Animal Behaviour - Social Learning
Social learning is the process of acquiring knowledge or skills by observing a conspecific (another member of the same species). It allows animals to learn efficiently while avoiding the risks and costs of trial-and-error learning. The learned behaviour should persist even without the demonstrator present.
What is Social Learning? What are the benefits of this?
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.
Key Terms
What is Social Learning? What are the benefits of this?
The acquisition of knowledge or skills from a conspecific. A route to learning while avoiding the costs associated with trial and error learning. T...
What are the 3 forms of social learning?
Stimulus and local enhancement
True imitation
Mimicry
Define stimulus and local enhancement
Attention is drawn to a particular object or area of the environment by a conspecific.
Define true imitation
Learning a new behaviour from seeing it done - brings immediate benefit to the individual
Define mimicry
Learning an new behaviour from seeing it done, but without any immediate benefit to the individual.
Which form of social learning is most cognitively demanding? Which is least?
Stimulus enhancement is least cognitively demanding
Mimicry is most.
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| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
What is Social Learning? What are the benefits of this? | 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. |
What are the 3 forms of social learning? | Stimulus and local enhancement True imitation Mimicry |
Define stimulus and local enhancement | Attention is drawn to a particular object or area of the environment by a conspecific. |
Define true imitation | Learning a new behaviour from seeing it done - brings immediate benefit to the individual |
Define mimicry | Learning an new behaviour from seeing it done, but without any immediate benefit to the individual. |
Which form of social learning is most cognitively demanding? Which is least? | Stimulus enhancement is least cognitively demanding Mimicry is most. |
What type of behaviour may be confused with social learning but isn’t? | Social FACILITATION - eg. feeding when others feed and flocking behaviour This is strengthening of a previously well learned response due to presence of others |
What types of stimuli may mediate social learning? | Visual Olfactory Auditory |
Give an example of social learning via olfactory cues | 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. |
Give an example of learning via auditory cues | 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 |
How does vocal mimicry evolve? | 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 |
What has developed alongside vocal mimicry? | Physical mimicry - eg parrots (Moore, 1992) |
Give an example of stimulus/ local enhancement. How does this function? | 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 |
What is imitation? Is this cognitively demanding? | Exactly copying the motor patterns of demonstrator. Highly cognitively demanding |
How may stimulus/local enhancement be distinguished from imitation? | Chimps twist v poke box (Whiten, 1998) |
Give an example of a field observation and how ambiguous the interpretation of the form of social learning is. | Chimp putting bowl on head Seen someone putting things on head, tried it - kept head dry Seen someone putting a bowl on head - copied exactly - kept head dry Copied someone putting a bowl on their head but with no purpose or direct gain to the chimp |
Give an exemplar study to distinguish stimulus/local enhancement from imitation | Rats with a joystick - found to push in the same direction relative to demonstrators body, therefore it is imitation (Heyes and Dawson, 1980) |
What must be considered when explaining behaviour as a social learning model? | That lower cognitive abilities cannot explain the phenomenon - novel stimulus may attract attention and then they learn by trial and error for example. |
What factors influence social learning abilities? | ID of demonstrator Dominance Age Salience (eg. bigger/brighter comb) Presence of other social learners - producers/scroungers |
DONT UNDERSTAND Explain the producers/scroungers phenomenon. Give an example. | 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 |
Give two examples of animals that will/will not pay attention to certain types of individuals. | Geese will learn from humans Hens will not pay attention to cockerels |
What are the 3 criteria for “teaching” to be occurring? Who developed these? | 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 |
Give 3 examples of animals teaching. | Hens teach their chicks to forage by over exaggerating behaviour (NIcol and Pope, 1996) Felines and whales provide semi-dead prey to teach hunting skills (Rendell and Whitehead, 2001) Chimps teach young to crack nuts using shammer and anvil (Boesch, 1991) |
Define adaptive behaviour | Behaviour that fosters effective/successive individual interaction with the environment |
Why is social learning studied? | 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 |
Have cultures been noted in animal populations? | Chimps - tool usage differs between areas |