20 Behavioral response and adaptation to environment

Imkongtenla Pongen

epgp books

 

 

 

 

Contents:

    Introduction

1.      Levels of stimulation and stress

1.1  Main varieties of hypo- and hyperstimulation

2.      Major dimensions of sensory deprivation and overstimulation

3.      Problem of adaptation

3.1  Concept of behavioral adaptation

3.2  Changes in preference as a function of adaptation to stimuli

3.3  Adaptation of affect for diverse stimulus dimensions

3.4  Adaptation as the basis for the optimization function

4.      Behavioral adaptation to the environment

4.1  Process of adaptation

4.2  Cost of adaptation

Summary

Conclusion

 

Learning Objectives:

1.   Describe the levels of stimulation and stress.

2.   Summarize the major dimensions of sensory deprivation and overstimulation.

3.   Explain the problems faced in the process of adaptation.

4.   Find out the factors that regulate fuel selection during different kinds of exercise.

 

Introduction

 

Environment directly influences the health of an individual. This view could be traced back as far as Hippocrates. Pioneers in the field of medicine and biology such as Claude Bernard, Ivan Setchenov and Rene Dubos are also of the view that disease is an adaptation to a set of conditions that disturbs the equilibrium between the internal and external processes of the body.

 

Biologists and those in the field of medicine have primarily focused themselves with the influence of physical conditions like nutrition, air pollutants, climate, etc. on health and disease, thereby following a homeostatic model. Whereas, psychologists and psychiatrists have primarily focused themselves with the environmental stressors emerging out of interpersonal relations, occupational demands, etc. with a concept that stress is a product of conditions of personal conflict and defects in our socio-cultural institutions.

 

This present module assumes that there are attributes in our physical environment that may act as psychological stressors which may affect the behavior and psychological health of an individual. It would provide a framework to study such stressors and consider the modes of adaptation used by the individual in coping with them. Since we will focus on the generalized aspects of environmental stimulation rather than specific stressors like noise pollution, etc, it is vital to present the stimulus environment in terms of this attribute before considering the problems of adaptation in this realm.

 

1. Levels of stimulation and stress

 

The individual functions within a certain range of conditions of the environment and more particularly on stimulation variables contained in the environment. This does not include only such attributes that have a direct effect on the physiological processes such as temperature, pressure, etc. but also those attributes to which the person respond by excitation of his sensory receptor mechanisms. Such environmental stressors at the behavioral level act similar to physiological stressors. In another consequence, psychological stressors may depart from some level of stimulation in a bidirectional way i.e., in either over or understimulation.

 

Theoretical system as proposed by Fiske and Maddi (1961), deals with the role of attributes in the stimulus environment in activating the behavior and maintaining the arousal tone. They brought out the relationship between high activation levels or intensities of stimulation and negative effect. They equated overstimulation to stress to the exclusion of understimulation and dismiss that overstimulation is irrelevant to the effects of stimulus variation on behavior. Both of these views are arguable because overstimulation as well as understimulation can be viewed as stressful which is seen in some literature (Zubek, 1969).

 

Stress is a resultant of either hyper- or hypo-stimulating conditions is similar to the ‘sensoristasis’ concept as given by Schultz in 1965 which states that stress is a state of cortical arousal that impels the organism in a waking state to maintain an optimal level of variation in sensory functions. This concept draws to Cannon’s concept of homeostasis which considers that increase in stimulation beyond the optimal level disturbs the internal balance and disrupts the behavior. This further points to Lindsley’s (1961) concept of the role of reticular formation having similar effects on sensory restriction and overload. Although Lindsley’s model reinforces the idea of conceiving hyper- and hypo-stimulation as comparable terms, i.e., considering the disturbance in sensoristasis in either direction , however there may be possibility that the behavioral manifestations may be different in the two scenarios. Hence it would be vital to maintain distinction between hypo- and hyper-stimulation while at the same time search for the possibility of their similarities in the individual’s mode of adaptation to them.

 

1.1 Main varieties of hypo and hyperstimulation

 

Hypostimulation is of three kinds, viz., deprivation of sensory stimulation, deprivation of social interaction and deprivation of movement.

