Processes Governing Behavioral States of Readiness

Abstract

The probability that an animal will perform a particular behavioral pattern depends on the environmental conditions, such as temperature, light, and time of the day or year. Some stimulus patterns are known to affect the probability of occurrence of certain behaviors over varying periods following their presentation. This chapter is concerned with how the ideas of “time series analysis” and the exploitation of certain fortunate behavioral situations can furnish information about these phenomena. The behavioral patterns that are fairly stereotyped and which vary little in intensity and duration are emphasized. The term “readiness” is used in the chapter to describe the propensity of an animal to perform a particular behavior, and the state of readiness will be measured by the “rate” of occurrence of this behavior in a standardized environmental situation. If the behavior studied ordinarily occurs in response to certain stimulus patterns, a standard test stimulus has to be presented and the number of responses obtained per unit time taken as a measure of the animal's readiness to respond. In order to measure this readiness as a function of time, the test stimulus should be applied continuously, or at least continually at short intervals. Problems underlying this procedure are also shared. The behavioral system of an animal may be looked upon as a set of different states of readiness determining the probabilities of occurrence of corresponding behavioral outputs. In order to investigate intrinsic fluctuations of different states of readiness and mutual correlations between them, the system should first be studied under steady conditions— that is, by keeping all known stimulus inputs constant.