Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 What Is the Problem and What Is the Solution?
- 2 Behaviour as a Means, Not an End
- 3 The Deep Structure of Behaviour
- 4 The Brain Is Not Alone
- 5 Bringing It All Together: Steps in the Descriptive Process
- 6 What of the Future?
- Epilogue
- Appendix A: Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation and Descriptive Analysis
- Appendix B: Practice, Practice, Practice
- References
- Index
3 - The Deep Structure of Behaviour
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 What Is the Problem and What Is the Solution?
- 2 Behaviour as a Means, Not an End
- 3 The Deep Structure of Behaviour
- 4 The Brain Is Not Alone
- 5 Bringing It All Together: Steps in the Descriptive Process
- 6 What of the Future?
- Epilogue
- Appendix A: Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation and Descriptive Analysis
- Appendix B: Practice, Practice, Practice
- References
- Index
Summary
Some actions are intrinsic motor units that can be concatenated as needed to solve a problem. In contrast, many actions are correlated with one another when engaging in particular types of behaviour, such as predation, mating or aggression. Moreover, how those actions are associated depend on intrinsic rules of organisation. Consequently, selecting markers to measure as if they are independent may be misleading. For example, scoring success in grasping a piece of food may fail to reveal that different combinations of limb movements may be capable of comparable rates of success. The lack of independence among actions and the potentially misleading conclusions that can be drawn from end-point measures point us to the second principle – understanding the intrinsic organisation of behaviour. Knowing something about the intrinsic organisation of a behavioural sequence can be critical in identifying markers that reflect that organisation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Understanding Animal BehaviourWhat to Measure and Why, pp. 47 - 60Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021