social learning

Question 1

Define social learning

Answer 1

changes in an individuals behaviour resulting from attending to anothers behaviour or its products

• social species
• maybe those with long parent-offspring associations

Question 2

Describe the process of social learning

(various behavioural processes)

Answer 2

1. Enhancement
   - stimulus enhancement
   - local enhancement
2. observational conditioning
3. goal-directed emulation
4. limitation

(all are proximate mechanisms)

Question 3

i it always necessary for animals to observe/understand the precise actions performed by others for social learning to take place

Answer 3

no but attention to a location/obect/individuals is required

Question 4

what ARE THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL LEARNING?

Answer 4

1. ENHANCEMENT
   - a naive animal learns somethig new via the presence/behaviour of a conspecific (helps survival)
2. stimulus enhancement =another animals presence/behaviour near an item, attracts the naiv animal
   - e.g. mates, carcass
   - e.g. pointing experiments
3. local enhancement = another animal attracts the naive individual to a location
   - e.g. feeding areas
   - this learning can be indirect (non-observational)
   - it isn’t necessary for naive animals to attend to the demonstrators actions
   - e.g. signs of foraging but not direct observations

-

Question 5

what were the key findings of Heyes et al. (2000) in an experiment with rats (pushing lever in a box to get food)

Answer 5

1. stimulus enhancement occured in rats who observe (no screen) demonstrater responses

• respons bias in favour of demonstrator lever
  2. if odour cues had mediated behaviour, the non-observing (screen) rats should have selected the same lever as their demonstrator

Question 6

what were the key findings of Worden and Papaj (2005) experiment wth bumblebees and flower choice?

Answer 6

1. observer bees watched
   - live bee mdels: demonstrator bees trained to forage on either orange/green artificial flowers
   - artificial bee models: model bees on orange/green artificial flowers

model colour influenced observers choice: observers landed on proportionally more of the flowers of the same colour as their demonstrators (live/artificial models)

–> implicatoin for foraiging for food

• model bee (live/artificial) colour choice significantly affected choice of observer bees
• may have implications for how colonoie monitor changes in food resources - through copying non-nest mates to exploit new food sources

Question 7

Briefly describe observational conditioning

Answer 7

1. learning about the relationship between two stimuli
   - attending to demonstrators
2. e.g. conspecifics reactions to prey can elicit responses
   - no fear respons to snakes in some rhesus monkeys -> learn via watching responses of wild-born monkeys
   - predispositionto behave in certain ways to biological significant things

Question 8

Briefly describe goal-directed emulation

Answer 8

1. naiv animal attempts to achieve the same goal- but produces own behaviour pattern in doing so

-not same topographical behaviour

-e.g. chimps using rake to retrieve food

Question 9

briefly describe the pattern of imitation in the process of social learning

Answer 9

naiv animal replicates another animals nbehaviour to achieve goals

Question 10

which social learning is considered more cognitively demanding?

observational social learning or non-observational

Answer 10

observational social learning

Question 11

what is the adaptive value of social learning?

Answer 11

reduce costs

• time taken for individual learning
• energy expenditure, risk of predatoin during foraging, etc.

Question 12

Briefly describe vertical/poblique social learning

Answer 12

1. vertical -offspring from parents

-e.g. infants following and pbserving mothers foraiging

oblique - juveniles from other adults

• if there is a choice of demonstrators, there can be a bias towards more skilled (and observation-tolerant) individuals
  e. g. nut cracking capuchins

Question 13

briefly describe horizontal social learning

Answer 13

1. across peers
   - e.g. foraiging areas
   - e.g. individuals eavesdropping on the outcomes of conflic

Question 14

how is culture defined in social learning?

what are some alternative expanations?

Answer 14

a group of animals possesses particular behavoural traits which are transmitted vial social learning

• innovative behaviour, learned via other individuals
• transmission can be vertical or horizontal
• AKA tradtions
  e. g. potato washing and wheat-in-water, japanese macaques

alternative:

• individual learning (play with items in water)
• trained by caretakers
• offspring collecting scraps in water from parents

Question 15

What is DAID?

Answer 15

Do as I do

• used to examine imitation abilities of many species, including great apes, parrots, dolphins, and dogs
• training is initiated by training dog to perform a small number of simple tasks via operant conditioning, on command “do it”
• the novel behaviours are demonstrated to the dog and they’re instructed to “do it”
  e. g. Fugazza and Miklosi (2014) compared DAID and shaping -> DAID dogs had significantly shorter learning latencies and learned more tasks (DAID might be useful in addition to current popular techniques, esp. for complex tasks)