Mange vernepleiere har lært mye om atferdsanalysen ved å lese William M. Baums bok ‘Understanding Behaviorism’. Den 25. juni vil han holde forelesningen «What Evolutionary Theory Tells Us about Behavior” på OsloMet.
Mange vernepleiere har lært mye om atferdsanalysen ved å lese William M. Baums bok ‘Understanding Behaviorism’. Den 25. juni vil han holde forelesningen «What Evolutionary Theory Tells Us about Behavior” på OsloMet.
Forelesningen, som gratis, starter klokken 11 og finner sted i rom X001 i Stensberggaten 26/28. Ingen påmelding er nødvendig.
Abstract
What Evolutionary Theory Tells Us about Behavior Why do organisms and behavior exist? Organisms exist because genes that make organisms increase reproductive success. An organism’s behavior is its interactions with its environment. Behavior, on average and in the long run, functions to serve reproducing. Surviving usually serves reproducing, and other activities like maintaining health, maintaining relationships, and gaining resources usually serve surviving and sometimes directly serve reproducing. When phylogenetically important features of the environment vary in ways that can be tracked by physiological mechanisms, selection favors phenotypic plasticity. Part of phenotypic plasticity is behavioral plasticity. Phylogenetically important events (PIEs), such as presence of potential mates, predators, or prey, impact reproductive success and underpin selection for behavioral plasticity. PIEs induce activities that tend to mitigate threats and enhance benefits. Additionally, selection favors phenotypes that respond to covariance in the environment between PIEs and other events and between activities and PIEs. Events that covary with a PIE come to induce the same activities as the PIE, and activities that covary with a PIE come to be induced by the PIE. Induction is the mechanism of the Law of Allocation that governs the allocation of time among an organism’s activities.
