Instinctive Behavior Pattern

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An Instinctive Behavior Pattern is an agent behavior pattern for instinctive acts.

  • AKA: Innate Behavior.
  • Context:
    • It can (typically) be observed in various species, including humans and animals, where the behavior is performed in response to specific stimuli without prior learning or experience.
    • It can (often) be encoded genetically, meaning that the behavior is inherited and develops naturally as the organism matures, without the need for conscious thought or training.
    • It can (often) be triggered by external stimuli, such as environmental changes, or internal stimuli, such as hormonal fluctuations, leading to predictable and automatic responses.
    • It can (often) serve critical survival functions, such as feeding, mating, defense, and caring for offspring, ensuring the continuation of the species.
    • It can (often) be consistent across members of a species, with little variation in how the behavior is performed, highlighting the uniformity of instinctive responses.
    • It can (often) be contrasted with learned behaviors, which are acquired through experience, observation, or conditioning, rather than being hardwired.
    • It can (often) be used as a basis for understanding more complex behaviors, where instinctive actions are modified or suppressed by learned experiences or environmental factors.
    • ...
    • It can range from being an Non-Cognitive Agent Instinct to being a Cognitive Agent Instinct (possibly supported by intuitive belief).
    • ...
    • It can be studied in the fields of ethology, psychology, and behavioral ecology, where researchers investigate how these behaviors develop, their evolutionary advantages, and their role in the life cycle of organisms.
    • It can be influenced by evolutionary pressures, where only the most adaptive instinctive behaviors are passed on to subsequent generations, shaping the survival strategies of a species.
    • It can (often) involve fixed action patterns, where a sequence of behaviors is triggered by a specific stimulus and carried out to completion without variation, regardless of changes in the environment.
    • ...
  • Example(s):
  • Counter-Example(s):
  • See: Innate Releasing Mechanism, Fixed Action Pattern, Ethology, Instinct, Evolutionary Psychology, Behavioral Ecology, Reflex, Life, Organism, Behavior, Fixed Action Pattern, Learning.


References

2016

  • (Wikipedia, 2016) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/instinct Retrieved:2016-1-17.
    • Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism towards a particular complex behavior. The simplest example of an instinctive behavior is a fixed action pattern (FAP), in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a clearly defined stimulus.

      Any behavior is instinctive if it is performed without being based upon prior experience (that is, in the absence of learning), and is therefore an expression of innate biological factors. Sea turtles, newly hatched on a beach, will automatically move toward the ocean. A joey climbs into its mother's pouch upon being born. Honeybees communicate by dancing in the direction of a food source without formal instruction. Other examples include animal fighting, animal courtship behavior, internal escape functions, and the building of nests.

      Instincts are inborn complex patterns of behavior that exist in most members of the species, and should be distinguished from reflexes, which are simple responses of an organism to a specific stimulus, such as the contraction of the pupil in response to bright light or the spasmodic movement of the lower leg when the knee is tapped. The absence of volitional capacity must not be confused with an inability to modify fixed action patterns. For example, people may be able to modify a stimulated fixed action pattern by consciously recognizing the point of its activation and simply stop doing it, whereas animals without a sufficiently strong volitional capacity may not be able to disengage from their fixed action patterns, once activated.

      The role of instincts in determining the behavior of animals varies from species to species. The more complex the neural system of an animal, the greater is the role of the cerebral cortex and social learning, and instincts play a lesser role. A comparison between a crocodile and an elephant illustrates how mammals for example are heavily dependent on social learning. Lionesses and chimpanzees raised in zoos away from their birth mothers most often reject their own offspring because they have not been taught the skills of mothering. Such is not the case with simpler species such as reptiles.