Measuring Behavior 2005: Dickins et al.

Introducing the analysis of sequences in behavior

D.W. Dickins

Honorary Senior Fellow, School of Psychology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

After suitable experience with behavioral coding the student of behaviour needs to move on to consider the structure of behavior. Examples of the ways in which individual behaviours, or interactions between individuals, may progress through a series of stages need to be observed. The statistical nature of unravelling the interdependencies between the emission of certain categories of behavior has to be understood in all but the most obvious examples of behavior. Students should do this by hand using simple examples before attempting to use supportive programs such as that provided by The Observer^® (Noldus Information Technology bv, The Netherlands).

Probable examples used here to demonstrate how students might learn to conduct lag sequential analysis will be:

For individual behavior: self-grooming (cat, monkey, human); exploratory sequences (mice); skilled sequences (humans).
For interactions between individuals: nest relief in kittiwakes; courtship sequences in fruit flies.

Clues that observational analysis may provide as to the causal mechanisms underlying sequential structures in behavior will be considered. Mention will be made of temporal patterns in behavior that may only be discerned using more sophisticated algorithms, such as Theme™ (PatternVision Ltd., Iceland).

Paper presented at Measuring Behavior 2005 , 5^th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research, 30 August - 2 September 2005, Wageningen, The Netherlands.