ONTOGENESIS OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOR 



1403 



cific stereotyped behavior that can be elic- 

 ited by specific sign stimuli. These stereo- 

 typed behavior patterns they consider to be 

 innate in the traditional sense of "instinc- 

 tive." It has been postulated that special 

 neurophysiologic brain mechanisms, referred 

 to as Innate Releasing ^Mechanisms (IRM), 

 operate to release the impounded "innate re- 

 action." Operation of an IRM is a response 

 to specific sign stimuli (the terms cue stim- 

 uli and social releasers have also been ap- 

 plied) in the environment. In the herring 

 gull, for example, the red spot on the beak 

 of the adult has been found to serve as a 

 trigger stimulus which elicits food-begging 

 behavior in the fledgling. 



Systematic study of similar phenomena 

 in humans has not yet been undertaken. A 

 well known human example is the smiling 

 response in infants (Spitz and Wolf, 1946). 

 The smiling response becomes active some- 

 where between the fourth and tenth week 

 of life and is elicited by the sign stimulus 

 of a slowly moving human face or, alterna- 

 tively, the essential elements comprising the 

 gestalt of the human face. Thus a drawing 

 of two circles for eyes and a mark for a 

 nose and mouth moved slowdy in the infant's 

 visual field will suffice. 



A word about terminology is in order at 

 this point. Some psychiatrists, knowing the 

 imjiortance of the theory of instinct in psy- 

 choanalytic doctrine, have been eager to 

 construe ethologic findings as an experi- 

 mental validation of this theory. Doubtless 

 the overlap in terminology in the two fields 

 has encouraged this not entirely justifiable 

 practice and the result has been a semantic 

 entente rather than an identity of opera- 

 tional definitions. In writing this chapter, 

 we have been in no position to be labora- 

 tory purists in the matter of operational 

 definitions; on the other hand, in pointing 

 up the similarity, where it occurs, between 

 concepts derived from ethology and from 

 our own work we have endeavored to avoid 

 the worst sins of argument by analogy. In 

 the context of human psychololgy, we have 

 deliberately avoided some of the ethologic 

 vocabulary as being arbitrarily mechanistic 

 and too likely to breed anachronistic mis- 

 understanding among those chiefly ac- 

 quainted with psychodynamic concepts. 



The premise that behavior is based pri- 



marily on instincts is gradually disai^pear- 

 ing from scientific writing and the tradi- 

 tional concept of instinct is undergoing 

 revision and modification.^ In its place has 

 emerged the view that early experience im- 

 portantly structures subsequent behavior. 

 This is not to say, lest misunderstanding 

 arise, that the animal organism, human or 

 .subhuman, is merely a blank slate to be 

 written upon by the capricious finger of life 

 experiences. Quite the contrary, for there are 

 now many studies in the literature dealing 

 with genetic constitution and the inheritance 

 of basic capacities affecting later learning, 

 temperament and personality (Medawar, 

 1947; Scott, 1953; Scott and Charles, 1953, 

 1954; Palowski and Scott, 1956; Goy and 

 Young, 1957). 



With increasing sophistication in these 

 matters behavioral scientists have begun to 

 abandon the fruitless effort to determine 

 what proportion environmental or heredi- 

 tary factors contribute to a given behavior 

 pattern. Instead, greater attention is being 

 given to the question, "hoiv do these factors 

 operate in structuring behavior?" 



Anastasi (1958) has recently appraised 

 the heredity-environment issue and the 

 multifocal research approaches required to 

 investigate the question "how?" That au- 

 thor rightly points out that the influence of 

 hereditary or environmental factors is al- 

 ways indirect; the more indirect the connec- 

 tion the wider the range of variation of 

 possible outcomes. 



With respect to early experience Beach 

 and Jaynes (1954) see three possible an- 

 swers to the question of how its influence 

 is mediated: (1 ) habits formed in early life 

 may persist in adult behavior; (2) the indi- 

 vidual's perceptual capacities may be so 

 structured by early experience as to affect 

 adult behavior; and (3) during specific 



^ Two exten8i\e ievie\v.s dealing with instinctive 

 behavior have recently been published. In the one, 

 Fletcher (1957) has surveyed the work in ethology, 

 comparative psychology, and social and educational 

 theory. Fletcher endeavors to integrate these new 

 insights with psychoanalytic instinct theory; re- 

 grettably he omits mention of such important 

 American and Canadian work as that of Scott, 

 Nissen, Skinner, Hebb, and Young, to mention 

 only a few. The other review (Schiller, 1957) is 

 more narrowly restricted to a presentation of a few 

 important, perhaps classic, studies in animal be- 

 havior. 



