Analyzing variable behavioral contingencies: Are certain complex skills homologous with locomotion? (original) (raw)

The role of locomotion in psychological development

Frontiers in Psychology, 2013

The psychological revolution that follows the onset of independent locomotion in the latter half of the infant's first year provides one of the best illustrations of the intimate connection between action and psychological processes. In this paper, we document some of the dramatic changes in perception-action coupling, spatial cognition, memory, and social and emotional development that follow the acquisition of independent locomotion. We highlight the range of converging research operations that have been used to examine the relation between locomotor experience and psychological development, and we describe recent attempts to uncover the processes that underlie this relation. Finally, we address three important questions about the relation that have received scant attention in the research literature. These questions include: (1) What changes in the brain occur when infants acquire experience with locomotion? (2) What role does locomotion play in the maintenance of psychological function? (3) What implications do motor disabilities have for psychological development? Seeking the answers to these questions can provide rich insights into the relation between action and psychological processes and the general processes that underlie human development.

Overcoming obstacles: the effect of obstacles on locomotor performance and behaviour

Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2012

Sprinting and jumping ability are key performance measures that have been widely studied in vertebrates. The vast majority of these studies, however, use methodologies that lack an ecological context by failing to consider the complex habitats in which many animals live. Because successfully navigating obstacles within complex habitats is critical for predator escape, running, climbing, and/or jumping performance are each likely to be exposed to selection. In the present study, we quantify how behavioural strategies and locomotor performance change with increasing obstacle height. Obstacle size had a significant influence on behaviour (e.g. obstacle crossing strategy, intermittent locomotion) and performance (e.g. sprint speed, jump distance). Jump frequency and distance increased with obstacle size, suggesting that it likely evolved because it is more efficient (i.e. it reduces the time and distance required to reach a target position). Jump angle, jump velocity, and approach velocity accounted for 58% of the variation in jump distance on the large obstacle, and 33% on the small obstacle. Although these variables have been shown to significantly influence jump distance in static jumps, they do not appear to be influential in running (dynamic) jumps onto a small obstacle. Because selection operates in simple and complex habitats, future studies should consider quantifying additional measures such as jumping or climbing with respect to the evolution of locomotion performance.

Locomotion, incidental learning, and the selection

Memory & Cognition, 2003

Preparation of this manuscript and the research reported in it were supported in part by NIMH Grant R01-MH57868. This article was improved as a result of the comments of two anonymous reviewers. Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to T.

Behavioral flexibility: A review, a model, and some exploratory tests

Learning & Behavior, 2020

This paper aimed to explore and clarify the concept of behavioral flexibility. A selective literature review explored how the concept of behavioral flexibility has been used in ways that range from acknowledging the fact that animals’ behavior is not always bounded by instinctual constraints, to describing the variation between species in their capacity for innovative foraging, a capacity that has repeatedly been linked to having a brain larger than would be predicted from body size. This wide range of usages of a single term has led to some conceptual confusion. We sought to find a more precise meaning for behavioral flexibility by representing it within a simple formal model of problem solving. The key to our model is to distinguish between an animal’s state of knowledge about the world and its observable behavior, using a construct of response strength to represent that underlying knowledge. We modelled behavioral flexibility as a parameter in the function that transforms respons...

Developmental constraints on behavioural flexibility

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2013

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The evolution, development, and modification of behavior

