Innateness and the instinct to learn

Abstract

Concepts of innateness were at the heart of Darwin's approach to behavior and central to the ethological theorizing of Lorenz and, at least to start with, of Tinbergen. Then Tinbergen did an about face, and for some twenty years the term 'innate' became highly suspect. He attributed the change to Lehrman's famous 1953 critique in which he asserted that classifying behaviors as innate tells us nothing about how they develop. Although Lehrman made many valid points, I will argue that this exchange also led to profound misunderstandings that were ultimately damaging to progress in research on the development of behavior. The concept of 'instincts to learn', receiving renewed support from current theorizing among geneticists about phenotypic plasticity, provides a potential resolution of some of the controversies that Lehrman created. Bioacoustical studies, particularly on song learning in birds, serve both to confirm some of Lehrman's anxieties about the term 'innate', but also to make a case that he threw out the genetic baby with the bathwater. The breathtaking progress in molecular and developmental genetics has prepared the way for a fuller understanding of the complexities underlying even the simplest notions of innate behavior, necessary before we can begin to comprehend the ontogeny of behavior.

Single-unit responses to 22kHz ultrasonic vocalizations in rat perirhinal cortex

“…Any innate defensive responses to 22 kHz USVs could theoretically depend on the simultaneous presence of multiple stimuli and certain environmental conditions [4]. Regardless of the interpretation of the preceding results, there may be some degree of biological "preparedness" [15,25,28,36] for forming or maintaining associations with USVs. In support of the latter possibility, the same study by Andres and Fendt [17] found that fear conditioning to 22 kHz USVs is more resistant to extinction than fear conditioning to continuous tones.…”

An evaluation of the concept of innateness

“…Some scientists, such as Marler [24], might object that in the situation just described the gene codes for the special learning mechanism needed for acquiring the song, and innateness should be ascribed to the learning mechanisms and not to the song. However, it is no more satisfactory to suppose that a one-toone relationship exists between a gene and a learning mechanism than it is to propose such a relationship between that gene and the outcome of learning.…”

Computational models in the debate over language learnability

“…Yet, have they solved the innateness controversy? The innateness question has a long and passionate history, filled with misunderstandings (Deacon, 1997;Marler, 2004). In the recent years a growing number of researchers have insisted on the importance of reconsidering this debate from novel perspectives, taking development in its full sense (Elman et al, 2001;Karmiloff-Smith, 1992;Thelen & Smith, 1994) or articulating differently the gene-environment question (Marcus,Figure 10.…”