less transmitter released into synapses! Similar results in cats Because of its generality, habituation is often thought of as the universal learning paradigm
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