Biological Behaviorism: Timberlake

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Biological Behaviorism Timberlake

• 3 theories for why instinctual behavior
• instinctive drift
• pavlovian theories by product of token-reward
  pairings
• appetitive structure view
• species typical foraging and food handling
• behaviors elicited by paring food with stimuli
  that resemble natural cues controlling
  food-gathering activities
• both physical similarity and temporal relation
  to food

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Behavior Systems Theory

• behavior systems theory
• can explain many of the biological boundaries
• basic model states
• behaviors which are elicited through
  noncontingent rewards (e.g.- as in autoshaping)
  are NOT arbitrary behaviors
• are behaviors which make up a particular behavior
  system or mode for that organism
• particular behavior elicited by a particular
  stimulus is a combination of many factors
• type of stimulus
• type of reward
• natural selection
• past learning and conditioning

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Behavior Systems Modes
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Research evidence

• Timberlake's research demonstrates this
• with pigeons where place feeder makes a
  difference
• in the wall
• in the floor
• Also rat studies
• Exp 1 4 groups CS only Random, Programmed
  Exit and Actual exit
• 25 of all rats showed orientation approach
• Actual exit marked increase in interactions for
  all subjects
• (also chewing and grabbing)
• Programmed exit
• stayed at food tray
• lots of post-pellet interaction with ball bearing
  
• Food tray behavior blocked ball-bearing behavior
  
• EXP 2 replication of Exp 1, except made trough
  for ball bearing so that could roll UNDER the rat
• lots of carrying of ball bearing
• saw more contact for actual exit and
  after-programmed exit groups
• not so much contact for before-programmed exit

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Research evidence

• EXP 4 and 5 positive response contingency must
  contact ball bearing to obtain food
• examined nature of contact did topography
  change?
• before-exit and exit groups
• got lots and lots of contact- 100
• chews
• carries
• dug the ball bearing out of the entry hole
• EXP 6 used naive animals same procedures as in
  exp 4
• occurrence of complex misbehavior NOT depend on
• requirement of sustained contact with ball
  bearing
• or on delay between contact and food delivery
• misbehavior not affected by overlap between
  presence of bearing and presence of food
• did find facilitation by prior experience with
  pre-pellet misbehavior
• naive animals showed less than experienced

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So why is all of this important for applied
psychologists?

• Even some human behaviors are likely to be
  innate or biologically based
• Understanding underlying biology helps
  understand, predict and control human behavior
  (particularly misbehavior).
• Understand that what is optimal in one setting
  may not be optimal in another- environment
  interacts with biology!

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Sociobiology

•    Outgrowth of comparative psychology
• Four classes of questions about Human behavior
•   immediate causation
•   Development of behavior
•   Evolutionary history
•   Adaptive significance
• Evolutionary research
•    Collection of relevant evidence
•   behavior was or is adaptive
•  behavior apparent in most members of a species
•  behavior is apparent in most closely related
  species
•  behavior is influenced by genetics
•   examine plausible explanations
•   map the course of (human) evolution

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Applications

• Development of phobias
• Likely to be set of innate fears
• Heights, water, snakes, poisons
• Some developmental evidence
• Visual cliff studies (Campos, Langer, Krowitz,
  1970)
• Developmental time course
• Precocial animals show immediate fear
• Human and other primate newborns can see depth
• Older infants begin to show fear
• Innate recognition of mom
• Stranger anxiety
• Separation anxiety
• Probably biological foundation for this

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Safety training

• Understanding fear and reaction to fear critical
• Fear/flight/fight response
• SSDRs
• But humans can overrule innate fear responses
  with well learned response
• Must over-train safety responses
• Must be stronger than innate response

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Mate Selection

•   Mate Selection
•    sociobiology view male
•   only impregnate 1 female every 9 mos x 30 years
•   by male limiting to 1 female- restrict of
  offspring
•   roam produce more
•   little parental investment
•   chimps, etc. kill babies, impregnate females
•    female view
•   more parental investment
•   more risk
•  remember in humans are strong social/cultural
  norms that go along with this

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Mate Selection

•  Again we can replace innate tendencies with
  well learned tendencies
• Women choose men with over muscles
• Money gets you farther than muscles these days
• Not necessarily true for men
• Women who make lots of less likely to bear
  offspring
• Go for younger, more fertile women
• Are we designed to be monogamous?
• Chimp strategies suggest not really
• Social norms, environmental strategies more
  likely override tendencies to be monogamous or
  not
•  remember in humans are strong social/cultural
  norms that go along with this

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Parenting

• Invest in child with greater probability of
  survival
• Selective rearing
• Even infanticide
• Spacing of pregnancy
• Mama bear syndrome
• Dont mess with a moms baby
• Lots of parental investment
• Mom, in sense, has more investment than dad
• Even in animal world, moms tend to be more
  aggressive in defending child

