Instinctive drift refers to the tendency of animals to revert to species-specific behaviors when those behaviors conflict with learned responses in conditioning paradigms. In real terms, when researchers ask which of the following behaviors are examples of instinctive drift, they are typically examining cases where a trained animal, such as a rat or pigeon, begins to perform actions that reflect its natural instincts rather than the operant behavior that was reinforced. This phenomenon challenges the assumption that learned behaviors always override innate tendencies, and it has significant implications for animal training, experimental psychology, and our understanding of the balance between nature and nurture Easy to understand, harder to ignore. But it adds up..
We're talking about where a lot of people lose the thread.
The Breland Breland Experiments: A Landmark Demonstration
The concept of instinctive drift was first systematically documented by Keller and Marian Breland in the 195
