Instinctive drift

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.