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Chance of Child abuse covaries with relatedness

• Abusive adults tend to be
• from abusive homes
• poor impulse control 
• more accepting of violence
• Often not directly related to the child
• Environmental conditions
• high stress
• high frustration no coping/parenting skills
• In nature low resources increased probability
  of infanticide
• Stressed animals eat their young!
• Characteristics of abused child
• selective single one kid out
• Often a child who looks different
• premature or disabled very high risk
•    lack of special char's
•    funny cry
•    not interact

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Parenting

• relatedness may be factor
•   non-biological parent more likely to abuse
•   may be due to how related parent is
•   e.g. Nonhuman primate behavior
•    kill unrelated infants
•    abort fetuses
•    mate with all females
•    ensures that offspring are 'his'
•   suggestion given above, physical
  characteristics may be "straw that   broke camels
  back"
•   in general premie ok
•   in bad environment- can be lethal
•  

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Sibling Rivalry

•  children fight w/sibs
•  limited resources
•  must compete for these resources
•  want parents attention and resources
•    Then why defend your sib in fight with other
  kids?
•   your sib is more closely related
•   thus will protect rather their genes (your
  genes) that unrelated genes be passed on

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Altruism and moral behavior

• Aggression
•   Cost analysis how much does it cost the
  animal?
•   If it gets the animal access- okay
•  Must distinguish between DEFENSIVE and OFFENSIVE
  behaviors
•  Biological wiring hypothalamus
• 4 Fs of the hypothalamus
• Interaction between sex/hunger/aggression/fear
•   3 Territoriality issues
• Protect ones mate/offspring
• Protect ones resources
• Altruisim

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Altruism and moral behavior

•   Altruism
•    similar to sibling rivalry
•    save those genetically close to you first
•    then begin to save less and less related
•   e.g. cousins
•   similar culturally/nationally
•   racially, etc.
•    Reciprocal altruism helps explain varying
  levels of altruism
•   more likely to save someone like yourself
•   less likely to save someone far away, unlike
  yourself
•   more likely to save child
• Helps understand why U.S. more likely to help
  Bosnia, or even Afghanistan than children in
  Africa.

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Applications to education?

• Fire safety/evacuation training
• Understanding human tendencies allows safety
  engineers to design better evacuation procedures
• Firefighters learn the behavior of fire,
  override natural fear of fire
• Emergency preparedness
• What kind of animal are you?
• Level of anxiety
• Types of preparedness
• Behavior systems mode
• Understanding different environments may elicit
  different behaviors
• Waiting behavior
• Engage in behaviors related to what waiting
  for/anticipating
• Important for side effects of reinforcement
• Stress effects tends to bring out the animal in
  us!

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Is sociobiology correct?

• Difficult question
• hard to test scientifically
• tests usually limited to nonhumans
• when do use humans, hard to factor out
  environmental issues
• After the fact issue
• Researchers dont live long enough to conduct the
  experiment!
• Lifespan studies suggest stronger impact of
  biology than we like
• Twin studies
• Personality studies
• Even IQ studies heritability is about 50
•  

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Is sociobiology correct?

•  Differences may exist in different
  populations/genders, but causes difficult to
  determine
•  Example IQ differences
• African Americans score an average of 15 points
  below Whites
• Whites score an average of three points below
  East Asians
• East Asians score an average of three points
  below middle Eastern  European Jews
• These differences are very stable, despite
  attempts to alter educational opportunities, etc.
• Is it IQ, or is it due to different sets of
  behaviors which may underlie intelligence/academic
  performance?
• Anxiety levels which then tie into academic
  performance/grades?
• Importance of belonging/fitting in to group or
  being independent?
• Are these socially driven or do they have strong
  underlying biology?

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Is sociobiology correct?

•  Can't argue with data differences exist
•  BUT causes for differences could be many
• Genetic difference
• Prenatal differences
• prenatal care levels (tied to infant mortality
  rate)
• Experience in womb different even for twins
• Underlying motivational differences
• could be biological
• Lead to different performances
• Educational opportunity differences
• Differences in wiring in brain due to experience
  genetics
• Differences in experiences result in different
  brain wiring
• Even differences in culture result in different
  brain wiring
• Tests may be culturally biased

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Is sociobiology correct?

• Bottom line
• we are animals instinct and instinctual/genetic
  variables do affect our behavior
• we are also highly social animals who are highly
  responsive to environmental  change
• we have a lot more neocortex- allows for more
  cognitive processing, and  possibly less reliance
  on instinctual behaviors
• Question can an entity study itself?
•    can we ever truly determine the answer?
•    do we really want to know the answer?