the child’s feeding behavior towards the mother. It has also been observed that thumb sucking appears in substitution of a display of attachment behavior in an unacceptable context. For instance, when the child’s attachment behavior is frustrated, when the mother is absent for example, non-traditional sucking or any other similar oral activity occurs and is reflected as a displacement behavior.

2. What can vonHolst’s stimulation experiments tell us that we cannot obtain from mere observation of natural behavior? What kind of evidence does he use to show the strength of drives or what other drives are operating?

vonHolst uses a series of stimulation experiments in chickens in order to be able to comprehend the questions of “how” and “why” animals do certain behaviors. He says that there are two ways we can decipher the “how” and “why”, the first is careful observation and the second is the technical mastery of electrical stimulation of regions in the brainstem. He uses chickens as they display clear forms of social behavior and social hierarchies and thus are great study subjects. His experiments were able to analyze and measure certain behaviors. With observation we are able to classify behaviors into simple and complex and are able to attempt to predict when these occur. However, using stimulation we are able to understand those behaviors that occur spontaneously, and understand how stimulating different areas of the brainstem concurrently, alternating between one and the other, can cause different, new, patterns of behavior.

For example, stimulating certain areas of the brainstem, vonHolst found out