Innate behaviors, also
known as instincts, versus learned behaviors--
and the main differences is an innate behavior
is a behavior that's performed correctly the first
time an animal or a human performs it in
response to a stimulus. It's something that
they innately possess. Another name for
an innate behavior is an instinct, which
is a more common word that people are familiar with. Learned behaviors,
on the other hand, are behaviors that are
learned through experience. So I've already written down
some of the most common types of innate and learned behaviors. And when it comes
to innate behaviors I had split them up
into what I consider simple behaviors versus
complex behaviors. The three types of
simple innate behaviors are reflexes,
taxis, and kinesis. And let's consider
them in the context of a spotlight shining bright. So here we have a spotlight and
you can see it shining bright in your eye. If you have a spotlight
shined directly in your eye, your natural response is
to squint or to blink. And blinking is a
kind of a reflex, because no one ever
taught you how to blink. It was just a behavior
that comes naturally since the day you were born. Taxis is a type of movement
where an organism either goes towards or away
from a stimulus. But it's a purposeful movement. If you've ever lit a candle at
night and noticed a lot of bugs flying towards it,
that's a form of taxis. Because as a
purposeful movement, the flies and bugs are
flying towards the stimulus of the candle. So I'll write here
bugs flying to light. Kinesis, on the other
hand, is a random movement. In using the example
of the spotlight, if you were to turn on the
spotlight in a dark room and there's a group
of rats on the floor-- they might respond to the
stimulus of this light by randomly scurrying
in different directions. And that's kinesis, because it's
a random movement in response to a stimulus. They're not trying necessarily
to move towards the light or away from the light. They're just trying to move. So I'll write here--
rats scurrying. Now, people often get
confused with the terms taxis and kinesis
because they say it has to do with movement
in response to a stimulus. And since taxis can be
either towards or away from a stimulus, it sounds
an awful lot like kinesis. But you have to remember,
taxis is a purposeful movement. Being purposeful, it's
either going towards or away for a reason. And if you say the word taxis
a different way, at least the way it's spelled,
you could say taxis. And if you ever
get into a taxi you expect it to purposefully move
in a particular direction. At least we hope. Kinesis, on the other hand, just
has to do with random movement. So if you wanted to
purposefully get somewhere, would you rather take
a taxi or a kinesis? I don't know what that would be. So those are the symbol
innate behaviors. When it comes to
complex behaviors, you have things like fixed
action patterns, migration, and circadian rhythms. So for complex
behaviors let's put this in the context of a bird. So here we have our bird. And a fixed action pattern
is a more complex type of innate behavior. It's an instinct. But this complex
behavior is already ingrained in the animal. So a really common example
of fixed action pattern is like a mating dance. You've probably
heard of birds that perform these mating
dances to attract mates. And these dances are just
fixed types of behaviors that they already know how
to do that attract a mate. Migration is another
complex behavior. And you can think of it
as, in context of birds, as birds flying
south for the winter. So migration is another complex
form of an innate behavior. And then circadian
rhythms are kind of your body's biological clock. It regulates things like
your sleep-wake cycle. If you've ever been
jet lagged, that's when your circadian rhythm
was knocked out of whack. So in context of a
bird, you could say, a bird wakes up naturally
in the morning very early to sing its song. So I'll draw musical notes here. It's a singing bird. So I'll write here,
waking up early to sing. So these are the most
common innate behaviors. And a learned
behavior is a behavior that's acquired
through experience. So the most common types
of learned behaviors are habituation,
classical conditioning, operant conditioning,
and insight learning. So they're kind of tied
together, most of these terms. I'm going to draw a
little scenario here. So imagine this is you. And it's your first
day of college. And it's your first time
living in a dorm room. And of course, you have a
roommate who is, let's say, a roommate who's gotten there
about a week earlier than you. I don't know why he's
bigger, but he is. So this is you. This is your roommate. And if you've ever
had the experience of living in a dorm one
thing that often happens is people making popcorn
will unintentionally burn it. So here we have popcorn. And I'm going to draw smoke here
symbolizing the burnt popcorn. What happens when the
popcorn burns is it sets off fire alarms. So here's a fire alarm. And we'll say the fire
alarm is ringing off loudly. So this being your first
day in this dorm room, you hear this loud fire
alarm and you freak out. But your roommate, who's
been there for a week, barely even flinches. That behavior of
barely even flinching is a form of habituation. And the way you can
think of habituation is it's a decrease in or end
of a response to a stimulus. So the fact that your
roommate didn't even react to that stimulus of the
fire alarm ringing off loudly is a form of habituation. Now the next term here is
classical conditioning. And classical
conditioning can kind of be summed up as one
stimulus being associated with a second stimulus that
produces a particular response. So the fact that you freaked
out to the sound of a fire alarm is a form of classical
conditioning. And really, if you
think of it, it's natural to be afraid of fire. No one had teach you
to be afraid of fire because it's naturally scary. It naturally induces fear. Now a fire alarm,
on the other hand, isn't dangerous like a fire. But you, in this case,
reacted to the fire alarm in the same way you would
kind of react to a fire. That's because a fire
alarm here represents or has been associated with
the stimulus of a fire. And so you respond
in a similar way. So that's classical
conditioning. Now, operant
conditioning is a kind of learning in which
the consequences that follow some behavior
either increase or decrease the likelihood of that
behavior occurring again. So while this fire
alarm is ringing off, your roommate's telling
you, don't worry. I can smell the popcorn burning. And he says, don't
bother going out because the RAs in your dorm
never write anyone up anyway. So he knows he doesn't
have to go outside because he won't get
in trouble, based off of his prior experience. And that's a kind of
operant conditioning. So insight learning is
a kind of mental process that's marked by the sudden
solution to a problem. It's kind of like an aha
moment, where you just come up with a
solution suddenly. And I couldn't
really think of a way to integrate it into
popcorn being burnt. But one example is, things
like a math equation. So if you were asked to solve
a particularly difficult math equation, it might
take you some time. But if you suddenly come
up with a solution or a way to figure it out,
that's insight learning. And that's because
you've already learned to add,
subtract, multiply, divide, and using those
skills to solve the problem. And when you finally have some
sort of insight or aha moment on how to solve
that problem, that would make it insight learning. And so these are the basic
types of learned behaviors. And these are the basic
types of innate behaviors. So to summarize, so when
it comes to simple innate behaviors, think of a spotlight. When it comes to complex innate
behaviors, think of a bird. And finally, when it
comes to learn behaviors, learn not to burn your popcorn.