Adaptive Behavior and Learning

Organisms are machines designed by their evolution to play a certain role. This role, together with the environment within which it is played, is called the organism's niche 1. For example, most cats-tigers, leopards, mountain lions-play the role of solitary hunters; wolves and wild dogs are social hunters; antelope are social grazers; and so on. The niche defines the patterns of adaptive behavior essential to an animal's survival and reproduction. For simple niches, such as those filled by most nonsocial invertebrates, direct responses to particular kinds of stimulation are all that is required. The animal need keep no record of its past history in order to succeed; it need only avoid bad things and approach good ones. A modest memory for the immediate past allows the creature to respond to changes in stimulation. Direct stimulus-response mechanisms, plus some sensitivity to rates of change, are sufficient for a wide range of surprisingly intelligent behavior. Adaptive mechanisms that require little or no dependence on history are discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. As the niche grows more complex, adaptive behavior depends more and more on the animal's past. The greater flexibility that this allows carries with it two kinds of cost: First, the animal must have a past if its behavior is to be guided by it. This implies a lengthening of infancy and adolescence, which necessarily delays reproductive maturity, and puts the individual at a reproductive-fitness disadvantage compared to others quicker on the draw-it is sometimes better to be dumb and fast than intelligent and slow. Second, there is a growing bookkeeping cost. The behaviors acquired through past experience, and some representation of the environments in which they are appropriate, must be "stored," with minimal duplication, in such a way that the animal has ready access to the most appropriate action. Representing data in the most flexible and economical way is a problem that also confronts human filing systems. Much work in computer science is concerned with "data-base management," as this is termed. The difficulties encountered in designing efficient and flexible database management systems show that early learning theories greatly underestimated the information processing task implied by the behavior of mammals and birds. Situations rarely recur in precisely the same form; and only some of the differences between situations are important for action. Hence, the animal's representation of past environments must also allow it to behave appropriately in environments similar to those it has already encountered. Just what similar means, and how it is determined both by the animal's evolutionary history and its own experience, is one of the most intriguing unsolved questions in animal behavior. These issues are taken up in Chapters 10, 13, and 14. When niches grow more complex, the need for simple mechanisms does not diminisheven human beings need reflexes, for example-but, in addition, more complex, historydependent processes are required. An animal's past experience can affect its future in a variety of ways. The simplest way to make sense of these is the supposed dichotomy between learned and innate behavior. Innate behavior is completely independent of experience, and learned behavior is, well, learned. Of course, nothing is truly innate, in the sense of being independent of any experience, but many things are almost independent of any particular kind of experience. For example, many small invertebrates avoid light; they need no special training, no nasty shock in a lighted place, to show this pattern. Most mammalian reflexes are of this sort: As soon as an infant can move at all, it Staddon AB&L: Chapter 1

How Locomotion Concerns Influence Perceptual Judgments

Social Cognition, 2017

Successful self-regulation involves both assessment (e.g., making the right choices) and locomotion (e.g., managing change and movement). Regulatory mode theory is a motivational framework that highlights the ways in which these locomotion versus assessment concerns can receive differential emphasis across both individuals and situations. Although we know that locomotion motivation modulates goal-related movement, it is unclear whether these rather high-level concerns influence perceptual judgments of physical movement. Four studies investigated whether locomotion motivation also increases individuals' perceptual judgments of movement. Across studies, whether locomotion motivation was measured (Studies 1a and 1b) or manipulated (Studies 2 and 3), individuals high in locomotion motivation judged more movement in static images relative to individuals chronically low in locomotion (Study 1a and 1b) and to individuals in an assessment motivational state (Studies 2 and 3). Implications for understanding the nature of locomotion motivation, and motivated perceptual judgments more generally, are discussed.

Specificity of practice results from differences in movement planning strategies

Experimental Brain Research, 2007

Withdrawing visual feedback after practice of a manual aiming task results in a severe decrease in aiming accuracy. This decrease in accuracy is such that participants are often less accurate than controls who are beginning practice of the task without visual feedback. These results have been interpreted as evidence that motor learning is speciWc to the sources of aVerent information optimizing performance, because it could be processed at the exclusion of other sources of aVerent information. The goal of the present study was to test this hypothesis. To reach our goal we evaluated whether online visual feedback prevented kinesthetic information to be used for: (1) eliminating movement anisotropy resulting from diVerence in limb inertia when aiming in diVerent directions and (2) creating an internal model of limb mechanics. Participants practiced a manual aiming task with or without visual feedback and with knowledge of results. After this acquisition phase, participants performed two transfer tests. The Wrst transfer test was performed without visual feedback and/or knowledge of results. The second transfer test was similar to the Wrst one but participants initiated their movements from a diVerent starting base. The results showed strong speciWcity eVects in that withdrawing visual feedback resulted in large pointing bias and variability. However, the results of the two transfer tests showed that the processing of visual feedback did not prevent the processing of kinesthetic information used to eliminate movement anisotropy or to create an internal model of limb mechanics. Rather, speciWcity of practice eVects resulted from participants using the same motor plan in transfer as they did in acquisition even though they had no longer access to visual feedback to modulate their movement online. These results indicate that during acquisition participants adopted diVerent movement planning strategies depending on the source of aVerent information available.