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Whalen, A., Cownden, D., & Laland, K. (2015). The learning of action sequences through social transmission. Anim. Cogn., 18(5), 1093–1103.
Abstract: Previous empirical work on animal social learning has found that many species lack the ability to learn entire action sequences solely through reliance on social information. Conversely, acquiring action sequences through asocial learning can be difficult due to the large number of potential sequences arising from even a small number of base actions. In spite of this, several studies report that some primates use action sequences in the wild. We investigate how social information can be integrated with asocial learning to facilitate the learning of action sequences. We formalize this problem by examining how learners using temporal difference learning, a widely applicable model of reinforcement learning, can combine social cues with their own experiences to acquire action sequences. The learning problem is modeled as a Markov decision process. The learning of nettle processing by mountain gorillas serves as a focal example. Through simulations, we find that the social facilitation of component actions can combine with individual learning to facilitate the acquisition of action sequences. Our analysis illustrates that how even simple forms of social learning, combined with asocial learning, generate substantially faster learning of action sequences compared to asocial processes alone, and that the benefits of social information increase with the length of the action sequence and the number of base actions.
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Webster, M. M., & Laland, K. N. (2008). Social learning strategies and predation risk: minnows copy only when using private information would be costly. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B, 275(1653), 2869–2876.
Abstract: Animals can acquire information from the environment privately, by sampling it directly, or socially, through learning from others. Generally, private information is more accurate, but expensive to acquire, while social information is cheaper but less reliable. Accordingly, the 'costly information hypothesis' predicts that individuals will use private information when the costs associated with doing so are low, but that they should increasingly use social information as the costs of using private information rise. While consistent with considerable data, this theory has yet to be directly tested in a satisfactory manner. We tested this hypothesis by giving minnows (Phoxinus phoxinus) a choice between socially demonstrated and non-demonstrated prey patches under conditions of low, indirect and high simulated predation risk. Subjects had no experience (experiment 1) or prior private information that conflicted with the social information provided by the demonstrators (experiment 2). In both experiments, subjects spent more time in the demonstrated patch than in the non-demonstrated patch, and in experiment 1 made fewer switches between patches, when risk was high compared with when it was low. These findings are consistent with the predictions of the costly information hypothesis, and imply that minnows adopt a 'copy-when-asocial-learning-is-costly' learning strategy.
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Hoppitt, W., & Laland, K. N. (2008). Social processes influencing learning in animals: a review of the evidence. Adv Study Behav, 38, 105–165.
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Galef, B. G., & Laland, K. N. (2005). Social Learning in Animals: Empirical Studies and Theoretical Models. BioScience, 55(6), 489–499.
Abstract: AbstractThe last two decades have seen a virtual explosion in empirical research on the role of social interactions in the development of animals' behavioral repertoires, and a similar increase in attention to formal models of social learning. Here we first review recent empirical evidence of social influences on food choice, tool use, patterns of movement, predator avoidance, mate choice, and courtship, and then consider formal models of when animals choose to copy behavior, and which other animals' behavior they copy, together with empirical tests of predictions from those models.
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Reader, S. M., & Laland, K. N. (2003). Animal Innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Laland, K. N., & van Bergen, Y. (2003). Experimental studies of innovation in the guppy. Animal Innovation, , 155–174.
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Reader, S. M., & Laland, K. N. (2009). Animal Innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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