 

Deprivation of sensory stimulation: It involves the removal of all potential sources of input of stimulus across some or all sensory modalities mostly by placing the individual in a dark, sound-proof room, preventing him/her from engaging in any stimulating activities in Hebb’s laboratories (1949). We can see the relevance of the sensory deprivation work in terms of understanding the response of the individual to circumstances such as extended stays in Antarctic or by astronauts on prolonged space flights.

 

Deprivation of social interaction (isolation): The stimulation that is produced by interaction and communication with other human beings is treated separate from sensory deprivation. The distinctive feature of social stimulus is that it provides a feedback to the individual’s responses and arouse an effect that inanimate stimuli would not be able to provide.

 

Deprivation or restriction of movement (confinement): Confinement is a different form of hypostimulation and is found in conjunction with either sensory or social deprivation or both as in case of prisoners solitary confinement. It is difficult to raise an organism     under severe deprivation of sensory stimulation (eg: in the dark)  at the same time restricting its movement. However at the same it is easy to find a condition where confinement can be done upto the extend of immobilization without either sensory deprivation or social isolation (eg: confining a patient to hospital bed for an extended period of time).

 

Hyper-stimulation consists of the following:

 

Sensory overload: Sheer exposure to stimulation has much less effects on behavior rather different effects than overload of information. The upper end is thus designated as “sensory overstimulation” implying that the prefix “over’ is used in a descriptive sense and to reserve the term “overload” to situations where the individual process information that is been carried by the stimuli impinging on them.

 

Crowding: Crowding refers to presence of a large number of social objects and it reflects a commonly encountered aspect of urbanization that brings in psychological stress. Effects of crowding have most recently been in the work of Calhoun (1962).This stress potential of crowding derives less from the quality of stimulation represented by people collectively (g exposures of crowd to parades).

 

Hyperdynamic conditions: An inordinate amount of physical movement marks the condition of the opposite pole of restricted movement. But it is difficult to envisage high amounts of movement even though there are some specific situations characterized by high levels of physical activity. Treadmill could elicit such form of restricted movements but environmental circumstances are not readily available.

 

2. Major dimensions of sensory deprivation and overstimulation

 

Sensory deprivation can be defined as complete absence of stimulation. But does this mean an absolute zero of stimulation (eg: complete darkness) or an unvarying homogeneous background of stimulation (eg, unpatterned light transmitted through translucent hemispheres)?This problem becomes more pronounced at the overstimulation end. We may take for granted that it is not possible to incorporate every kind of stimulation into our experiment. It is thereby necessary for us to examine the components in which sensory-deprivation-overstimulation continuum is analysed. There are five components:

 

(i) Level: This is the only aspect that shows variation in a large range of continuum that brought out bi-polar nature of the under- to overstimulation dimension and brings us close to the physiological mechanisms on stress to body’s state of equilibrium. This is shown mostly with respect to temperature where similar reactions are seen both at the physiological and behavioral levels such as shivering or rubbing one’s hands and from sweating to turning on the air conditioner.

 

(ii) Diversity: Both in a simultaneous and successive sense, the role of variation in stimulation have been receiving increasing interests in psychological experiments. It is reflected in Berlyne’s study (1960) wherein heterogeneity of the elements of a stimulus reflects one among many ways in which complexity is operationalized. Fiske and Maddi (1961) postulated that stimulus variation is a basic property of organism and brought in the concept of “variation-seeking” in explaining the different forms of exploratory activity. Yet our environment may produce the phenomenon of “visual pollution” i.e the wearisome mélange of diverse sights, eg, the gas stations, hamburger stands on the streets, etc.

 

(iii) Patterning: Earlier we discussed that deprivation of visual stimulation was done through homogeneous field of diffuse light, ie, one that completely lacks patterned information. While a diversified stimulus devoid of structure would represent overstimulation, ie., one that would be overtaxing the capacity of the individual to encode and transmit information. This principle is recognized in the aesthetic field (Meyer, 1956), eg: music. It is likely that experience changes the degree to which to which the individual is capable to structure the input of the stimulus, i.e., to extract the information according to the type of patterning contained in it. One source of stress in our environment is from the difficulty an individual faces in trying to impose the pattern on the chaotic or random constellation of stimuli confronting him as can be seen in Lynch’s work (1960) of urban landmarks, boundaries, etc that aid the individual in structuring it.

