Self-Injurious Behavior (SIB) as a Maladaptive Function of Previous Learning Experience in a Single Female Pig-Tail Macaque (Macaca nemestrina) Model (A Hypothesis)

Abstract

Aim: This paper aims to describe how to decrease hair-plucking behavior in a female pig-tail macaque model as one of Self-Injurious Behavior (SIB) representations of human behavior by using a different way called 'pulling back' technique. Method: An action researched by applying an environmental analyses used to examined its effectiveness on the case. The subject inserted from an artificial individual cage without any grass into a semi natural cage with plenty of grass, leaf, and insects. An instantaneous sampling method (per minute in a ten minutes) used to calculated the amount of hair-plucking behavior between two conditions. Result and discussion: The level of hair-plucking behavior was lower at the semi natural cage with plenty of grass, leaf, and insects. It shown us that hair-plucking behavior had been replaceable by plucking grass, leaf, and insects. It seems that plucking grass, leaf, and insects as a previous learning experience had evolved into a different form of maladaptive function as hair-plucking behavior. Although plucking behavior has a central function of feeding behavior since we knew that non-human primates used their hands to hold the food rather than other lower species, but here this behavior faced to malfunction since the behavior couldn't keep its normal function to support survival effort rather than produced serious injuried-body. Here, hair-plucking behavior seems like to be a consequence or side-effect of tick-seeking behavior. Conclusion: These results may have a natural implication to Self-Injurious Behavior (SIB) in human. In human, a self could be a substitute-target for injurious behavior when the other one than self was not reachable. Self-Injurious Behavior (SIB) may as replacement of environmental-injurious, partner-injurious, or other-injurious. Based on these results we propose that a 'pulling back' technique may use to reduce Self-Injurious Behavior (SIB) by seeking and kept the original function of the certain behavior when it failed in a certain adaptation levels in a changing world.