Social Learning

Question 1

What is Social Learning? What are the benefits of this?

Answer 1

The acquisition of knowledge or skills from a conspecific. A route to learning while avoiding the costs associated with trial and error learning. The behaviour or new information should be retained by the observer in the absence of the demonstrator.

Question 2

What are the 3 forms of social learning?

Answer 2

1. Stimulus and local enhancement
2. True imitation
3. Mimicry

Question 3

Define stimulus and local enhancement

Answer 3

Attention is drawn to a particular object or area of the environment by a conspecific.

Question 4

Define true imitation

Answer 4

Learning a new behaviour from seeing it done - brings immediate benefit to the individual

Question 5

Define mimicry

Answer 5

Learning an new behaviour from seeing it done, but without any immediate benefit to the individual.

Question 6

Which form of social learning is most cognitively demanding? Which is least?

Answer 6

Stimulus enhancement is least cognitively demanding

Mimicry is most.

Question 7

What type of behaviour may be confused with social learning but isn’t?

Answer 7

Social FACILITATION - eg. feeding when others feed and flocking behaviour
This is strengthening of a previously well learned response due to presence of others

Question 8

What types of stimuli may mediate social learning?

Answer 8

Visual
Olfactory
Auditory

Question 9

Give an example of social learning via olfactory cues

Answer 9

Rats are more likely to eat food if they smell it on a conspecific. NB: do not learn aversion socially (conspecific can be ill/unconcious, will still ^food intake.

Question 10

Give an example of learning via auditory cues

Answer 10

Young songbirds cannot learn to sing unless they hear an adult male when they were young (sensitive period)

• actual birds more effective teachers, and produce more variable songs than tapes
• bias shown to tutors - more salient males ^ effectiveness of learning

Question 11

How does vocal mimicry evolve?

Answer 11

From song copying - birds that can song copy have a neural template to compare sounds they hear to sounds they produce

• relaxation of sensitive period allows lifelong learning
• attention broadened to a wider set of stimuli

Question 12

What has developed alongside vocal mimicry?

Answer 12

Physical mimicry - eg parrots (Moore, 1992)

Question 13

Give an example of stimulus/ local enhancement. How does this function?

Answer 13

eg. Rats stripping pine cones (Terkel, 1996)
Presence of demonstrator ^ salience of a location or stimulus
Subsequent acquisition of same behaviour is via instrumental learning

Question 14

What is imitation? Is this cognitively demanding?

Answer 14

Exactly copying the motor patterns of demonstrator.

Highly cognitively demanding

Question 15

How may stimulus/local enhancement be distinguished from imitation?

Answer 15

Chimps twist v poke box (Whiten, 1998)

Question 16

Give an example of a field observation and how ambiguous the interpretation of the form of social learning is.

Answer 16

Chimp putting bowl on head

1. Seen someone putting things on head, tried it - kept head dry
2. Seen someone putting a bowl on head - copied exactly - kept head dry
3. Copied someone putting a bowl on their head but with no purpose or direct gain to the chimp

Question 17

Give an exemplar study to distinguish stimulus/local enhancement from imitation

Answer 17

Rats with a joystick - found to push in the same direction relative to demonstrators body, therefore it is imitation (Heyes and Dawson, 1980)

Question 18

What must be considered when explaining behaviour as a social learning model?

Answer 18

That lower cognitive abilities cannot explain the phenomenon - novel stimulus may attract attention and then they learn by trial and error for example.

Question 19

What factors influence social learning abilities?

Answer 19

ID of demonstrator 
Dominance 
Age 
Salience (eg. bigger/brighter comb)
Presence of other social learners - producers/scroungers

Question 20

DONT UNDERSTAND Explain the producers/scroungers phenomenon. Give an example.

Answer 20

Indiscriminately copying others behaviour is not adaptive - it is only adaptive when scroungers are uncommon
EG. Sparrows - dominant sparrow allows some subordinates to forage nearby
Dominants scrounge from subordinates and protect them from other dominants

Question 21

Give two examples of animals that will/will not pay attention to certain types of individuals.

Answer 21

Geese will learn from humans

Hens will not pay attention to cockerels

Question 22

What are the 3 criteria for “teaching” to be occurring? Who developed these?

Answer 22

Teacher alters behaviour only in presence of naive observer
Modified behaviour incurs a cost/no benefit to the teacher
Naive observer squires skills more quickly/new skills it would have not otherwise developed

Caro and Hauser 1992

Question 23

Give 3 examples of animals teaching.

Answer 23

1. Hens teach their chicks to forage by over exaggerating behaviour (NIcol and Pope, 1996)
2. Felines and whales provide semi-dead prey to teach hunting skills (Rendell and Whitehead, 2001)
3. Chimps teach young to crack nuts using shammer and anvil (Boesch, 1991)

Question 24

Define adaptive behaviour

Answer 24

Behaviour that fosters effective/successive individual interaction with the environment

Question 25

Why is social learning studied?

Answer 25

Transmission of abnormal behaviour eg. tail biting, feather pecking (or other behaviour, eg. blue tits pecking through milk tops)
Cognitive abilities affect housing and husbandry

Question 26

Have cultures been noted in animal populations?

Answer 26

Chimps - tool usage differs between areas