Instinctive drift or instinctual drift is the tendency of an organism to revert to instinctive behaviors that can interfere with the conditioned response. The concept originated with B. F. Skinner's former students Keller and Marian Breland when they tried to teach a raccoon to put money into a piggy bank. Instead the raccoon instinctively drifted to its instinctive behavior of putting money on ground or turning it over in its paws, as they would do with food.
Famous quotes containing the words instinctive and/or drift:
“There is in him, hidden deep-down, a great instinctive artist, and hence the makings of an aristocrat. In his muddled way, held back by the manacles of his race and time, and his steps made uncertain by a guiding theory which too often eludes his own comprehension, he yet manages to produce works of unquestionable beauty and authority, and to interpret life in a manner that is poignant and illuminating.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)