behavior, behaviour = 1. (emp) the whole complex of observable, recordable, or measurable activities of a living animal, such as movements of the skeletal, cardiac, or smooth muscles, production of sound, discharge of electric organs, movements of cilia, contraction or expansion of chromatophores, nettling, glandular secretion, and changes in body chemistry (including those producing luminescence) as they are concerned in the animal's commerce with its environment. Loosely, behavior is anything an animal does. The intuitive concepts of mental activity and consciousness are not behavior, although they may be defined in terms of it. Behavior is analyzed into responses. = 2. (emp) any parts of behavior (1.) that are recurrently identifiable and classifiable by the observer. Cf. response. A class of behavior need not show the types of orderly quantitative variations that enable us to analyze it still further into responses.
behavior/acquired = (emp, bt) behavior that has been experimentally demonstrated, in either its topography or stimulus control or both, to be dependent in part upon the operation of variables encountered in conditioning and learning, such as the occurrence of reinforcing stimuli. If species-specific behavior, as a result of conditioning procedures, occurs systematically as a function of the presence of previously ineffective stimuli, it must then be considered acquired with respect to those stimuli. The terms, then, are not mutually exclusive in application. Ant. unlearned or inborn behavior.
behavior/aggressive = (emp) a broad class of behavior that includes both threat and attack behavior. Once identified as such, responses occurring in aggressive behavior can be identified in other contexts, so that it can be stated that aggressive behavior may occur toward inanimate objects. Aggressive behavior is often exhibited during the extinction of conditioned responses: rats bite bars during extinction; pigeons threaten keys.
behavior/agonistic = (emp, eth) a broad class of behaviors that includes all attack, threat, appeasement, and flight behavior.
behavior/allochthonous = 1. (th, eth) behavior that is not activated by its own drive. = 2. (th, eth) behavior that is activated as a consequence of the frustration of behavior activated by some drive other than that which most often controls it. Syn. displacement activity; Ant. autochthonous behavior.
behavior/appeasement = (emp, eth) those behaviors of an animal (exclusive of flight) that, when they occur, terminate attack on the animal by another animal of the same species. E.g., when wolves fight and one gains, as it were, tile upper fang, the losing animal will throw up its head and turn the ventral surface of its neck toward the jaws of the winner. The winner will then cease the attack, and the loser will retreat from the field of battle.
behavior/appetitive = (th, eth) a term applied to characterize, in terms of an inferred or anticipated (by the ethologist) consummatory act, the behavior of an animal that is not at rest or "doing nothing." It is described as plastic, etc. Appetitive behavior, by definition, cannot be identified as such until observations not involving it have been made. It is further presumed to be characterized by a motor pattern, an orientation (taxis) component, and sets of behavior classified as appetitive by ethologists as "operant behavior occurring in an environment devoid of experimental control.'' Further, they would lean on theory to note that, after given drive operations had occurred experimentally or naturally, all the operants conditioned under that drive should increase greatly in strength. This of stimuli to which that animal is particularly responsive. Many behaviorists would identify almost all the interpretation would not make the activities any the less interesting to them. In fact, they spend much of their time studying them.
behavior/attack = (emp, eth) a broad response class including those behaviors of an animal that, when earned to completion, bring to bear one or more of the animal's effectors on the body surface of a second animal in such a way that injury and possibly death of the second animal will occur if the behavior continues. In a given species, more precise specification is possible in terms of biting, clawing, hitting with the wings, and the like.
behavior/autochthonous = (th, eth) behavior that is activated by its own drive. See behavior/allochthonous, drive (3.), and instinct (2.).
behavior chain = (emp) a sequence of stimuli and responses that can be observed repeatedly in an animal, with only minor variations in the ordinal position of each stimulus and response. In many cases of chaining, it is not possible to identify all the stimuli of the chain, but only the responses as they occur in order. In others, a response may move the animal in such a way that he is confronted with a new set of stimuli that release or elicit the next response, and so on. A theoretical distinction can be drawn between "heterogenous" chains, some of the stimuli of which are environmental and others movement-produced (see stimuli/ movement-produced), and ''homogenous" chains all stimulus members of which are either environmental or movement-produced-e.g., (classical) the hunting and egglaying behavior in the female solitary wasp, the running of a rat through a complex maze which he has run through many times before.
behavior/emotional = (emp, bt) an arbitrary class of responses that is defined differently for different species and that is based on the covariation in response-strength of the behaviors as a function of certain often ill-defined independent variables. Despite the rather fuzzy origins of this class, once a particular response has been placed in the class, the term emotional can be consistently applied to it; and a concept that is initially theoretical seems to acquire some empirical status. Emotional behaviors in the rat include urination, defecation, freezing, vocalizing, and trembling, when two or more of these occur together. In the pigeon they include cooing and wing-beating.
behavior/escape = 1. (emp, eth, bt) rapid locomotion of an animal from any given location that occurs after specific stimuli are presented to it in that place. The stimuli effective in producing escape behavior are almost identical with those identified as negative reinforcing stimuli or aversive stimuli in conditioning situations. = 2. (emp, eth) behavior/flight (2.).
behavior/flight = 1. (emp, eth) flying of birds and bats. =2. (emp, eth, bt)
rapid locomotion of an animal from proximity to another animal that is exhibiting threat or attack behavior.
