Volitional Behavior

Summary

Volitional behaviors are defined and differentiated from autonomous and nonvolitional behaviors. Volitional behaviors are defined as those caused by information that has been adjusted by a central nervous system, whereas autonomous behaviors are primarily determined by genetic information and nonvolitional behaviors are mainly determined by chemical information and information in the nervous system that is not adjusted. The most easily observable volitional behaviors are, in the more complex animals, the result of the learning capability of the central nervous system.

Concepts are synthesized for the most ubiquitous volitional behaviors of food acquisition and coping with the thermal environment. Both of these behaviors are necessary for animals to survive. These concepts are based on the quantitative behavior principles developed in the early part of this book. The concepts were developed so they could be tested against extant behavior data.

The extant data is used to test the concepts. This testing resulted in a high degree of confidence in the application of basic quantitative behavior principles to volitional behaviors.