Abstract

CUNHA, Walter Hugo de Andrade. Ant's trail, the course of a psychologist and ethologist. Psicol. USP [online]. 1995, vol.6, n.1, pp.43-73. ISSN 1678-5177.

This paper reports the path that the author went through in the investigation of some apparently emotional behaviors in ants, and the evolution of his interpretations about these phenomena: an initial cognitive interpretation was replaced, firstly, by an operant conditioning approach, which proved to be improductive. The author relates how he came to the discovery of a new behavioral mechanism, complementary to reflexes and fixed action patterns, and equally automatic and philogenetically determined. This proposition imposes changes in the current conceptions of psychology, ethology and their mutual relationships, and endows ethology with the conditions it presently lacks in order to become a truly complete biological of behavior science.

Keywords : Ants; Behavior modification; Behavioral assessment; Ethology; Behaviorism; Comparative psychology.

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