PSY352H5 Study Guide - Spring 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Natural Selection, Mutation, Memory
PSY352H5
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
1
Lecture 1
Evolution: random genetic drift
• a change in the frequency of genes in the population from one generation to the next
• Natural selection is not the only way for evolution to occur
• Genetic drift can also cause evolution
o One disaster that wipes out a specific allele expression and the next generation
does not represent the overall population
What is behaviour
• Behaviour is the subject’s movement in space and time (methodological definition)
o When measuring behavior we quantify it as objectively as possible, eg. Using
visual tracking systems, timing the movement of the animal
o The subject qualification of the behavoiur is the interpretive aspect of monitoring
the behavior
• The organisms response to something
• Behaviour is the window to the brain (experimental neuroscientist’s definition)
• Behaviour is the output of the brain
o How neurons function in the brain
o But before scientists though behavior was much more spiritual in nature
• Even the most complex behavioural phenomena are the result of the functioning of the
nervous system
Psychology and biology
• Psychology deals with numerous aspects of animal and human behaviour.
• Psychology traditionally belonged to Social Sciences and sometimes treated the brain as a
“black box”.
• Nowadays the discipline is regarded as part of Natural Sciences and psychology uses
numerous concepts and methods of biology.
• If you have knowledge about biology it gives you a tool, to see behavior in another way
Two fundamentally distinct questions
• Proximate question (phenogenetic causation)
o Concerns the biological & physiological mechanisms of behaviour.
o That is: “How do things work?”
o Dissecting the mechanisms of begavioru to answer the question how things work
• Ultimate question (phylogenetic causation)
o Concerns the evolution and adaptive aspect of behaviour.
o That is: “How did it come about?”
o What are their adaptive function and why are they there
o How does it allow the organism to cope with their environmental conditions
This course
• This course will explore both the proximate (mechanistic) and the ultimate (evolutionary)
aspects of behaviour.
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2
• The goal of the course is to make you appreciate that behaviour is just like any other
characteristics of your body:
o it is the result of biological mechanisms and it has developed according to the forces
of natural selection, i.e. evolution.
o Although behavior is unique and flexible but it is not different in terms of
environmental effects just like phenotypic characteristics
Why study animal behavior when human behavior is most interesting?
• Animal behaviour is just as interesting.
• There are many species of animals with many different behaviours (comparative
approaches).
o You can compare closely or different species to see the similarities and differences
between the species
• Ethical considerations.
o A controversial topic
o Some argue that the animals don’t have a choice when there are experiments being
conducted on them
o Procedures such as inbreeding are not harmful for animals but cannot be done on
humans which is why animals are a good choice
• There are many methods with which behaviour can be studied in animals but not in humans.
• Medical research (model organisms and laboratory animals as tools for discovery).
o Transgenic mice use them to better understand human conditions like Alzheimers
How can we study animal behavior?
• Two fundamentally different approaches in the past:
• One is North American and the other is European but this difference has now been diffused
• Animal psychology
o Controlled laboratory conditions
o Nature blind
o Argued that their commonalities in all species, so the species do not have
differences, so consolidation of memory for example works the same in all species
o Focuses on generalities
• Ethology (European approach)
o Study of natural behavior
o Often based on observations at large
o Nature aware
o Stresses species specific characteristics
o Cannot ignore the environmental effects on species
o Eg. You need to study what motivates the animal to better understand behavior and
this is species specific
▪ There are differences in visual perception amongst species too
▪ Some species learn very differently, they have different motor functions
• Now these two approaches are mixed
o They do emphasize rigorous lab control but try to make it similar to the
environmental context that the animal lives in
Darwin
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