Behavior change (BC) DOI is the transition from one observable behavioral state (B1) to another (B2) occurring within a dynamic context and triggered by an informational event rather than by direct physical, chemical, or mechanical forcing. Within General Informational Flow DOI, organisms encounter continuous environmental variation, only some of which becomes informationally relevant for the regulation of action. Behavior change is the point at which that relevance becomes empirically visible: it marks the moment when a situation has been recognized as meaningful in relation to the viability constraints of Energy, Safety, and Reproduction (ESR) DOI. Within the Five Task Model DOI, behavior change functions as the primary observational unit through which informational regulation becomes visible across species. It represents a shift in ongoing activity patterns such as direction, speed, orientation, engagement status, signaling activity, or interaction structure. In this framework, cognition does not produce behavior as such — it changes behavior by selecting among viable continuations under informational conditions. The comparative importance of behavior change is demonstrated in the Comparative Dataset of Informational Tasks (1530 Species) DOI, where transitions from B1 to B2 serve as the primary observational handle for identifying recurrent informational task domains across biological life.
Sergei A. Frolov (Wed,) studied this question.