<P> Instinctive drift or instinctual drift is the tendency of an animal to revert to instinctive behaviors that interfere with a conditioned response . The concept originated with B.F. Skinner 's former students Keller Breland and Marian Breland when they tried to teach a raccoon to put tokens into a piggy bank . Instead , the raccoon drifted to its instinctive behavior of putting the tokens on the ground or turning them over in its paws , as they often do with food . </P>
the early work into the phenomenon called instinctive drift was performed by
Keller Breland Marian Breland