 

(iv) Stability/instability: The most critical component of a stimulus is the degree and type of movement it contains in terms of its potential to give rise to stress through overload of information. Two reasons for projected role of movement in the fields of complex stimulus is that, firstly, it is difficult to ignore a moving stimulus unlike a stationary stimulus. The other reason is that when the elements of the stimulus field are in a possible state of flux, a dynamic element is introduced into the information processing capacity in requirements for the need to identify the stimuli without extensive examination. Here we again confront the bipolar dimension in terms of its effects on the concerned individual.

 

(v) Meaningfulness: The extent to which a given stimulus taxes the individual’s information processing capacity is a function directly associated with its meaningfulness to him i.e., his degree of familiarity with it and the degree of structure or organization.

 

3. Problem of adaptation

 

The influence of a given level or kind of stimulation present in the environment on an individual derives its difficulty from the universal fact of adaptation.

 

3.1         Concept of behavioral adaptation

 

Here we will restrict the concept of adaptation to dimensions and attributes of the stimulus field. Adaptation can be defined as a quantitative shift in the distribution of responses (judgmental or affective) along a stimulus continuum is a function of the continued exposure to stimulus as represented by Helson’s (1964) adaptation –level theory.

 

First by defining adaptation as a shift in responses, we may think that we are leaving the neutralization process, i.e., reduction of power of a given stimulus to induce response, yet in many cases this shift can be reformulated by considering variations in response as a function of intensity of stimulation. For instance, comparing the change in response of a person to different dosages of insecticide.

 

Second, adaptation may be a change in behavior which has the effect of modifying the stimulus to which the person is exposed as viewed by Sonnenfeld (1966).For instance an American on a visit to Great Britain during winter months may need to put on an extra sweater or an overcoat but after a prolonged stay in England, he may no longer find it uncomfortable at the prevailing cold temperature since he his level of adaptation has shifted downwards.

 

3.2 Changes in preference as a function of adaptation to stimuli

 

In a study by Haber (1958), subjects were immersed one hand in water at a given temperature and then their preference for waters at other temperatures both warmer and colder than the original temperatures were determined. Their preferences were found out to be a joint function of the deviation of the temperature of the sample from the one to which the subject had been pre-exposed and the absolute level of the temperature. For temperatures at an intermediate range, preference peak on either side of the level of adaptation produced by the temperature of exposure, a function originally put forward by McClelland et al in 1953. But when more extreme temperatures were used, preference functions reduced monotonically for values beyond the level of adaptation temperature. This means that no subject immersed in water that was warmer than the extreme temperature. This show the adaptation processes at work in respect to temperature.

 

3.3 Adaptation of affect for diverse stimulus dimensions

 

Helson (1964) has postulated reference theory which states that any given stimulus would be evaluated in terms of adaptation level formed through previous experience with varying stimuli. For instance, a picture would be judged more beautiful if it follows exposure to a picture independently rated as ‘ugly’ at the end of the continuum than it is exposed to a picture rated as ‘beautiful’.

 

3.4 Adaptation as the basis for the optimization function

 

The preceding consideration of level of adaptation phenomena suggests that the optimization function is a characteristic of preference and arousal measures in relation to the diverse dimension of stimulation which are established through prior experience. Since adaptation levels are resultant of prior experience, they are expected to fall at some intermediate value. The most compelling evidence comes from the study of Vitz (1965) where random walks of different lengths were given and the study of Dorfman and McKenna’s (1966) where preference was given to black and white patterns in fineness of grain (i.e, content of information). In both studies, moderately inverted U-shaped function for group curves was observed when broken into subsets of individuals grouped according to most preferred complexity level and progressively more monotonic curves when approaching the extremes. These studies suggests the differences in individual level of adaptation with respect to dimension in question.

 

McClelland et al hypothesis has a severe limitation. It is difficult to obtain finely graded series of stimuli once we move away from simple dimensions of intensity such as temperature, brightness, etc. It is also difficult to evaluate a very large number of such stimuli to a single individual.

