William Timberlake

Education and Career

Timberlake earned his PhD in experimental psychology at University of Michigan in 1969 under the supervision of David Birch. He joined the Indiana University psychology faculty the same year, where he remained for the rest of his career, becoming adjunct member of the biology department, and member of the cognitive science programme.

Timberlake was the key mover behind the establishment of the interdepartmental animal behavior programme and Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior (CISAB) at Indiana University (co-founded with biologist Ellen Ketterson). CISAB is a cross-disciplinary research and training unit designed to engender cross-disciplinary cooperation, for which its independence from any department was considered important. The animal behavior programme was among the world's first academic entities to issue degrees specifically in animal behavior.

Timberlake established (with co-chair, James Holland) an ethics committee to oversee animal research on the Bloomington campus (the ancestor of today's BIACUC, Bloomington Institutional Animal Use and Care Committee). Timberlake also established research ethics courses and assured that they remained a part of core curricula of the animal behaviour programme at Indiana University. He served on the Campus Committee on Teaching Ethics in Science from 1989, then on the Board of Fellows of the Poynter Center for the Study of Ethics from 1993.

Timberlake coined the term theriomorphic. A theriomorphic approach is species-centred, one that is based on an explicit model of the animal studied.

Behaviour systems

Timberlake's behaviour systems approach rejects the separation of functional capacities, such as learning, from the particulars of performance, and begins by modelling performance in a given species and environment. The resultant model is then used to frame an understanding of the focal construct in a specific context.

Disequilibrium theory

Timberlake's disequilibrium approach to reinforcement (also known as: behaviour regulation theory, response deprivation theory, molar equilibrium theory, and disequilibrium theory) resituates the locus of behaviour change from a response strengthening power of particular environmental stimuli envisioned in mainstream views, like food, to constrained activities, like eating. Reinforcement is attributed to the animal's correcting deficits in relative activity rates.