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KEY CONCEPTS
- Typology of biologies based on the level of biological organization concept, the reductionism-organicism continuum and the proximate versus ultimate causes concept.
Typology of biologies: We study biology organizing its components, we stablish a hierarchy because there are components of different order and some of them are included in other. We study from the intro-organismic biology, to the supra-organismic biology. In the middle of this axes, we find the organismic biologies. This way, we can study from the most elemental components to the item as a whole.
Reductionism and Organicism: both of them are casual relations, but they are quite different. Reductionism is based on the horizontal activity (cause and effect are located in the same hierarchical level) and cause-effect relations; nevertheless, it also can work in a vertical way, but only ascendingly, towards different levels of organization. Organicism: is bidirectional (or two-way causation), what means that cause might be in the upper levels, and the effect take place in the lower ones o vice-versa. They are two kinds of casual relations, but they differ in something more. Reductionisms defines provincial biology and organicism defines autonomous.
- Reductionism: every complex phenomenon can be explained by analyzing the simplest physical mechanisms that are in operation during the phenomena. The cause is located in the low levels, and the effect in the one above.
- Organicism: bidirectional variables that explain how cause and effect and located in any level of the hierarch. t can also be vertical (cause and effect are located in different levels)
Proximate causes versus ultimate causes: To study behavior, in psychobiology, we stablish a temporal scale in order to order those casual relations. There are two types: the proximate causes and the ultimate causes. In the broad sense of biology, this causes are addressed by functional and evolutionary biologies, relatively. However, in the narrow sense, only proximate causes are approached, and only functional biology. This distinction has brought to scientist to develop two biologies, the functional and the evolutionary.
- Proximate: is an event which is immediately responsible of causing some observed result. IMMEDIATE CAUSATION = FUNCTIONAL BIOLOGY.
- Ultimate: real cause of why something occurred. DISTAL CAUSATION = EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY.
- Optimality principle and biological fitness.
Optimality principle: living beings are designed to maximize their biological fitness (survival and reproduction). Biological fitness: according to optimality principle, individuals are designed in a way that the benefit produced by its function can be maximized. Th benefit has to be higher than the cost, in order to reach survival and reproduction.
We are not optimally designed, because we need time to evolve. We are relatively optimally design but we still can be even better, and the problem is that we don’t really know what really means., as the environment is in continuous change. We are relatively optimal as we are the best we can be with the energetic ant time budget we have. if we had to spend that budget in for example forming a better organ, we couldn’t have extra budget to maximize other priorities like reproduction or survival. Something that today might be adaptive, tomorrow may not be, as environment is always changing and challenging to the individuals that live on it. We can say that we have been designed by any “ente” like God or something similar, because we haven’t really been designed, it has been Natural Selection the one who has chosen who is better and whose is not.
- Concept of trade-off.
In biology everything requires time and energy, two limited resources, that force living things to make decisions and choose between doing two things that are incompatible in energy and time. One activity is priories over the other. These decisions may change depending on the environment and the situation.
- It is related with the concept of coevolution.
- (^) INDIVIDUAL: this concept, on the contrary of coevolution, is individual, we are the ones who have the problem and the ones who have to solve it, others decisions don’t affect us, at least in a direct way.
- Concepts of coevolution, arms race and conflicts of interest.
What we do, always affect others, as their decisions also affect us. Because we all want to maximize our profits and in most of the times, they are the same. This can cause a conflict. This conflicts also appear in within species: sexual competition and sexual selection.
- Sexual competition: conflicts between individuals when the process of mating starts. It has to do with the election of male mate (precopulatory competition and sperm competition.
- Sexual selection: members of one sex choose between individuals of the other sex to mate with. This created huge problems with females that are in disadvantage with males in many aspects.
- COLECTIVE. Others goals can cause conflicts on us and their decisions may have impact on us.
- Arms-race: Our success means their failure and vice-versa. It’s the situation that deals with the coevolution between predators and pray; if the predator is too sophisticated, the pray would need to look for other ways to defend itself. Development of weapon to be ahead of the ones whose living means our death. (Example: mating, reproductive success).
- Concepts of evolutionary ladder versus evolutionary tree.
- Ladder=anthropocentric approach = animal model. Representation of the evolution as a linear process in which organisms that appear at the bottom are less developed that the ones that appear on the top, that usually are humans.
- (^) Tree = biological approach = model animal. Representation of variety through the process of branching. One common ancestor produces several and different lineages that continue to develop in different ways.
- Concepts of animal model (of humans) versus model animal (of process). ///7. Anthropocentric versus biological approaches.
Biological approach: to understand the human species as a whole, so that it also includes biology and nature and its relations with humans.
- Model animal: study of the species in each nature, to compare differences and similarities of behavior, physiological and psychological in between different animal species. That is way, the answer obtained, end up being a biological principle that can be applied to any other living being. There is no species more important than other, they are just compared under the same parameters. (Usually, behavior, psychological and physiological processes are shared by different species). This approach is also interested in the evolutionary and biological processes that have cause a behavior.
Anthropocentric approach: to be interested only in the human’s specie.
- (^) Animal model: to use different animal species to understand human processes and behaviors, as studying them is easier and cheaper, and there are some studies than can`t be performed in humans for ethnic reasons. If they could they would only study humans as it is the only thing they are concerned about. They inly use animals to substitute humans.
- Concepts of niche construction and interpenetration.
As it has been said, in each level of the hierarchy there are different and emergent properties. That is why the whole is not the sum of the parts.
- It refuses the central dogma of molecular biology (the info flow goes from the DNA molecule to the ARN-m molecule, and from it to the chain of that forms a protein. In this conception, the DNA is the primary source of information needed for eh construction of the cell)
- Information (genes, drive the whole system and construct the brain, and depending how it’s constructed it says how we will behave) flows from genes up to the organism (About brain activity) = REDUCTIONISM
- Probabilistic: the relation between all the agent of the development id bidirectional. The information flows in both ways, so we would never know the final result for sure. The information flows within the different level of organization.