 

4. Behavioral adaptation to the environment

 

The optimal level of stimulation and its relation to adaptation level as discussed above is very important for the response of individual to stimulation in the environment. Individuals should be able to respond to a given stimuli in terms of levels of adaptation established in prior exposure to different environments. Responses to environmental stimuli are preferred subjected to the effect of levels of adaptation that predominated in the individual’s past experience (we like best what we are most used to) is brought forth by Sonnenfeld in 1967. He represented a flat terrain versus a mountainous terrain, and arid scene versus a place where water was prominent, etc to his subjects. Mostly the preferences of his subjects were in the direction of the habitat they were presently living in .One paradox to this theory is that people search for change or variation in their environment and are attracted to the unfamiliar as opposed to familiar (Maddi, 1961). To resolve this contradiction, one way will be that in case of short term activity (eg, vacationing) we are more biased toward novel conditions differing from the condition where we live, whereas for permanent stay we are more dependent on adaptation level extended by prior experience.

 

4.1 Process of adaptation

 

Some of the mechanisms the individual has at its disposal to add in his adaptation to an unpleasant stimulus environment is given by Miller (1969) in his treatment of the problem of overload of information.

 

Filtering: This refers to an individual’s tendency to process only a portion of the input of stimulus that is affecting him and to reject the remainder. This mechanism cannot be directly applied to loudness, temperature and the like but it can be applied to higher order stimulation such as density of people or stimulus that can be described in discrete order. This is vital in adaptation to conditions of sensory overload, eg those that prevail in urban areas. It impairs the person’s ability to respond to information which may be relevant to him. For instance we can say that the contributing factors for retardation of development of language could be due to the overdose of visual and auditory stimuli with which the “culturally deprived” children are subjected to –from the TV screens to the neighbors brawling and the ever present group of siblings.

 

Milgram in 1970 has presented an analysis of adaptation to overload in urban environment which results out of crowding of people. He cites mechanisms people resort to adaptation . Only sheer numbers of people i.e., intensity of overload coming from the presence a large number of people in the cities is not only the determining factor for adaptation syndrome. The perception of harm to the individual and other cultural factors contributes to distrust toward strangers. Overload in the form of excess social stimulation forces the individual to avoid information from other people and this appears to be one of the psychological stressors associated with life in urban areas.

 

4.2 Cost of adaptation

 

The cost to the individual to adapt to particular environmental conditions to understanding of disease has been given due importance by biologist, Rene Dubos. Glass et al has brought in “the psychic cost of adaptation”. He found evidence both at the behavioral and physiological level for adaptation of individuals to a situation in which subjects had to work when exposed to a burst of noise. The group exposed to the unpredictable noise post two measures of resistance to frustration and task of proofreading, had a residual effect and it manifested in lower performance of proofreading and reduced tolerance of frustration. This residual effect therefore represents the “price” of the adaptation that has occurred, ie., whether it took place due to or despite the adaptation during the original period of exposure.

 

Summary

 

There are attributes in our physical environment that may act as psychological stressors which may affect the behavior and psychological health of an individual. The individual functions within a certain range of conditions of the environment and more particularly on stimulation variables contained in the environment. This does not include only such attributes that have a direct effect on the physiological processes such as temperature, pressure, etc but also those attributes to which the person respond by excitation of his sensory receptor mechanisms. Such environmental stressors at the behavioral level act similar to physiological stressors. Psychological stressors may depart from some level of stimulation in a bidirectional way i.e, in either over- or understimulation.

 

Hypostimulation is of three kinds, viz., deprivation of sensory stimulation, deprivation of social interaction and deprivation of movement. Deprivation of sensory stimulation involves the removal of all potential sources of input of stimulus across some or all sensory modalities mostly by placing the individual in a dark, sound-proof room, preventing him/ her from engaging in any stimulating activities. The stimulation that is produced by interaction and communication with other human beings is treated separate from sensory deprivation. Confinement is a different form of hypostimulation and is found in conjunction with either sensory or social deprivation or both.

 

Hyper-stimulation consists of sensory overload, crowding and Hyperdynamic conditions. Sheer exposure to stimulation has much less effects on behavior rather different effects than overload of information. Crowding refers to presence of a large number of social objects and it reflects a commonly encountered aspect of urbanization that brings in psychological stress. An inordinate amount of physical movement marks the condition of the opposite pole of restricted movement which is referred to as hyperdynamic conditions.

