learning Flashcards
learning defintion
change in an animal caused by experienced detectable later in their behaviour
individual learning
Conditioning (trial and error)
Insight (experiments by Wolfgang Köhler, 1912)
Stimulus enhancement (exposure to problem-solving situation)
social learning
Emulation (duplicate result, but not method)
Imitation (read intention of others; “Monkey see, monkey do”)
Teaching
general learnign mechasnims
conditionin (Classic/operant)
trial and error
insight
food avoidance
socia learning
classical conditionign
pavolv dog (passive learning)
neutral response (reinforcement)
operant conditioning
shape the behaviour
skinner rat box (active learning)
voluntary and consequence driven
positive and negative reinforcement
trial and error
thorndike ‘puzzle box’
hungry cats; selfreinforced learnign based on positive/negative outcomes
insight learning
Köhler–> sudden realization of solution to a problem
apes and stacking boxes with banana hanging experiment: understand relationship between elements to solve a problem, driven by previous experiences
social learning
produced by others; social and public information
social learning: why?
conserve energy
save time
minimize exploration risks
risks of social learning and costs
out of date information
false information or irrelevant information
developmental fallabillity
large brain size and complexity
decreased competitive abillity
delayed reproduction
increase juvenile vulernabillity
increased parental investment
processes behind social learning
Gildaleu 1997:
- area coping: LOCAL ENHNACEMENT
—-> blue tits go to where others area - object copying: STIMULUS ENHNACEMENT
—> blue tits focus on milk bottles because others do
- behaviour copying: IMITATION/EMULATION
—> blue tits open milk bottles and drink because others do
producers vs scroungers study
barnard and sibly 1981:
scrougers use investemnts of others to gain access to limited resource sin frequency-dependent areas
tend to steal food, nest parasitism etc.
example: house sparrow: producers forage, scroungers steal (but too many producers outcompete scroungers)
collared fly catcher case study
quantity vs quality: testing the public information hypothesis
IMMIGRATION: lowers when quantity and quality do not align (no local information)
EMMIGRATION: when there is an increase in the population so not enough quality/quantity
how is social learnin studied
demonstrator-observer pairing
observational conditioning
imitation/emulation experiments
neurocognitive mechanisms
public information hypothesis
animals monitor current reproductive success of ocnspecifics to assess local habitat quality and choose breeding sites
demonstrator observer pairing studies
- rat food choice
2, mate choice in guppies
rat food choices and infants
galef and cleark 1971:
without parents food avoidance is not learned
but possibly some avoidance is transmitted in breast milk (learning)
mate choice in guppies
Dugatkin et al 1996: prior preferences change to majority anad of high status individual
for example guppies prefer males with orange but when this is experemtnally changed, they then prefer less orange males if others do so (Post exposure to new preference)
observational conditioning studies
toy snak and flower experiment w macaques
toy snake and flower experiment
cook and mineka 1990: looked at fear learning in lab-born macaques
videos of adults reacting in ‘fear’ to snake and flower
the fear of snake is learned, but not flower—> hence ‘genetic predisposition to fear’
observational conditionin
learning responses from othres, such as fear
imitation and emulation studies?
yawning (massen)
whiten et al 1997: fruit bo
buttelmeann et al 2007; overimitaiton
whiten et al 1997 fruit box
chimps and children given boxes with fruit to poke/twist around
children: 2-3 tend to IMITATE MORE
chimps tend to EMULATE more
whiten et al 2009 imitation
chimsp are emulators only in SIMPLE tasks
buttelmann et an 2007 overimitation
raitonal imitation in chimps and children studied (i.e. use hands but not feet to open door)
both pass
neurocognitive mechanisms studies
amygdala is the ‘fear’ centre in brian and lights up during exposures in learning
van de waal 2013 vervets + social learning
food migraiton habits based on GROUP NORMS and not individual behaviours
migration males= adopt new group behaviour especially from strong HR individuals
smolla et al 2015 social learning is favoured when..
competition for limited resourcs;
favoured when weak competition
resource quality variance is high and low environmental change
less socia learning when low variance and high competition within patch
how to track behaviour change?
- genetic evolution
- individual behavioura plasticility (innovation, social learning, individual learning)
describe when social learnign might occur
under intermediate environmental change
when will behavioural channges occur under different environments?
random
rapid
intermediate
slow
RANDOM; none
RAPID: individual
INTERMEDIATE; social
SLOW: genetic
rendell et al 2010 models show..
social laerning better than asocial learing even when asocial learning has no cost difference and when SL is not used
