Let's question Elicited Behaviour and Modal Action Pattern

Have you ever thought of how different behaviours can be differentiated based on their frequency and intentionality? 

You may have not, (or you may have, but I won't include this in my writing because of the flow). But, behaviourist had. In this blog, we are going to talk about 2 types of behaviours: Elicited Behaviour and Modal Action Pattern. One is also called as a simple reflex and the other is referred to as species specialized reflexes respectively. 

Elicited behaviours

As described in a random website I found, elicited behaviours are, "behaviours that occur due to specific environmental stimulus." And as we discussed in class, these are the behaviours that are kind of universal, in terms of their relation to stimulus, for instance, one will sneeze in the presence of dust. Thus, the stimulus-response relation is hard-wired in everyone. The slide we got after the class says, "Organisms born with pre-existing behaviour systems" and these behaviour systems, are encoded into our nervous system. Thus, the elicit behaviours result from the pre-existing wiring in the nervous system. Some of the examples of elicited behaviours are, eye blinking, sneezing, salivation in the presence of desired food, etc. 

Now some random questions, "Can we change elicited behaviour?, if yes then can we say we can change one's pre-existing wiring in the nervous system? And if yes then, how? if not then, is there something in human behaviour that is still not explained well so that we can manipulate it? why do we get elicited behaviours? is it evolutionary beneficial? how do we explain the existence of some pre-existing behaviour pattern? who put them in our nervous system? (will add more questions in future, or maybe answers)

Modal Action Pattern

It was during my bachelor's when I heard the term Modal Action pattern for the first time while preparing for the CUET-PG exam. And nearly after a year I again came across this. Again referring to the shared slides, Modal Action Patterns (MAPs from here) are explained as a species-specialized reflex. Some of the MAPs of mammals are nesting, parenting, prey capture, and aggression. Okay WOW, now these look like some behaviours that require some higher level of cognition, the behaviour of parenting, nesting, and aggression doesn't come from a basic afferent efferent nerve connection. So, what could be the reason? Before going there, let's look at some discussions we had in the classroom. Some of the mentioned texts in the slide say that "An important feature of MAPs is that the threshold for eliciting such activities varies", "the stimulus responsible for MAP is difficult to isolate in a complex social context.", "The same stimulus can have different effects depending upon the animal's physiological and recent actions". Well Well Well, now these functional definitions are making the MAP a bit confusing as compared to a normal behaviour that had been reinforced or punished, so let's take a look on what are the things that make MAPs special. After searching for a while, I found, that MAPs are genetically wired and only triggered in the presence of a specific stimulus, but we just saw that the same stimulus cannot result in the same response under certain conditions, thus this statement is falsified. okaay got it! So, MAPs are also known as Fixed Action Patterns, however, experts prefer to use the term MAPs because they are flexible. So even something like MAPs which are genetically hard-wired can be altered. Also, because MAPs are similar across species they are termed instincts, but unfortunately, they are not. Behaviours are learned, even if not by us then by someone in our ancestors, I don't believe something happens just out of nowhere, it needs some history to occur. Any behaviour doesn't occur in isolation, there is a chain of stimulus-response that results in the behaviour through which we acquire our goal. I remember studying a behaviour modification technique called chaining, where the previous response of a stimulus becomes the stimulus for the next response. 

Behaviours change

Now some questions: if instinct is not MAPs then what is instinct, well I believe that there is nothing such a thing called instinct, but science doesn't work on my belief, the concept of instinct exists, what were the original arguments for instinct? how MAPs are encoded?  how true is the statement is, that no behaviour occurs in isolation? 

References

Hunter, M., & Hunter, M. (2014, October 31). Using modal action patterns to influence behavior | Stale cheerios. Stale Cheerios. https://stalecheerios.com/other-species/modal-action-patterns-influence-behavior/

Daffin, L. (n.d.). Module 3: Elicited Behaviors and More – Principles of Learning and Behavior. https://opentext.wsu.edu/principles-of-learning-and-behavior/chapter/module-3-elicited-behaviors-and-more/#3.1