 

Sensory deprivation can be defined as complete absence of stimulation. But does this mean an absolute zero of stimulation (eg complete darkness) or an unvarying homogeneous background of stimulation (eg, unpatterned light transmitted through translucent hemispheres)?This problem becomes more pronounced at the overstimulation end. There are five components of sensory-deprivation-overstimulation continuum, viz., Level, diversity, patterning, stability/instability and meaningfulness.

 

The influence of a given level or kind of stimulation present in the environment on an individual derives its difficulty from the universal fact of adaptation. Adaptation can be defined as a quantitative shift in the distribution of responses (judgmental or affective) along a stimulus continuum. It is a function of the continued exposure to stimulus as represented by Helson’s (1964) adaptation –level theory. Changes in preference is a function of adaptation to stimuli. Helson (1964) has postulated reference theory which states that any given stimulus would be evaluated in terms of adaptation level formed through previous experience with varying stimuli. The preceding consideration of level of adaptation phenomena suggests that the optimization function is a characteristic of preference and arousal measures in relation to the diverse dimension of stimulation which are established through prior experience.

 

Some of the mechanisms the individual has at its disposal to add in his adaptation to an unpleasant stimulus environment is given by Miller (1969) in his treatment of the problem of overload of information. Filtering refers to an individual’s tendency to process only a portion of the input of stimulus that is affecting him and to reject the remainder. Milgram in 1970 has presented an analysis of adaptation to overload in urban environment which results out of crowding of people. Overload in the form of excess social stimulation forces the individual to avoid information from other people and this appears to be one of the psychological stressors associated with life in urban areas. In Glass’s study, it was found out that adaptation was both at the physiological as well as the task performance level and the post- test measures revealed residual effects of the original stressor on measures of tenacity of behavior and efficiency of attention.

 

Only by employing both physiological and behavioral variables in adaptation studies, we can arrive at a healthier environment for our activities.

 

Conclusion

 

How adaptive is adaptation? What are the pros and cons of adaptation as compared to adjustments dealing with unpleasant environmental conditions? With regard to the first question, an individual cannot respond continually to stimuli that are a constant feature of the environment with the intensity of affective arousal he shows on his first confrontation with the environment. It is necessary that neutralization of affect occur with respect to negative aspect of the stimulus experienced earlier , over which the individual have no control. But such kind of neutralization process could be considered adaptive in the functional sense only when no price is paid by the individual for resorting to it. Functional sense is based on long term effects of adaptation to the environment stimulus confronting a person over a long period of time. Our knowledge of this at the behavioral level is limited, however we have more evidence on adaptation of bodily functions to to environmental stressors such as high altitudes (Baker, 1969), temperature, etc.

 

From evolutionary point of view, the problem is of recent origin. Until the advent of recent technology, human beings of the historical past were well fitted to their habitats and there were less environmental stressors that placed demands on the process of adaptation. Technology has brought in two types of changes. It has brought new kinds of environmental stressors placing a heavy burden on the individual’s ability for biological and psychological adaptation, for instance, crowding, noise pollution, and other unusual environments such as sea lab and space capsules. At the same time, technology has provided us with an alternative form of adaptation which helps us to resort our exposure to the environmental stressors such as air conditioning, soundproofing in homes and offices, central heating ,etc.

 

We are left with a choice between adapting to environmental stressors or resorting to the response of adjustment by either directly altering the stimuli or escaping from them. This distinction of Sonnenfeld’s (1966) between adjustment and adaptation has many practical implications. We have been given less recognition to adaptation as a mechanism to deal with stimulation from the environment that varies in some way from an individual’s ideal and the need to change the environment to remove such stimuli and create a more satisfying one has been overtly stressed. However, Dubos (1965) has stressed on providing a satisfying place for all human beings in relation with humanistic values.

