L12 - Social Learning

Question 1

What is social learning definition?

Answer 1

Learning that is influenced by observation or interaction with other humans or animals
Requires an observer and a demonstrator

Question 2

What is social facilitation?

Answer 2

Increase of behaviour due to others performing that behaviour e.g. yawning

Question 3

What is stimulus enhancement?

Answer 3

Increase in tendency to interact with object because of the presence of others

Question 4

What is local enhancement?

Answer 4

Increase tendency to approach location because of the presence of others e.g. cat only interested in keyboard only when someone using it

Question 5

What is affordance learning?

Answer 5

Learning about what can be done with objects in the environment - not necessary to have observed it from someone else
e.g. squirrel on a bird feeing releases food, squirrel on the ground climbs up and gets food (looks like social learning but also explained by this, learnt the properties of the feeder)

Question 6

What is food preferences by Wrenn 2003?

Answer 6

Mice at flavoured food
Then placed in cage with another mouse
24 hours given a choice of food
Measure how much of the food they ate
Observer mice ate more cued food, correlated with the amount of sniffing

Question 7

What is Mineka and Cook’s research into observational learning?

Answer 7

Lab monkeys with no fear of snakes
Wild monkeys with fear of snakes
After observation lab monkeys showed fear related behaviour after observing
Explained by classical conditioning

Question 8

What is imitation?

Answer 8

Copying another behaviour exactly to reach the same goal

Question 9

What is emulation?

Answer 9

Exact actions are not reproduced but aims for the same goal, or actions are reproduced for a different goal

Question 10

What is the bidirectional task?

Answer 10

Rats observe demonstrator push L or R
They were placed in box with joystick
Pushed in same direction they observed

4 days of training
Tested where they were rewarded for pushing opposite direction
Response - reinforcer learning occurs via social means

Question 11

What is Horner and Whiten research with chimps and children?

Answer 11

Chimps and children show demo of how to open puzzle box
Included unnecessary behaviour
When box was opaque they both imitate entire sequence
When box was transparent children imitated but chimps did not

Question 12

Did dogs perform over imitation?

Answer 12

If the owner was the demonstrator then they were more likely to copy the irrelevant behaviour