chs@nancy (Craig Hansen-Sturm) (04/08/88)
In article <231@ttidca.TTI.COM> hollombe@ttidcb.tti.com (Jerry Hollombe) writes: >There's some question whether _any_ behavior is hard-wired in any creature >above the level of insect. The following example is from one of my psych. >courses: >New-born chicks will begin to scratch for food almost as soon as they are >able to stand. This looks to be a classic example of instinct -- a >behavior hard-wired into the organism. However, if you take a chick and >fit it with a harness that prevents it from pecking at the ground for >food, then spoon feed it, the chick will _never_ scratch for food. It >will starve to death while standing on a pile of grain if not spoon fed. >So much for _that_ hard-wired behavior. This argument is falacious, for it does not rule out the possibility that an initial `hard-wired' configuration may eventually be overidden through learning. In fact, if my laymen's knowledge of psychology is correct, there is evidence supporting the view that the human brain physically rearranges its own structure between years 0-4. Pathways between neurons are established, in fact, a child of age 2 has more than twice the number of synapses than an adult. By age 12 or so, the number of synapses levels off to the adult number. The physical structure of the human brain changes through time. It is unlikely that things are so drastically different in a newborn chick. Are you suggesting that the newborn mind is a blank slate? I thought that most people have rejected that empiricist dogma long ago. Craig Hansen-Sturm --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Craig A. Hansen-Sturm {decvax,ihnp4,allegra}!brunix!chs.UUCP | | Box 1910, Dept. of Computer Science chs%cs.brown.edu@relay.cs.net.ARPA | | Brown University, Prov., RI 02912 chs@browncs.bitnet.BITNET | | (401) 273-5623 chs@cs.brown.edu.CSNET | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
sbrunnoc@eagle.ulowell.edu (Sean Brunnock) (04/09/88)
In article <649@dukempd.UUCP> crown@dukempd.UUCP (Rick Crownover) writes: > > Regarding the question of whether "any" behavior is hard wired. >I recall reading about behavior-response pairings which were apparently >not possible. > Anyone heard of this experiment, and remember the details? This phenomena was discovered by Marian and Keller Breland, two former associates of Skinner who started a company in Arkansas called Animal Behavior Enterprises. They used operant conditioning techniques pioneered by Skinner to train a variety (38 species) of animals for display at fairs, carnivals and other shows. The Brelands encountered many problems with animals who were intially conditionable but would begin regressing to past behavior patterns. For example, the Brelands once trained a racoon to pick up a coins and deposit them into a box. There was no problem in conditioning the racoon to pick up a coin but the racoon would hesitate to put the coin into the box. The problem was more readily apparent when the Brelands tried to train the racoon to pick up two coins simultaneously and deposit them into a box. The racoon would rub the coins together, dip them into the box, take them out again, and start over. It seemed that the racoon's innate eating behavior patterns were too strong to be overcome by operant conditioning. The Brelands called this phenomena instinctual drift and detailed it in their 1961 article "The Misbehavior of Organisms". I never read the article, I got the reference from one of my textbooks, Hergenhahn's Theories of Learning. Sean Brunnock University of Lowell sbrunnoc@eagle.cs.ulowell.edu
hollombe@ttidca.TTI.COM (The Polymath) (04/12/88)
In article <24726@brunix.UUCP> chs@brunix.UUCP (Craig Hansen-Sturm) writes: >In article <231@ttidca.TTI.COM> hollombe@ttidcb.tti.com (Jerry Hollombe) >writes: > >>There's some question whether _any_ behavior is hard-wired in any creature >>above the level of insect. The following example is from one of my psych. >>courses: ... >This argument is falacious, for it does not rule out the possibility that >an initial `hard-wired' configuration may eventually be overidden through >learning. ... I think the problem here is in the definition of "hard-wired". I was thinking that a behavior that could be overridden or eliminated wasn't hard-wired, by definition. I see now that's not necessarily a valid metaphor. (Maybe I've been hanging around with computer types too long (-: ). Perhaps someone could quote, or propose, an explicit definition of "instinct" so we have a better idea of what we're discussing? In a related article, someone mentioned impossible behavior pairings, citing electric shock vs. nausea in rats. According to a documentary I saw a few months ago, rats are physically incapable of vomiting. That may imply it's impossible to make a rat nauseous. We know electric shocks cause pain, but we can't ask a rat if it's feeling nauseous. On that basis, I'd have to reject that particular experiment. -- The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, hollombe@TTI.COM) Illegitimati Nil Citicorp(+)TTI Carborundum 3100 Ocean Park Blvd. (213) 452-9191, x2483 Santa Monica, CA 90405 {csun|philabs|psivax|trwrb}!ttidca!hollombe