Social learning Flashcards
What is social learning and asocial learning
Social: learning influenced by observation of or interaction with another animal or its products (objects / product of a behaviour of another animal)
Can be adaptive … but not always adaptive as info may be wrong, inappropriate or outdated
Asocial: learn appropriate response to an env through trial + error -> acquire reliable info but costly to obtain (often better quality than social info + arises from genetically fixed behaviours)
Example: Bees can use both
- Social info: Waggle dance, Trophallaxis = share food mouth to mouth, Antennal contact – scented sugars on ends of antennae
- Asocial info: previosly aqcuired
- Study: Bees trained to go to 2 feeders and then one was made redundant.
- > Waggle dance followed preferentially to recruit bees to new feeder
-> evidence of personal information use
-> olfactory cues eg. trophallaxis, antennal contact play little role in recruiting bees (but do contain info on the source)
When are where should social learning evolve
a) Env varies too fast for genetic change, but slow enough for social info to still be relevant
b) Asocial leaning = too risky / costly to obtain
c) When social info outperforms personal info
d) In social species where opportunity to learn and when juvenilles are social with experienced adults arises
tranmission modes
Horizontal – current -> current gen
Vertical – parent -> offspring
Oblique – previous -> next gen of non-kin
can also get interspecific social learning (e.g. bee species)
Learning mechanisms
- Social facilitation – leaning enhanced by presence of others
- Local enhancement – drawn to area where others are + where will learn info about area
- Stimulus enhancement – drawn to object eg. tool another is using
- Imitation – copying actions
- Emulation – copying end products (solution not actions used to get there)
- Teaching ?
Sub optimal social learning
Social info can be beneficial as cheap to acquired, but can be suboptimal
Example:
- bees biased to assume resource is good if other conspecific bees are on that plant
- In study, trained that certain colour flower is bad resource, if put social cue on unrewarding coloured flower then ignore prior learning and follow social cue
Example: Chimpanzees
- Young chimpanzees observe older chimpanzees cracking open nuts to eat
- Juvenile observes adult using a stick instead of a rock which is less efficient.
- However, the juvenile mimics the adult.
Example: Where to go
Example: Painted turtle navigation
- Residents know how to move from drained pond to non-dry pond
- Translocated adults can’t find route to new water source – all residents do
- Juveniles 1-3yrs if translocated can learn route (critical learning period when <4yrs) -> all within 3.2m of known route
- Juveniles 4+ yrs can’t learn route
Oblique, Local enhancement
Example:
- ducks in a pen may ignore an escape hole unless they are near another duck who escapes through the hole, thus drawing their attention to it
Example: where to forage
Example: Blue tits and great tits
- Blue tits forage = top of trees
- Great tits forage = lower down
- GT raised w/ BT feeds higher up tree and BT raised w/ GT feeds lower down the tree
- Cross-raising -> early learning shifts eco niche in direction of foster species
- Stronger shift in GTs as more generalist so more flexible + change more
- Changes is lifelong
- Shows cultural transmission as well as genetic inheritance of niche
Vertical, social facilitation
Example:
- untrained adult female guppies swam with trained conspecifics to feed, and in the process learned a route to a food source
- When demostrator was removed guppies followed the route.
Example: What to sing
Example: great tits and blue tits
- BT raised by GT song matches GT song more closely (tho not quite same)
Vertical, imitation
What to eat?
Example: Meerkats
- Meerkat pups fed dead prey when young -> then disabled prey -> then live intact
- prey = deadly scorpions
- Adult feeds pup depending on pup call which varies with age
Vertical/oblique, teaching
Example: baboon study in Namibian desert
- Baboons learn from each other what to eat
- Dr Alecia Carter set baboons 2 learning tasks involving a novel food and a familiar food hidden in a cardboard box and allowed ignorant baboons to watch baboons who knew the tasks (had eaten novel food or got into box).
