stereotypy: one construct, many systems

In applied ethology and animal welfare, a stereotypy is a repetitive, unvarying behaviour with no obvious goal or function (a caged mink pacing a fixed loop, a stabled horse crib-biting or weaving), taken as a sign of frustration or a barren environment. Mason's 1991 Stereotypies: a critical review set the modern definition and warned that the same movement can mean different things in different animals. The referent is a behavioural marker of welfare, scored by how fixed and how frequent the pattern is, and it is the same construct that clinical neuroscience studies in people.[1]

Unit

The fixity, frequency, and proportion of time an animal repeats a functionless pattern

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Quantified by the rate, duration, and invariance of the repeated behaviour under observation

In clinical neuroscience, stereotypy refers to the repetitive, patterned, apparently purposeless movements seen in autism, intellectual disability, and schizophrenia, and induced in animals by stimulant drugs. Ridley's 1994 The psychology of perseverative and stereotyped behaviour ties these behaviours to dysfunction of the basal ganglia and dopamine systems and to a loss of behavioural flexibility. It is the same repetitive-behaviour construct that ethology finds in confined animals, here framed as a neuropsychiatric sign with a shared neural basis and measured by observation and rating scales.[2]

Unit

The frequency and patterning of repetitive movements and their neural correlates

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assessed by behavioural rating scales, direct observation, and pharmacological and imaging studies of the basal ganglia