3282 (3) Social learning in animals

Two things that seem to serve a similar function have very different origins e.

g. wings of a bird/bat

Common ancestor but different environmental and genetic pressures leads to an accumulation of differences between groups - new species occur

1. Gradualism model - gradual changes introduced over time 2. Punctuated equilibrium model - change occurs because of some catastrophic event

5 behavioural traditions in capuchin monkeys.

An organism needs to have the capacity to acquire information socially not biologically

1. Social information transfer 2. which turns into consistent habits that form: traditions 3. then you get multiple and diverse sets of traditions which form: culture 4.

which then lead to: cumulative culture - by having more sophisticated traditions that are progressively built through elaborations on earlier ones

Shows dynamic mimicry Doesn't suggest social learning Biologically determined behaviour

Tool use was not socially learned as crows raised in captivity still exhibited behaviour - suggests it is biologically inherent. Still shows very good innovation - better than human children.

Local enhancement Mimicry Emulation Imitation

Animals are attracted to the locations at which other animals are behaving Leanr something they would not have otherwise learned

Mimicry

An individual observes and learns about changes of state in the inanimate world as the result of the behaviour of another animal and then uses what it has learned in devising its own behavioural strategies

recognition and reproduction of the goal of the observed behaviour, as well as the specific actions that brought about that goal

Choosing to devise your own way of doing the observed behaviour or reproducing the specific actions and goal of observed behaviour

Local enhancement - macaques was in the right place at the right time to learn a new behaviour

Despite repeated demonstrations the monkeys could not perform the task correctly - shows very poor social learning

Failure of monkeys to show social learning in the trap tube task by Visalberghi & colleagues.

"copy when uncertain" strategy - Infants ate corn that parents preferred. - Males that had migrated switched their preference to the group norm. Shows evidence of social information transfer in monkeys

- crows & octopus - biologically determined behaviours - potato washing macaques - local enhancement - monkeys - van de waal et al.

(2013) - social learning - Orangutans - mimicry - doesn't understand purpose of washing clothes - Chimps - nut cracking - emulation Whiten et. al. - juveniles arent copying what parents are doing - don't imitate consistently but do show imitation The closer we get to humans the more 'imitation-like' behaviour we find evidence of

Whiten et al. argue chimps do imitate - found that if shown a certain method to retrieve a reward they copied the set of actions demonstrated.

Chimps and children would copy the set of actions shown - therefore both show imitation.

Chimps only imitated when the box was opaque and did not imitate when box was clear and actions were obviously casually irrelevant.

Children were motivated by social reasons in retrieving rewards - for apes it was much more functional

Groups move toward behavioural homogeneity while increasing between-group heterogeneity

Adjusting behaviour to along with other people's, irrespective of the underlying motivation.

Children changed their initial choice to match the confederate. Chimps stayed with their initial preference. Orangutans stayed with their initial preference.

Children's behaviour showed it was more socially motivated - adjust behaviour in accordance with the in-group.

- Social learning can be classified into distinct types or forms with classification depending on what is learned and understood about the learning (local enhancement, mimicry, emulation, imitation) - Chimpanzees, our closest living ancestors, appear capable of imitating but seem more inclined to emulate in the wild - monkeys are not great imitators (or even emulators)