- Bold anxious baboons learn more than shy, laid-back baboons.
oblique, mimicry
Example: who to mate with
Example: Mate choice of insects
- Individually … females more attracted to good quality males
- If female watches male associating w/ other females + asked to rethink decision …
- Switches to prefer low quality male as assumes has mated w/ other females = social learning via observation
- Females rely on visual cues for mate choice
Horizontal, imitation
Social learning strategies
Un-biased transmission
State-based
- Copy if uncertain
- > e.g. Bees show more social behavior when foraging in regions with high flower variability
- Copy if disatisfied
Model-based
- Copy if familiar, kin, age based, dominant, success based
- >e.g.chickens peck at red button to get food – will peck button more if observed dominant pecking it, almost not difference if watch subordinate pecking
Frequency dependent
- Copy if majority
- > Conformity – tendency to change behaviour to match majority
- > Study using pink and blue die to show tasty or not food. Males baboons moving between groups switch food source + copy preference of new group rather than follow innate preference / preference of old groups
- Copy if rare
what is teaching and Mimimum criteria
Teaching reserved for transfer of skills, concepts, rules and strategies – not simply handing over of declarative info (facts) or simple procedural info such as how to get somewhere by guiding indivs there
- Teacher modifies behaviour only in presence of a naïve pupil
- Teacher pays a cost or at least gain no immediate benefit from behaviour modification
- Pupil must acquire knowledge / learn skill faster than would otherwise as result of teaching
Teaching is rare in animals + its existence is contentious
Teaching examples
1) Pied babblers
a. Adult only “puurs” when nestlings present
b. Adults puuring longer lose more weight when raising chicks
c. Chicks associate puur call w/ food -but unclear benefit (so is it teaching)
2) Ants
a. Tandem running w/ pauses only when naïve ants present
b. Teacher ant incurs speed cost as walks slower + pauses
c. Student ant finds new food source faster than would have alone
! BUT is it really teaching or telling the answer rather than teaching to solve problem + apply skill to other problems
3) Cheetah = good example
a. Cheetah brings back live prey to kittens only when has kittens
b. Cost to her as prey often lost + energy to catch prey
c. Kittens get better at hunting -> transferable skill used for rest of life
Is social learning social
Occurs between interspecific species
eg. bumblebees go to flower w/ other bumbles / honeybees on
Occurs in non-social groups
e.g. Juvenile rattlesnakes learned to hunt more efficiently by observing and mimicking the foraging behaviors of adult conspecifics
Occurs in ‘simple’, small brained animals
Is it just associative learning (pavlovian conditioning)
Example: Bee
- Learning mechanisms based on elemental associations, (Pavlovian or operant conditioning), may account for social learning in bees
First-order conditioning -> bee associates other conspecific (CS1) on a flower as sign of good resource
second-order conditioning -> bee sees conspecific (CS1) on a blue flower (CS2) so now associates blue as being a sign of good resource.
Bee now uses blue flowers as a sign of a good resource even though may have never visited a blue flower before.
Overview
Social learning: Learning that is influenced by observation of, or interaction with, another animal (typically a conspecific) or its products
When should it evolve?
Transmission modes
- Horizontal – current -> current gen
- Vertical – parent -> offspring
- Oblique – previous -> next gen of non-kin
can also get interspecific social learning (e.g. bee species)
Learning mechaniss
- Social facilitation – leaning enhanced by presence of others
- Local enhancement – drawn to area where others are + where will learn info about area
- Stimulus enhancement – drawn to object eg. tool another is using
- Imitation – copying actions
- Emulation – copying end products (solution not actions used to get there)
- Teaching ?
What is learnt examples?
* How to eat
* What to eat
* Where to go and where to stay
* What to fear
* What to sing and signal
* Who to mate with
Suboptimal social information use
Social learning strategies:
- Un-biased transmission
- State-based
- Model-based
- Frequency dependent
Does teaching exist in animals?
- Criteria
- Examples
What’s social about social learning?
1. Emerges between different species
- Can emerge in non-social animals
- Present in “simple”, small-brained animals
- Asocial and social learning performance covary
