My .02 as well ... it may seem weird talking about the behavior of trees, but, the tropisms of plants played a role in the development of behavioral thinking (J. Loeb I believe, positive heliotropisms or turning toward light, and then the tropism-type reflexive behavior of paramecium: helio and geotropisms - as in H. S. Jennings's 'Behavior of the Lower Organisms' 1906). These I believe helped advance the cause of S-R models and behaviorism.
I like the clarity of Palmer's definition (modifiable via classical/instrumental conditioning), though isn't this way too limited? There are other behaviors that undergo habituation, such as infant orienting to novel stimuli, but would find it hard to believe they are readily to instrumental/classical conditioniong; and even if we can classically/instrumenmtally head turning and orientation of infants to stimuli, the neural substrates are probably different from the usual reflexive-type response seen. Also, there are fixed action patterns (gulls' pecking at red dot under mom's beak) and simple pattern generators (a fish's & snake's co-ordinated body movements to move) - a stretch to think of conditionability as a critical feature of these behaviors. I like the earlier post (forgot origin) that says behavior is whatever data we profitably record. -------------------------- John W. Kulig Professor of Psychology Plymouth State University Plymouth NH 03264 -------------------------- ----- Original Message ----- From: [email protected] To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 11:54:57 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [tips] What is behavior? On 21 Jul 2009 at 13:03, Jeffrey Nagelbush wrote: > > Behavioral biologists try to define behavior, with interesting results: > > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/science/21angier.html?ref=science >By this definition, masting oak trees, bacterial colonies > creeping across a sugar gradient, zebra herds fissioning and fusing, > are all displaying behaviors. My two cents. Whatever behaviour is, I'm sure that oak trees don't do it. So any definition which allows oak trees to behave will not do. The same goes for Canadian maple trees. Dogwood--maybe, because of their bark. I have to say I find Dave Palmer's definition (from Paul Brandon's post) that a behaviour is anything sensitive to operant or classical conditioning persuasive. This could even include EEG as a behaviour, assuming it's been shown to be conditionable (which takes us back to the Neal Miller debacle, doesn't it?). Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [email protected] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
