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Byrne, R. W. (2002). Imitation of novel complex actions: What does the evidence from animals mean? In C. T. Snowdon, T. J. Roper, & J. S. Rosenblatt (Eds.), Advances in the Study of Behavior (Vol. 31, pp. 77–105). San Diego: Academic Press.
Abstract: Summary Underlying the various behaviors that are classified as imitation, there may be several distinct mechanisms, differing in adaptive function, cognitive basis, and computational power. Experiments reporting “true motor imitation” in animals do not as yet give evidence of production learning by imitation; instead, contextual imitation can explain their data, and this can be explained by a simple mechanism (response facilitation) which matches known neural findings. When imitation serves a function in social mimicry, which applies to a wide range of phenomena from neonatal imitation in humans and great apes to pair-bonding in some bird species, the fidelity of the behavioral match is crucial. Learning of novel behavior can potentially be achieved by matching the outcome of a model's action, and it is argued that vocal imitation by birds is a clear example of this method (which is sometimes called emulation). Alternatively, the behavior itself may be perceived in terms of actions that the observer can perform, and thus it may be copied. If the imitation is linear and stringlike (action level), following the surface form rather than the underlying plan, then its utility for learning new instrumental methods is limited. However, the underlying plan of hierarchically organized behavior is visible in output behavior, in subtle but detectable ways, and imitation could instead be based on this organization (program level), extracted automatically by string parsing. Currently, the most likely candidates for such capacities are all great apes. It is argued that this ability to perceive the underlying plan of action, in addition to allowing highly flexible imitation of novel instrumental methods, may have resulted in the competence to understand the intentions (theory of mind) of others.
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Byrne, R. W. (1999). Imitation without intentionality. Using string parsing to copy the organization of behaviour. Anim. Cogn., 2(2), 63–72.
Abstract: A theory of imitation is proposed, string parsing, which separates the copying of behavioural organization by observation from an understanding of the cause of its effectiveness. In string parsing, recurring patterns in the visible stream of behaviour are detected and used to build a statistical sketch of the underlying hierarchical structure. This statistical sketch may in turn aid the subsequent comprehension of cause and effect. Three cases of social learning of relatively complex skills are examined, as potential cases of imitation by string parsing. Understanding the basic requirements for successful string parsing helps to resolve the conflict between mainly negative reports of imitation in experiments and more positive evidence from natural conditions. Since string parsing does not depend on comprehension of the intentions of other agents or the everyday physics of objects, separate tests of these abilities are needed even in animals shown to learn by imitation.
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Byrne, R. (2002). When cognitive psychology met Japanese primatology. Anim. Cogn., 5(1), 59–60.
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Bates, L. A., Sayialel, K. N., Njiraini, N. W., Poole, J. H., Moss, C. J., & Byrne, R. W. (2008). African elephants have expectations about the locations of out-of-sight family members. Biol Lett, 4(1), 34–36.
Abstract: Monitoring the location of conspecifics may be important to social mammals. Here, we use an expectancy-violation paradigm to test the ability of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) to keep track of their social companions from olfactory cues. We presented elephants with samples of earth mixed with urine from female conspecifics that were either kin or unrelated to them, and either unexpected or highly predictable at that location. From behavioural measurements of the elephants' reactions, we show that African elephants can recognize up to 17 females and possibly up to 30 family members from cues present in the urine-earth mix, and that they keep track of the location of these individuals in relation to themselves.
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Bates, L. A., & Byrne, R. W. (2007). Creative or created: Using anecdotes to investigate animal cognition. Methods, 42(1), 12–21.
Abstract: In non-human animals, creative behaviour occurs spontaneously only at low frequencies, so is typically missed by standardised observational methods. Experimental approaches have tended to rely overly on paradigms from child development or adult human cognition, which may be inappropriate for species that inhabit very different perceptual worlds and possess quite different motor capacities than humans. The analysis of anecdotes offers a solution to this impasse, provided certain conditions are met. To be reliable, anecdotes must be recorded immediately after observation, and only the records of scientists experienced with the species and the individuals concerned should be used. Even then, interpretation of a single record is always ambiguous, and analysis is feasible only when collation of multiple records shows that a behaviour pattern occurs repeatedly under similar circumstances. This approach has been used successfully to study a number of creative capacities of animals: the distribution, nature and neural correlates of deception across the primate order; the occurrence of teaching in animals; and the neural correlates of several aptitudes--in birds, foraging innovation, and in primates, innovation, social learning and tool-use. Drawing on these approaches, we describe the use of this method to investigate a new problem, the cognition of the African elephant, a species whose sheer size and evolutionary distance from humans renders the conventional methods of comparative psychology of little use. The aim is both to chart the creative cognitive capacities of this species, and to devise appropriate experimental methods to confirm and extend previous findings.
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Stokes, E., & Byrne, R. (2001). Cognitive capacities for behavioural flexibility in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): the effect of snare injury on complex manual food processing. Anim. Cogn., 4(1), 11–28.
Abstract: In chimpanzees, it is only in the restricted context of tool use that manual and cognitive skills have been described, comparable to those that gorillas and orang-utans display in obtaining plant foods. We report the complex food preparation skills used to eat, without tools, the leaves of the tree Broussonettia papyrifera in the Sonso community of chimpanzees at Budongo Forest, Uganda. Able-bodied individuals used multi-stage techniques that required bimanual role differentiation at several stages, and were hierarchical in organisation. A total repertoire of 14 techniques was found, with strong preference in all individuals for either of two of these; 6 additional techniques were found when flowers and leaves were eaten together. However, in this community over 20% of individuals suffer from some form of upper- or lower-limb injury as a result of snares. We investigated the manner of compensation for upper-limb injury. Only the most severely injured showed reduced feeding efficiency. Injured individuals were found to use the same repertoire of techniques as able-bodied chimpanzees. We found no evidence to suggest that injured individuals were able to develop wholly novel techniques optimal for their specific injuries, although shifts in preference for particular techniques did occur. Rather, injured individuals used novel ways of achieving particular steps in the process; by “working around” their impairments; in this way, they managed to use the same techniques as the able-bodied. Since snare injuries generally befall young animals, these results suggest that chimpanzees learn techniques partly through observational learning (of, necessarily, able-bodied individuals).
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Byrne, R. W., & Whiten, A. (1990). Tactical deception in primates: the 1990 database (Vol. 27). German Primate Center.
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Whiten A., & Byrne, R. W. (Eds.). (1997). Machiavellian Intelligence II – Extensions and Evaluations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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