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From: sbrunnoc@eagle.ulowell.edu (Sean Brunnock)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.psychology
Subject: Hard wired behavior (was Re: Intelligent Parrots)
Message-ID: <6061@swan.ulowell.edu>
Date: 9 Apr 88 10:23:29 GMT
References: <649@dukempd.UUCP>
Sender: news@swan.ulowell.edu
Reply-To: sbrunnoc@eagle.UUCP (Sean Brunnock)
Organization: University of Lowell
Lines: 33
Keywords: Hard Wired Behavior

In article <649@dukempd.UUCP> crown@dukempd.UUCP (Rick Crownover) writes:
>
>	Regarding the question of whether "any" behavior is hard wired.
>I recall reading about behavior-response pairings which were apparently
>not possible.
>	Anyone heard of this experiment, and remember the details?

   This phenomena was discovered by Marian and Keller Breland, two
former associates of Skinner who started a company in Arkansas called
Animal Behavior Enterprises. They used operant conditioning techniques
pioneered by Skinner to train a variety (38 species) of animals for
display at fairs, carnivals and other shows.

   The Brelands encountered many problems with animals who were intially
conditionable but would begin regressing to past behavior patterns.
For example, the Brelands once trained a racoon to pick up a coins and
deposit them into a box. There was no problem in conditioning the racoon
to pick up a coin but the racoon would hesitate to put the coin into the
box. The problem was more readily apparent when the Brelands tried to
train the racoon to pick up two coins simultaneously and deposit them
into a box. The racoon would rub the coins together, dip them into the
box, take them out again, and start over. It seemed that the racoon's
innate eating behavior patterns were too strong to be overcome by
operant conditioning.

   The Brelands called this phenomena instinctual drift and detailed
it in their 1961 article "The Misbehavior of Organisms". I never
read the article, I got the reference from one of my textbooks, 
Hergenhahn's Theories of Learning.

       Sean Brunnock
       University of Lowell
       sbrunnoc@eagle.cs.ulowell.edu