- all components are responsible for the behavior of an individual, all influence all = ORGANICISM.
- Ethology’s four causes/questions/whys.
In ethology we study many things, but they are based in four questions, the four whys.
- To look for the answer of what stimulus orprocesses internal and external predict the exhibition of certain conductive answers and the inidividual in a certain moment.
- The study of development or ontogeny implies the answer to when the behavior is originated and what the evolution patterns is probable to take place during the life on an individual.
- The study of function or adaptive values implies giving and answer to what utility it has. What is it the impact on its biological fitness. Either way, the effect has to be measurable in biological fitness.
- The study of evolution or phylogeny implies the answer to when the behavior arise in the history of the specie, what evolution sequence occurred until the present moment and wat consequences will it have on posterior generations.
- Narrow-sense versus broad-sense conceptions of psychobiology.
DIMENSION NARROW MINDED BROAD MINDED
Level of organization - Greater focus on lower levels, cellular and molecular biologies
- Focus on multiple levels.
- Emphasis on crossing and recrossing.
- Greater focus on organismic and populational biologies. Reductionism - Acceptance of the three categories of reductionism.
-Provincial biology.
- Acceptance of the constitutive reductionism.
- Rejection of explanatory and theory reductionism.
- Autonomous biology. Causal relations Levels
of Organization
- Horizontal and bottom-up.
- Great focus on one-way relations
- Horizontal and top- down.
- Greater focus on two-way relations and integration. Temporal Scale - Proximate causes
- Functional biology
- Integration of proximate and ultimate causes
-Functional and Evolutionary biologies.
Organisms and environment relation
- Organismal changes are driven by the environment; the organism is passive.
- Organisms and the environment are interpenetrated. Organisms actively construct their own niches.
- The relation is bidirectional. Concept of development Inheritance - Genetics - Inclusive (four types)
Relation of environment and evolution
Unappreciated Emphasized (evo-devo)
Epigenesis Predetermined Probabilistic
Evolutionary perspective Anthropocentric Ladder Evolutionary tree
Comparative perspective and model animal
Anthropocentric, Animal model Biological, Model animal.
- Psychobiological disciplines.
- Psychological psychology: it studies all the neuronal mechanisms of behavior by the experimental manipulation of the nervous system in animals (no humans). It uses animals are examples of the human species so it is Anthropocentric, and it focuses in the causal relations that take place in the infraorganismic and organismic level which tend to be vertical (reductionist, the cause is at the bottom and the effect at the top).
- Neuropsychology: it studies the bases of the psychological processes of humans with brain injury. Its only interest is humans so it’s also Anthropocentric. In the experiments they record brain activity while the individual is doing some psychological test. They look for the relation between biology (physiology) and the brain (psychology)
- Cognitive neuroscience: they tend to relay on images techniques that are able to take information from the brain and produce an image of the activity in real time.
- Psychophysiology: they focus on studying the relation between the neuronal processes that are the bases of the psychological processes in humans. It is also anthropocentric and focuses on the proximate causes. In the experiments, they use non-invasive methods that record the activity of the nervous system of the individual while he does some kind of controlled psychological activity.
- Empirical-inductive versus hypothetical-deductive methods.
- Empirical inductive method: from observations and accumulation of observation, you come up with an explanation. It is as a first step, we can’t stop here the investigation. “involves the search for pattern from observation and the development of explanations – theories – for those patterns through series of hypotheses”. It is based on learning from experience.
- Esto supone que, tras una primera etapa de observación, análisis y clasificación de los hechos, se logra postular una hipótesis que brinda una solución al problema planteado. Una forma de llevar a cabo el método inductivo es proponer, mediante diversas observaciones de los sucesos u objetos en estado natural, una conclusión que resulte general para todos los eventos de la misma clase.
- Hypothetical inductive method: when we have a theory, we have to spell out specific predictions about how the world should be if my explanations where right. I observe, I explain, I made a hypothesis, I collect all the data and see how the problem fits my theory.
- Experimental versus correlational paradigms.
What are the key distinguishing characteristics of epigenetic inheritance versus parental effects? Epigenetic inheritance is information that can be transmitted only vertically and involves inheriting your parents’ epigenetic marks already present in their gametes’ DNA, whereas parental effects are anything your parent does that shapes your phenotype, e.g. what they eat, the stress they experience, the parenting style they use to rear you, etc. Parental effect, which are also only vertically transmitted, can start from very instant the zygote is formed.
Single‐out a characteristic that distinguishes predetermined from probabilistic epigenesis. The direction of arrows!
What are the major contributions that the broad‐minded view of psychobiology can make to psychology? Two: integrating processes that operate at different levels of the biological hierarchy and integrating proximate and ultimate causes.
Why is the internal validity higher in experimental than observational studies, and conversely, why is ecological validity higher in observational than experimental studies? It is just a matter of how much control of context, subjects, and variables you are able to incorporate. Control is positively associated with repeatability, replicability and more typically negatively related to the naturalness (ecological validity) of the system that you are studying. Too much control is often associated with distorting, making too artificial, the system you want to understand. And, you are supposed to be interested in understanding how nature works!
Why observational studies cannot be used to test causal hypothesis? Because they don’t control the multiple confounding variables that can impact the system you are studying. In observational studies you just study patterns of co‐variation between the study variables.
In Harlow’s experimental studies, what is the independent variable and what the dependent variable? This you already know: maternal deprivation is the cause (independent variable) and the behavior and the poor psychological function of deprived infants is the effect (dependent variable).
