Development of behaviour

Development of behaviour

1. Instinct and learning

   • Innate
     • Response to shape and movement
     • Response to visual cliffs
     • Nest building
     • Experience
       • Better nest building comes w experience
   • learnt
     • Learning by association
       • Pavlov
       • Conditioning
       • Sound of milking equipment, causes milk let down
     • Learning by reinforcement
       • reinforcement
         • Positive
           • Appetive stimulus given
         • Negative
           • Averse stimulus removed
       • Punishment
         • Positive
           • Averse stimulus given
         • Negative
           • Appetive stimulus removed
       • Timing important
         • Stimuli need to be close together for animal to make an association
       • Recognition of handlers
         • Positive or negative associations dictate how much the animal will seek/avoid you
     • Social learning
       • Watch and learn from each other
     • Genetic influence
       • Often makes adaptive sense
       • Artificial selection
         • Tameness
         • Breeds

2. Environmental influence

   • Maternal environment
     • Position in uterus influences sexual development
     • Maternal stress alters hormonal environment
       • Offspring more emotional and explore less
     • After birth
       • Poor early nutrition
         • Followed by compensatory growth
           • Impairs adult cognitive performance
   • Physical environment
     • Perception
       • Kittens and stripes experiment
     • Complexity
       • Animals in poor environment
         • More aggression
         • Show symptoms of chronic stress exposure
           • Delayed puberty
           • Smaller DLWG
           • Elevated basal cortisol
   • Social environment
     • Maternal deprivation
     • Weaning
       • Early weaning
         • More escape behaviour
         • Smaller at 6 wks
         • More bely nosing
       • Better to give a 2 step process where they still have contact w mum
         • Less traumatic stress
     • Raised in isolation
       • High pain threshold
       • V abnormal
     • Play
       • Can be social or self directed
       • Function uncertain
         • Apparent functional importance

3. Bird song

   • Innate - deafened males still produce a song
   • Males w no contact develop a simple unstructured song
   • Early critical period
     • Even songs heard in the first weeks can be copied when singing starts at 8 months

4. Sensitive periods

   • Sexual imprinting
     • Cross fostering
       • Play / grooming resembles maternal species
       • Agression , feeding + vocalisation is genetic
       • Male sexual and social preference of maternal species
       • Female sexual preference weaker and reversible
   • Socialisation
     • Dogs 3-7wks
       • Build relationships w humans or other dogs