behavior/imitative = (emp) an animal is placed in the environment of another animal. If the first animal then makes some response that is not species-specific, and thereafter the second animal makes the same response under conditions when it can be demonstrated that the response of the first animal is the stimulus for the response of the second, then the second animal is said to imitate the first and the behavior is called imitative. Imitative behavior is readily producible in the primate after discrimination and differentiation training has been given. Cf. behavior/mimetic.
behavior/mimetic = (emp, eth) an animal is placed in the environment of another animal of the same species: if the second animal then makes some species-specific response, and thereafter the first animal makes the same response under conditions where it can be demonstrated that the response of the second animal is the stimulus for that of the first and that no opportunity for discrimination and differentiation training has been given to either animal, then the behavior is termed mimetic. This term is to be distinguished from imitative behavior, which does not refer to species-specific behavior. (Cf. behavior/imitative.) Reified, we have "mimesis." This is a good example of a not very useful empirical concept. Hinde (11) has shown that, although a few examples of mimetic behavior can be found, little is gained by classifying them together.
behavior/operant = (emp, bt) the totality of operant responses in the behavior repertoire of the animal.
behavior pattern = (emp) a set of responses statistically organized in time, that is, associated together and manifesting some degree of stereotypy in the temporal sequence in which they occur. The term behavior pattern is applied whenever one has analyzed behavior into relatively large units, that is, units composed of a number of responses. Behavior chains, instincts (1., 2.) and the activities that are the empirical bases of particular drives are all labeled behavior patterns, which renders the term of very limited usefulness for theory.
behavior/purposive = (con) behavior when considered with respect to its goals. The usage of goal varies sufficiently that this term finds very limited use except in conversation or in literary statement. To those who wish to investigate variations in the stimulus control of verbal behavior, one thing is clear: few people respond to the same behavioral events consistently with one another by calling them purposive behavior. For the behavior scientist, purposive behavior is a null class or, alternatively, a class that includes all behavior. In either case, purposive behavior is not a very useful concept, for it is neither empirical fish nor theoretical fowl.
behavior repertoire = (emp, bt) the set of behaviors characteristic either of an entire species or of a single member of a species.
behavior/respondent = (emp, bt) the totality of respondents in the behavior repertoire of an animal.
behavior/species-specific = 1. (Emp) those behaviors shown by a great majority of members of a species in the same or highly similar environments and under the same or highly similar conditions. Such species-characteristic behaviors can sometimes be employed in taxonomy to assist in the classification of animals. =2. (emp, eth) those behaviors, complex and relatively stereotyped, that appear in most members of a species under set and statable conditions without evident prior opportunity to learn. These behaviors are often presumed to be unmodifiable by training.
behavior/spontaneous = (emp) behavior that occurs in the ostensible absence of any stimuli that can be shown to elicit or release, or to set the occasion for its occurrence. To call behavior spontaneous is to indicate current ignorance of the events controlling it. It does not imply capriciousness. This term would be synonymous with operant behavior, except that operants that have come under the control of discriminative stimuli are no longer spontaneous.
behavior/symbolic = 1. (emp, bt) verbal behavior. =2. (th, bt) a hypothesized class of behavior that cannot necessarily be directly observed. =3. (th, bt) the observed behavior from which symbolic behavior (2) is inferred. Loosely, all behavior that "must" be accounted for on some such grounds is also termed symbolic. If some behavior is observed for which the controlling stimuli are not present in the environment at the time of the response (although they may have been present on previous occasions on which the behavior occurred), then it is presumed to be under the control of symbolic behavior' that acts as surrogate for the absent stimuli. Stimuli present in the environment are presumed to elicit some mediating behavioral (e.g., postural) or sensory event-pure stimulus act (15) or fractional anticipatory goal response---which in turn serves as the stimulus for the behavior that is actually observed. =4. (con) loosely and colloquially, thinking.
behavior/threat = (emp, eth) those sets of behaviors of an animal that have been shown to produce flight behavior at some strength in another animal (usually of the same species) when they occur in its presence. Threat behavior most often elicits other agonistic behavior, e.g., threat, attack, flight, or appeasement, in the other animal.
behavior/unlearned = I. (emp) species-specific behavior, the necessary and sufficient antecedents of which are unknown to, and often of little interest to, the investigator. = 2. (emp, eth) behavior that has been experimentally demonstrated, in both its stimulus control and topography, to be independent of and unmodified by the operation of variables encountered in conditioning and learning, such as the occurrence of reinforcing stimuli. Syn. behavior/instinctive, inborn, innate (obsolete); Ant. behavior/acquired. The empirical referents of this definition are in dispute.
behavior/verbal = 1. (emp, bt) behavior involving the vocalization or writing of words, or response to spoken or written words. =2. (emp, bt) behavior whose reinforcement is contingent upon stimulation of and response by another individual. By this definition, verbal behavior is not limited to behavior involving words: gesture and other forms of communication are included.
behaviorist = 1. (emp) a scientist who investigates die behavior of animals objectively and who attempts to relate his observations together in a theoretical system that does not include concepts borrowed from introspection and mental philosophy. =2. (emp) more specifically, a psychologist who studies learning and related phenomena as a behaviorist (1.) His theories are often built on the behavior of R. r. norvegicus albinus, the domesticated rat. See ethologist.
block = (th, eth) a hypothetical state of the pathways between two centers of an instinct. This state may be terminated or reduced by the action of an innate releasing mechanism that has been activated by a sign stimulus. After such nullification of the state, "motivational impulses" can flow from the higher center to the lower, activating the latter and hence yielding a response. There is no direct physiological evidence for such a state.