ABSTRACT
Behavioural anomalies must, as H. Davis observes, imply behavioural expectations. They are therefore exceptions that prove the rule and so are suitable bases from which to assault commonsense or theoretical dogma. S. Freud took the opportunity to mount such an assault on rational psychology through the anomaly of human neurosis; similar opportunities have been taken by students of animal behaviour through the phenomena of displacement activities, animal misbehaviours and normal misdemeanours. The most robust of such misdemeanours in modern psychology are auto-shaping, schedule-induced polydipsia and aggression, and bar-holding with negative reinforcement. Displacement activities are apparently irrelevant activities that ethologists have observed in free-ranging animals that are disturbed in the course of feeding, courting, mating, fighting or similar species-specific activities. A phenomenon that challenges normal learning theory interpretations of behaviour is sign-tracking. Sign-tracking, originally called autoshaping is a characteristic behaviour of pigeons reinforced on a fixed-time schedule with a signal announcing the impending delivery of food.
