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Nicol, C. J. (2006). How animals learn from each other. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 100(1-2), 58–63.
Abstract: This paper explores ways by which animals may learn from one another, using examples drawn mostly from the chicken, an animal for which social learning is likely to be less dangerous than individual learning. In early life, the behaviour of the hen is important in encouraging chicks to peck at edible items. Maternal display not only attracts chicks to profitable food items, but also redirects their attention away from harmful or non-profitable items. Older chicks can enhance their foraging success by observing the behaviour of conspecifics within their own social group. Hens have been trained to perform a novel behaviour (key-pecking for food) by observation of a trained demonstrator bird. Moreover, observers learnt most from watching dominant demonstrators. Thus the ability to learn from others is not `fixed', but depends on the context and the social identity of both the observer and the demonstrator.
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Nicol, C. J. (1995). The social transmission of information and behaviour. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 44(2-4), 79–98.
Abstract: Social influences on established behaviour and on the acquisition of new information and behaviour are reviewed. Distinctions between social facilitation and contagious behaviour are drawn and suggestions for further research on contagious behaviour are made. Socially derived visual, olfactory and auditory cues are considered as important influences on behaviour and subsequent learning. The evidence supporting two potential mechanisms of social learning, i.e. stimulus enhancement followed by individual learning, and imitation, is reviewed in detail. It is argued that the functions of social learning are similarly heterogeneous and include motor skill acquisition, gathering of environmental information, and social conformity. Factors affecting the spread of socially acquired skills, including the social relationship between demonstrator and observer, are highlighted. Lastly, the few studies of social learning that have been conducted with domestic species are reviewed and potential applied goals that could stimulate further research in this area are suggested.
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Heyes, C. M. (1995). Imitation and flattery: a reply to Byrne & Tomasello. Anim. Behav., 50(5), 1421–1424.
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Allen, C. (2006). Transitive inference in animals: Reasoning or conditioned associations? In S. Hurley, & M. Nudds (Eds.), Rational Animals? (pp. 175–186). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Abstract: It is widely accepted that many species of nonhuman animals appear to engage in transitive inference,
producing appropriate responses to novel pairings of non-adjacent members of an ordered series
without previous experience of these pairings. Some researchers have taken this capability as
providing direct evidence that these animals reason. Others resist such declarations, favouring instead
explanations in terms of associative conditioning. Associative accounts of transitive inference have
been refined in application to a simple 5-element learning task that is the main paradigm for
laboratory investigations of the phenomenon, but it remains unclear how well those accounts
generalise to more information-rich environments such as social hierarchies which may contain scores
of individuals, and where rapid learning is important. The case of transitive inference is an example of
a more general dispute between proponents of associative accounts and advocates of more cognitive
accounts of animal behaviour. Examination of the specific details of transitive inference suggests
some lessons for the wider debate.
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Sovrano, V. A., Rainoldi, C., Bisazza, A., & Vallortigara, G. (1999). Roots of brain specializations: preferential left-eye use during mirror-image inspection in six species of teleost fish. Behav. Brain. Res., 106(1-2), 175–180.
Abstract: It has recently been reported that predator inspection is more likely to occur when a companion (i.e. the mirror image of the test animal) is visible on the left rather than on the right side of mosquitofish Gambusia holbrooki. This very unexpected outcome could be consistent with the hypothesis of a preferential use of the right eye during sustained fixation of a predator as well as of a preferential use of the left eye during fixation of conspecifics. We measured the time spent in monocular viewing during inspection of their own mirror images in females of six species of fish, belonging to different families--G. holbrooki, Xenotoca eiseni, Phoxinus phoxinus, Pterophyllum scalare, Xenopoecilus sarasinorum, and Trichogaster trichopterus. Results revealed a consistent left-eye preference during sustained fixation in all of the five species. Males of G. holbrooki, which do not normally show any social behaviour, did not exhibit any eye preferences during mirror-image inspection. We found, however, that they could be induced to manifest a left-eye preference, likewise females, if tested soon after capture, when some affiliative tendencies can be observed. These findings add to current evidence in a variety of vertebrate species for preferential involvement of structures located in the right side of the brain in response to the viewing of conspecifics.
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Hall, C. (2007). The impact of visual perception on equine learning. Behav. Process., 76, 29–33.
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McCall, C. A. (2007). Making equine learning research applicable to training procedures. Behav. Process., 76(1), 27–28.
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Hothersall, B., & Nicol, C. (2007). Equine learning behaviour: accounting for ecological constraints and relationships with humans in experimental design. Behav. Process., 76(1), 45–48.
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Nicol, C. J., & Pope, S. J. (1999). The effects of demonstrator social status and prior foraging success on social learning in laying hens. Anim. Behav., 57(1), 163–171.
Abstract: Opportunities for social learning within a group of animals are likely to be influenced by the social dynamics of that group. Some individuals may be more influential demonstrators than others even when there are no differences in their skill level or performance. In this study of domestic hens,Gallus gallus domesticus, differences in demonstrator salience were examined. From 24 separate flocks we selected as demonstrators a dominant cockerel, a dominant hen, a mid-ranking hen or a subordinate hen. Demonstrators were pretrained to perform an operant discrimination task to obtain food. Six observers from each flock individually watched the demonstrator perform the task for four 5-min sessions held on consecutive days. On the fifth day observers were tested individually in the operant chamber. We analysed data from 19 flocks, where there were no quantitative differences in demonstrator performance. Observer hens of relatively high social status performed more correct operant pecks than observer hens of relatively low social status. Demonstrator category also had a significant effect on subsequent observer behaviour. Hens that had observed cockerels performed very few general pecks or operant pecks. Hens that had observed dominant hens performed more operant pecks, but hens that had observed sub-ordinate hens performed more general pecks in the chamber. The results suggested either that there was an interaction between dominance and gender in demonstrator salience or that dominant hens might have been influential because of some factor imperfectly associated with their dominance status. A possible candidate was the foraging ability of the dominant hens. In a second experiment using the same protocol, we manipulated the prior foraging success of dominant hens from four additional flocks but this had no significant effect on their subsequent influence as demonstrators.
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Reed, P., Skiera, F., Adams, L., & Heyes, C. M. (1996). Effects of Isolation Rearing and Mirror Exposure on Social and Asocial Discrimination Performance. Learn. Motiv., 27(2), 113–129.
Abstract: Four experiments examined the effects of rearing in isolation on rats performance on discrimination-based and social learning tasks. After demonstrating that the rearing procedures produced similar results in an open field task to those previously established (Experiment 1), rats were subjected to two discrimination tasks: an instrumental occasion setting procedure (Experiment 3) and a nonspatial win-stay/lose-shift versus win-shift/lose-stay procedure (Experiment 4). Deficits in acquisition of the necessary discriminations were noted in the rats raised in isolation, but there were no differences between isolation-reared and socially reared subjects in response acquisition per se. In Experiment 2, rats were presented with an observational learning task using the bidirectional control procedure. Socially reared rats had a tendency to imitate the behavior they had observed, but rats raised in isolation performed the opposite behavior to that observed, indicating a failure to use a conspecific as a reference point in the task. The presence of a mirror during rearing in isolation was also investigated, but was found to have little effect in attenuating the above deficits in behavior.
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