Innate Behavior Patterns And

Habituatıon
Asst. Prof. Gökçer Eskikurt
Characteristics Of Goal-Directed Systems
Reflexes
• What is reflex?
• Disappear or not?
• Spinal reflex arc
Tropisms
• Kineses
• Woodlouse - huminity
• Slug - chemical
• Taxes
• Maggot – light
• Ant - sun
Sequences of Behavior
• Fixed Action Patterns
• 3 characteristics
• Part of the repertoire for all members of that species
• Perform that ability not a result of prior learning experiences
• Once it started it will continue to completion
• Eibl-Eibesfeldt experiment – squirrel
• Sign stimulus
• Trigger a fixed action pattern
• Contagious yawning
• Oystercatcher
Sequences of Behavior
• Fixed Action Patterns
• Reaction chains
• Hermit crab
Innate Human Abilities and Predispositions
• Learning experiences
• Watson vs. Pinker
• We learn everything by experiences
• Parts of brain specialized to perform certain functions
• Language
• Emotions
Habituation
• Decrease in the strength of a response after repeated presentation of
a stimulus
• Orienting response
• Animals and humans – novel stimulus
• What is the function?
• Rats – cat collar
• Hydra, protozoa etc.
General Principles of Habituation
• Course of habituation
• Effects of time
• Relearning effects
• Effects of stimulus intensity
• Effects of overlearning
• Below-zero habituation
• Stimulus generalization
• Johnson & Aslin (1995)
• 2-month-old infants
• Broken rod or solid rod?
• Other research
• Recognize visual stimuli
• Discriminate different musical
excerpts
• Analyze cause and effect in a
chain of events
Neural Mechanisms of Habituation
• Kandel – Aplysia
• Simple nervous system
• Siphon contains 24 sensory neuron
• 10-15 times every min
• Complete habituation one hour
• Partial habituation observed 24 hours
• 3-4 successive days long-term habitiuation
• Davis et al. (1989) – Rat
• Auditory pathways
• Condon & Weinberger (1991) – Guinea pigs
• Cortex cells
• PET & fMRI
• Plasticity
Habituation in Emotional Responses: The
Opponent-Process Theory
• Solomon & Corbit (1974)
• The temporal pattern of an emotional
response
• Student grade
• Dog and shock
• The a-process and b-process
• A-process – initial emotional response, fast acting response
• B-process – after-reaction, activated only in response to the acvitivy of the a-
process
• The effects of repeated stimulation
• B-process is strengthened
• B-process increases more quickly, reaches a larger maximum, and is slower to
decay
• Dog experiment
• Other emotional reactions
• Parachutists
• Drug abuse