Lecture 10

Question 1

What study talks about the trade-off between private and public information?

Answer 1

van Bergen et al. 2004

Nine-spiked sticklebacks use both types of info

Question 2

Social learning

Answer 2

Learning that is influenced by observation of, or interaction with, another animal or its products

Question 3

Social facilitation

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Why learn from others?

Answer 4

• Less time-consuming
• May allow exploitation of new resources
• Less risky e.g. learning about predation risk

Question 5

Example of when not to use social learning

Answer 5

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

Question 6

How does opportunity to scrounge affect learning?

Answer 6

-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

Question 7

Mechanism 1 of social learning

Answer 7

Location enhancement
Presence/behaviour of demonstrator draws observers attention to specific location where behaviour is then acquired through individual learning

Question 8

Mechanism 2 of social learning

Answer 8

Stimulus enhancement

Presence/behaviour of demonstrator draws observers attention to particular object/stimulus which is then generalised

Question 9

Mechanism 3 of social learning

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Mechanism 4 of social learning

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Mechanism 5 of social learning

Answer 11

Imitation

Observer copies the topography of the novel behaviour shown by the demonstrator

Question 12

Define imitation

Answer 12

Observer performs same action as demonstrator as a result of having seen act performed
Action is novel
Observer matches precise form/topography of action

Question 13

How to study imitation?

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Budirectional control example

Answer 14

Fawcett et al., 2002
Push and pull by starlings to obtain food
Ghost condition ruled out goal emulation

Question 15

Two action task example

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Cultural transmission

Answer 16

Where behavioural techniques are transmitted socially and persist over generations

Question 17

Example of cultural transmission

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Two components of cultural transmission (rats and pine cones)

Answer 18

• Access to partially stripped cones

- Inout from mother to focus attention - location/stimulus enhancement

Question 19

Traditions

Answer 19

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

Question 20

Features of intelligence

Answer 20

Short term memory
Recall memory
Episodic memory
Human intelligence

Question 21

Simple memory examples

Answer 21

Habituation

Pavlovian conditioning

Question 22

Testing for short-term memory

Answer 22

Morris 1981

Water maze with rats

Question 23

Serial position effect definition

Answer 23

Tendency to remember items at the beginning and end of a list

Question 24

Example of recall

Answer 24

Birds e.g. Clarke’s nutcracker must remember where they have stored thousands of seeds and retrieve them in spring

Question 25

What did Kamil et al. say in what year?

Answer 25

1994

Reliance on food storing affects capacity for spatial memory

Question 26

Episodic memory definition

Answer 26

Tulving 1972
What?
When?
Where?

Question 27

Example of episodic memory

Answer 27

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

Question 28

Example of tool use in rooks

Answer 28

Bird and Emery, 2009