Fixed action pattern

Instinctive behavior referred to within the ethological physiological theory of instinctive movement an innate complex behavior, which is composed of mutually definable basic building blocks of behavior: the instinctive movements. Another word for instinctive movement is fixed motor pattern or Fixed Action Pattern (FAP). Instinctive movements are triggered according to the first time was formulated in 1937 by Konrad Lorenz theory by a key stimulus and can run as long as an inner readiness to act is present.

As evidence that behavior is innate, applies, inter alia its " maturation ", that is their perfection in the course of individual development without exercise.

" Building blocks" of instinct behavior

Instinctive behavior (more precisely, an instinctive movement ) is by Lorenz from independent sub-elements, namely from the innate recognition of a triggering situation (see key stimulus ), an activation mechanism ( the innate releasing mechanism ), a movement component and a specific internal drive for moving component (of Lorenz introduced under the name of action-specific excitation).

The behavior must meet four criteria to be considered as innate and therefore as instinctive behavior:

It must

• , (where undirected appetence can be very variable) be stereotyped
• Occur in all specimens of a species (depending on ripeness )
• Also occur in isolation-reared specimens of this kind (special case: embossing), and
• Also occur in specimens that were previously prevented from exercising the behavior figure.

Frequently found in a fully running instinctive behavior of three phases:

The " control" by the willingness to act permits a termination of the original behavior and the transition to a different behavior when changing internal or external conditions. Example: A bird in search of food will interrupt it when threatened by a cat.

Instinctive movements can occur with very different strength according to the theory of their full expression to merely indicated movements, which are interpreted as intention movements. Also referred to by the representatives of the instinct theory movement patterns of very different complexity as instinctive movements: in birds, for example, both scratch and pick movements as well as complicated motion sequences such as the loops of a node in the nesting of some birds.

Historical

The advanced and fundamentally new about this concept was in the 1930s that animal behavior was not viewed as a purely reactive ( as of the classical behaviorists ) still as a chain of rigid reflexes but also that internal state changes - ie the spontaneity of behavior - in accounting was provided. Furthermore, the view has been particularly focused on innate, inherited behavior and its plasticity.

Today, the instinct theory hardly plays a role in behavioral biology, as the brain research so far could find no physiological equivalent of the postulated action-specific arousal. Whether this rather than lack of " physiological theory of instinctive movement " to view or due to still existing shortcomings of experimental brain research, currently can not be decided.