首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Animal Behavior P1: Throughout much of the 20th century, European and American scientists were sharply divided over how to study
Animal Behavior P1: Throughout much of the 20th century, European and American scientists were sharply divided over how to study
admin
2018-10-18
97
问题
Animal Behavior
P1: Throughout much of the 20th century, European and American scientists were sharply divided over how to study animal behavior.
To ethologists who mainly based in Europe, the most striking fact about animal behaviors was that they are fixed and seemingly unchangeable. For example, cats have an innate need to climb and seek refuge up high. They typically feel most secure when they can view their world from a point of concealment and gain control over their environment from a single vantage point. Dogs, by contrast, are able to understand and communicate with humans. Ethologists came to believe that ultimately even the most complex animal behaviors could be broken down into a series of immutable stimulus-response reactions. They emphasized the value of comparative studies of specific behavioral patterns, such as mating across species, in order to gain insight into how those behaviors evolved. For well over half a century, their search for the innate mechanism continued.
P2: Meanwhile, to those ethologists who based mainly in North America, the study of animal behavior took a different tack. American comparative behaviorists focused on learning and conditioned responses, which later developed into comparative behaviorism. Of interest to comparative behaviorists was where a particular behavior came from—that is, its evolutionary history, how the nervous system controlled it, and the extent to which it could be modified. In 1894, C. Lloyd Morgan, a pioneer comparative behaviorist, insisted that animal behavior be explained independently without reference to emotions or motivations, since these could not be observed or measured. In Morgan’s research, animals were put in simple situations and presented with an easily described stimulus, accompanied by precise observations and vivid accounts of behavior.
P3: This extension of animal behaviorism— studies of stimulus-response—has evolved to become an important development in comparative behavior. A stimulus is an observable fact and a broad term—so broad, in fact, that it involves any phenomenon that directly influences the activity or growth of a living organism. Not all responses to stimuli are automatic, however: as we have noted, even humans are incapable of some automatic responses. Nor are environmental changes limited to the organism’s external environment. In some cases, its internal environment can act as a stimulus as well. In general, behavior can be categorized as either innate (inborn) or learned, but the distinction is often unclear. Behavior is considered innate when it is presented and completed without any experience whereby it was learned. Higher animals, in contrast to other animals, use both innate and learned behavior. Not surprisingly, comparative behaviorists worked most comfortably from the comfort of a laboratory or psychology department, while their ethologist colleagues tended to stick strictly to studying innate patterns in a natural environment, like the development of behavior throughout animals’ lives. Major disagreements between adherents of the two approaches out inevitably occur, though the distinctions were often unclear.
P4: To early ethologists, the major driving force in behavior was instinct, behaviors that are inherited and unchangeable. Moths move towards light because they inherit the mechanism to respond to light. Although dogs have more options available to them, they bark at strangers for much the same reason. The comparative behaviorists disagreed: learning and rewards are more important factors than instinct in animal behavior. Geese are not born with the ability to retrieve lost eggs when they roll out of the nest—they learn to do so. If their behavior sometimes seems silly to humans because it fails to take new conditions into account, that is because the animals’ ability to learn is limited. There were too many examples of behaviors modified by experience for comparative behaviorists to put their faith in learning and rewards.
P5: The arguments came to a peak in the 1950s and became known as "the nature vs. nurture controversy". Consider how differently an ethologist and a comparative behaviorist would interpret the begging behavior of a hatching bird. The first time a hatching bird is approached by its parents, it begs by pecking at the beaks of their parents in an attempt to stimulate them to regurgitate a meal. Obviously, said the ethologists, they inherited the ability and the tendency to beg. Not so, countered the comparative behaviorists. We also saw that a model bearing what would seem to be the most superficial resemblance to the beak of the parent birds would stimulate begging on the part of the chick. Later experiments showed that when presented with two parental birds from related species, the young initially showed no preference for either of them. Of course, these chicks will only ever be rewarded by their parents. It would appear therefore that their innate behavior is refined with time, or to put it another way—they learn. Eventually, the distinctions between the two fields narrowed.
P6: The current view is that both nature and nurture influence behavior and development.
Increasingly, people are beginning to realize that asking how much heredity or environment influence a particular trait is not the right approach. The reality is that there is not a simple way to disentangle the multitude of forces that exist. These influences include genetic factors that interact with one another, environmental factors that interact such as social experiences and overall culture, as well as how both hereditary and environmental influences intermingle. Instead, many researchers today are interested in seeing how genes modulate environmental influences and vice versa.