 

Two questions need to be raised in context with the account of the nature, purpose and limitations of behavioral adaptation. Firstly, whether the human’s capacity for adaptation is subjected to the role of prior experience in the past? If we perceive adaptation as a process which is active and every change in the level of stimulation brings this process into play, then this process may conform to the “law of disuse” such that its effectiveness may be reduced following an extended period wherein the individual might have minimized his exposure to the stimuli. If we try to analyse this in context of adaptation-level, we might look at the question as variability of stimuli and its role in determining the slope of the adaptive function. Variability might be a factor influencing the range of stimuli over which the change from neutral to positive to negative takes place as suggested by McClelland et al .The second question can be derived from Glass’s study which puts in that adaptation occurs differentially at different behavioral levels. In his study, it was found out that adaptation was both at the physiological as well as the task performance level and the post- test measures revealed residual effects of the original stressor on measures of tenacity of behavior and efficiency of attention. The relevance of this question is that an individual’s decision to either adapt or to overt adjustment in his environment is based on his subjective experience of comfort and the opportunities available to him for resorting to adjustment depending on the feasibility, cost, etc.

 

The above cited questions thus bring out the complexity of adaptation as a multilevel problem and the importance of considering both physiological and behavioral criteria in assessing the effect of the environmental stimuli on an individual and his capability to adapt to them.

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GLOSSARY

 

Adaptation The process of physiological, genetic and biochemical modification to a particular production environment and/or stress in order to survive and reproduce.

 

Stress- A state of cortical arousal that impels the organism in a waking state to maintain an optimal level of variation in sensory functions

 

Shivering The involuntary contractions of the skeletal muscles throughout the body for regulating heat when exposed to cold surrounding for a long period.

 

Crowding The presence of a large number of social objects and it reflects to a commonly encountered aspect of urbanization that brings in psychological stress.

 

Did you know?

 

1.  Overstimulation as well as under stimulation are viewed as stressful

2. We have been given less recognition to adaptation as a mechanism to deal with stimulation from the environment that varies in some way from an individual’s ideal and the need to change the environment to remove such stimuli and create a more satisfying one has been overtly stressed.

 

Interesting facts:

  • Treadmill could elicit hyperdynamic condition (restricted movements) but environmental circumstances are not readily available
  • Any states with any given stimulus are evaluated in terms of adaptation level formed through previous experience with varying stimuli.

    References

  • Dalmont A (Ed.). (1975). Physiological Anthropology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
  • Fiske D.W and Maddi S. R. (1961). A conceptual framework. In functions of Varied Experience,eds, Fiske D.W and Maddi S. R..Homewood,Ill:Dorsey Press,pp.11-56.
  • Glass D.C., Singer J.E.,Friedman L.N. (1969). Psychic cost of adaptation to an environment stressor. J.Person.Soc.Psychol.12:200-10.
  • Glass D.C. and Singer J.E.(1972).Urban Stress: Experiments on Noise and Social Stressors.New York.Academic Press.
  • Helson H.(1964). Adaptation-level theory.new York:Harper & Row.
  • https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article/26/3/665/233718/Behavioral-responses-to-changing-environments
  • Lindsley D.B.(1961).Common factors in sensory deprivation, sensory distortion and sensory overload. In Sensory Deprivation,eds. P.Solomon et al., Cambridge:Harvard University Press,pp.174-194.
  • Maddi S.R. (1961).Exploratory behavior and variation-seeking in man. In functions of Varied Experience,eds, Fiske D.W. and Maddi S.R. Homewood.ILL:Dorsey Press,pp,253-77.
  • Milgram S.(19700. The experience of living in cities.Science 167:1461-68.
  • Miller J.G.(1960). Information input overload and psychopathology. Amer.j.Psychiat,116:695-704.
  • Schultz D.P. (1965). Sensory Restriction :Effects onn Behavior.new York:Academic Press.
  • Sonnenfeld J.(1966).Variable values in space landscape: An inquiry into the nature of environmental necessity. J. Soc, Issues 33:71-82.

    Suggested readings:

  1. Hebb D.O. (1949). The Organization of Behavior.New York:Wiley.
  2. Wohwill.J.F.(1968). Amount of stimulus exploration and preference as differential functions of stimulus complexity. Percept. & Psychophys.4:307-12.
  3. Zubek J.P. (ed.).(1969).Sensory Deprivation:Fifteen Years of Research.New York:Appleton-Century-Crofts.
  4. https://brainmass.com/biology/human-biology/behavioral-adaptations-to-the-environment-192404
  5. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1998.tb09546.x/full
  6. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1752-4571.2010.00166.x/full