fixed action pattern
Hardwired behavioral sequence
A fixed action pattern is an innate behavioral sequence triggered by a specific stimulus and carried to completion once started.
The term comes from ethology, the study of animal behavior: a mother bird will continue feeding motions even if the chick falls from the nest.
The stickleback's attack response to red coloring is a classic fixed action pattern.
The behavior is hardwired, not learned.
- instinctInnate behavioral tendency
- survival instinctInborn drive to live
- innateExisting since birth
- behaviorManner of conducting oneself
- reflexInvoluntary stimulus response
knee jerk · trigger · fight or flight · stimulus · response · ethology · releaser · hardwired · built in · automatic · ritual · courtship · nesting · Lorenz · bird behavior · modal · stereotyped · species-specific
- animal behavioranimal behavior, instincts, learned behavior, conditioning, social behavior
- instinctsinstinct, survival instinct, survival instincts, maternal instinct, gut instinct
fixed action patternadaptive behavior
Context-appropriate functional responses
fixed action patternlearned behavior
Action acquired through experience
conditioned response · operant conditioning · classical conditioning · trial-and-error learning · social learning
fixed, fixing, fixer, fixable, fixation, action, actions, acting, actor