P4: ■ To early ethologists, the major driving force in behavior was instinct, behaviors that are inherited and unchangeable. ■ Moths move towards light because they inherit the mechanism to respond to light. Although dogs have more options available to them, they bark at strangers for much the same reason. ■ The comparative behaviorists disagreed: learning and rewards are more important factors than instinct in animal behavior. ■ Geese are not born with the ability to retrieve lost eggs when they roll out of the nest—they learn to do so. If their behavior sometimes seems silly to humans because it fails to take new conditions into account, that is because the animals’ ability to learn is limited. There were too many examples of behaviors modified by experience for comparative behaviorists to put their faith in learning and rewards.
In paragraph 5, why does the author discuss the begging behavior of a hatchling bird?
选项
A、To support the view that instinct explains animal behavior better than learning does.
B、To demonstrate that ethologists are correct about the limited ability of animals to learn.
C、To contrast an ethologist’s explanation of a particular animal behavior with that of a comparative behaviorist.
D、To question whether the discussion about the roles of nature and nurture was a valid one.
答案
C
解析
【修辞目的题】文中提到两类行为学家会给出不同的解释,随后详细说明了实验,所以提到实验是为了说明不同的观点,因此答案为C。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/xrfO777K
0
托福(TOEFL)
相关试题推荐
Completethesentencesbelow.WriteONEWORDAND/ORANUMBERforeachanswer.Scientistshavetaken______ofthesoilintheYuc
Writethecorrectletter,A-F,nexttoquestions21-26.AVideoResourceCentreBReadingRoomCFoodServiceCentreDPeriodic
Listentothedirectionsandmatchtheplacesinquestions11-15totheappropriateplaceamongA-Eonthemap.TheComplaint
Listentothedirectionsandmatchtheplacesinquestions11-15totheappropriateplaceamongA-Eonthemap.HealthCentre
Choosefouranswersfromtheboxandwritethecorrectletter,A-G,nexttoquestions27-30.AlightsBfixedcameraCmirrorD
Completethenotesbelow.WriteNOMORETHANTWOWORDSforeachanswer.TheroleofsleepinhumansandanimalsImportanceofsl
Completethenotesbelow.WriteNOMORETHANTWOWORDSforeachanswer.TheroleofsleepinhumansandanimalsImportanceofsl
Completethenotesbelow.WriteONEWORDONLYforeachanswer.EffectsofurbanenvironmentsonanimalsIntroductionRecenturba
Choosethecorrectletter,A,BorC.Americanboysdropoutofschoolatahigherratethangirlsbecause
CoursesforinternationalstudentsExampleWritinginfirsttermInsecondterm:【L1】________Throughouttheyear:【L2】_______
随机试题
新生儿,出生26小时,因“无明显诱因出现颜面皮肤浅黄染6小时”就诊。患儿精神及吃奶可,无发热、嗜睡、拒奶、抽搐等症状。当地医院给予单面蓝光照射治疗12小时,皮肤黄疸较前加重,波及躯干及四肢。患儿为G2P1,母孕39周自然分娩,母亲血型O型,无特殊疾病及特殊
男性,32岁,轻度膀胱刺激症状1个月就诊。尿常规检查白细胞4~5个/HP,红细胞2~3个/HP,尿结核菌培养阳性。在该病人接受手术治疗前,至少应用抗结核药物治疗( )。
下列关于某病病死率和死亡率的叙述,正确的是
患儿11个月,因睡眠不安、多汗、易惊来院就诊。体检可见明显方颅、肋骨串珠,诊断为佝偻病活动期。对患儿母亲进行护理指导时,下列提法哪项不妥
2017年12月12日,经与黄河公司协商,长江公司以一项非专利技术和对甲公司债务工具投资(作为以公允价值计量且其变动计入其他综合收益的金融资产核算)换人黄河公司持有的对乙公司长期股权投资。长江公司非专利技术的原价为1200万元,已摊销200万元,已计提减值
与资产相关的政府补助的公允价值不能合理确定的,企业应以名义金额对其进行计量,并计入当期损益。()
制定战略之前要对企业外部宏观环境进行分析,通常称为PEST分析,以下属于其中的“P”所指的因素的是()。
根据下表回答以下问题,字符替换。天里与人COS4
WheredoesObamamakethespeech?
SomeAmericansarealittlenervousaboutthenation’sfuture,butothersfeelsecure,knowingthatthemantheyconsiderthemo
最新回复
(
0
)