Lecture 10 Flashcards
What study talks about the trade-off between private and public information?
van Bergen et al. 2004
Nine-spiked sticklebacks use both types of info
Social learning
Learning that is influenced by observation of, or interaction with, another animal or its products
Social facilitation
Probability of performing a known behaviour increases in the presence of others doing it e.g. breeding behaviour in kittiwakes
Leads to synchronisation of species-typical behaviour
Why learn from others?
- Less time-consuming
- May allow exploitation of new resources
- Less risky e.g. learning about predation risk
Example of when not to use social learning
Guppies
Laland and Williams (1998)
Naive individuals followed demonstrators along the long route even after demonstrators were removed
More lone fish used the shorter route than shoaling fish
How does opportunity to scrounge affect learning?
-When pigeons in same cage as other bird that removes stopper from tube, it scrounges from other bird rather than learning to unstopper tube itself
Palameta and Lefebvre 1985
Mechanism 1 of social learning
Location enhancement
Presence/behaviour of demonstrator draws observers attention to specific location where behaviour is then acquired through individual learning
Mechanism 2 of social learning
Stimulus enhancement
Presence/behaviour of demonstrator draws observers attention to particular object/stimulus which is then generalised
Mechanism 3 of social learning
Goal emulation
Observer attends to the movement of the object, not the behaviour of the demonstrator, then comes up with its own solution to reach the goal
Mechanism 4 of social learning
Observational conditioning
Demonstrator performs behaviour in presence of certain stimuli
Observer forms association between behaviour and stimuli
Consequently observer performs similar behaviour on encountering those stimuli
Mechanism 5 of social learning
Imitation
Observer copies the topography of the novel behaviour shown by the demonstrator
Define imitation
Observer performs same action as demonstrator as a result of having seen act performed
Action is novel
Observer matches precise form/topography of action
How to study imitation?
Bidirectional control and two-action task
Present animal with problem that can be solved in two alternative ways
Each animal witnesses one of the ways
Consider first response only to rule out individual learning
Budirectional control example
Fawcett et al., 2002
Push and pull by starlings to obtain food
Ghost condition ruled out goal emulation
Two action task example
Difference is animal changes the way it moves object e.g. beak or foot
Carter et al.
To get mealworms starlings has to push down the barrier - both beak and foot action novel
Strong evidence for imitation
Cultural transmission
Where behavioural techniques are transmitted socially and persist over generations
Example of cultural transmission
Black rats stripping pine cones to extract seeds
Terkel et al. 1990
any other method costs more energy than is gained
only gained ability to strip cones when raised with a mother who was able to do it - no evidence of individual or observational learning
Cultural learning
Young rats must also acquire technique from opportunities to practice on partially stripped cones
Two components of cultural transmission (rats and pine cones)
- Access to partially stripped cones
- Inout from mother to focus attention - location/stimulus enhancement
Traditions
Population-specific behaviours transmitted from one generation to the next
E.g. termite fishing in chimpanzees
Major variation in fishing tools selected, not seen in all populations
Differences could be due to individual learning, genetic variation or ecological differences
Features of intelligence
Short term memory
Recall memory
Episodic memory
Human intelligence
Simple memory examples
Habituation
Pavlovian conditioning
Testing for short-term memory
Morris 1981
Water maze with rats
Serial position effect definition
Tendency to remember items at the beginning and end of a list
Example of recall
Birds e.g. Clarke’s nutcracker must remember where they have stored thousands of seeds and retrieve them in spring
What did Kamil et al. say in what year?
1994
Reliance on food storing affects capacity for spatial memory
Episodic memory definition
Tulving 1972
What?
When?
Where?
Example of episodic memory
Clayton and Dickinson 1998
Scrub jay
Peanuts vs wax worm
Only retrieved preferred wax worm if not decayed - knew what the food was, when they stored it and where
Example of tool use in rooks
Bird and Emery, 2009
