Note on Behavioral Study

History of Behavioral Science

Two historical trends of study combines into modern comparative cognition / behavioral science study.

Comparative Psychology

More in context of psychology:

  • Athropocentric

  • Behaviorism
    • Believing
    • Behavior > mind. Attribute causation to outside world not inside
    • All learning Through Conditioning
  • General Process Approach: Universal processes to all animals
  • Study behavior in artificial setting / artificial tasks
  • Focus on few model specie, not very comparative across phylogenetic tree!

Classical Conditioning

Associative Learning Associate CS with US, so that CS can elicit the UR just as US.

Operant Conditioning

  • Reinforcement: increase the frequency of behavior
    • Positive Reinforcement: Add Reward
    • Negative Reinforcement: Relieve Punishment
  • Punishment: decrease behavior

Can be combined in a clever way! Can be really complex

Ethology

More in context of biology:

  • Focus on: Anatomy, physiology, environment, evolution
  • Descendent of Natural history and Ecology
  • Innate and hard wired behavior:
  • Study in natural environment and adaptive behavior!

Tinberrgen’s 4 Questions

Tinberrgen’s 4 Questions: Why X exhibit Y behavior?

  • Causation (Proximal cause / Mechanism / Neuro Circuit / Physiology):
  • Development (ontogeny):
  • Evolution (phylogeny):
  • Function (Adaptive significance / value for the animal): How it helps survival and reproduction

How and Why? Proximal reason and Ultimate reason!

Note: Answer one of these questions don’t answer other questions, not exclusive. Multiple explanations for the same behavior.

Fixed Action Patterns

Fixed Action Patterns: Classical concept from Ethology. Useful as a baseline model of behavior, but obsolete.

  • Stereotypic Motor Sequence
  • Innate, quite specie-specific
  • Triggered by a sign stimulus, but not like reflex!
    • Releasers:
  • Run to completion
    • Hard to define completion
  • Need no sensory feedback

Ethogram: Full behavior repertoire and the transition probability in it

Examples

  • Social behavior can be a interwined FAPs
  • Motivation can affect probability of FAP
  • Conditioning can associate FAP with other releaser …

Modern Comparative Cognition

  • Focus on information processing:
    • Perception, Attention, Memory, Learning, Problem Solving, Decision making, Communication.
    • How information
      • gets in, gets processed, (Perception & Attention)
      • gets stored, (Memory)
      • changes the inner representation and associate with other things (Learning)
      • gets used to guide behavior output (Decision)
      • transmitted between individuals (communication)

Philosophy

  • Study each species from its own perspective, specialization
  • Evolutionary context + adaptive behavior
  • Study species across phylogenetic tree, and compare explicitly!
  • Choose natural behavior and species that suggest interesting cognition behind!

Methodology

  • Use behavior as proxy for cognition
    • However, no behavior doesn’t mean no inner process. No Equivalence!

Lesson: Use easy quantifiable natural behavior, use training / conditioning to motivate!

  • Training / Conditioning to solve the motivation / variability problem!

Caveat

  • Story of Clever Hans! Expectancy effect influence behavior, even if human doesn’t notice his expectation!

Evolution and Cognition

Tackles the ultimate questions in 4 questions!

Different level of biological evolution

  • Genotypic evolution
  • Phenotypic evolution

Note: Current animals are not evolving into each other, we are nodes.(老鼠 猫 猴子不会相互进化)

Darwinian Evolution: The mechanism

  • Overproduction

Evolution and Brain

Brain structure share similarity among

Flexibility of Brain

  • Neural modulatory system, affecting the behavioral pattern (motivation, inner state)
  • Activity dependent plasticity (development, learning)

Learning

General Process Learning Theory

  • Majorly involve Classical + Operant Conditioning

  • It’s not appropriate to compare learning speed across species
    • They learn what they need!
  • Autoshaping: start a process that is innate behavior
  • Conditioned Food Aversion: Very long temporal delay, not
  • Imprinting
  • Song Learns: Not classical not operant

Why Learning Evolves?

  • Learning is based on environment regularity but not totally fixed!
  • Q: What’s good for a learnt behavior VS innate behavior

Questions on Learning

  • Contents of Learning
  • Conpact on behavior

Note: Behavioralism doesn’t distinguish contents and behavior!!

Example: Bees are really good learner of sensory information (Color Odor Shape), and remember that, integrate that with

Test Classical Conditioning

  • Control for Non-associative Learning !
    • Make one stimuli unpredictive of learning !
    • Unpair CS and US