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Bonnie, K. E., & Earley, R. L. (2007). Expanding the scope for social information use. Anim. Behav., 74(2), 171–18.
Abstract: Our understanding of how, why, and the circumstances under which animals use social information has been facilitated by three principal areas of research, social learning, public information use and social eavesdropping. With few exceptions, these related concepts have remained remarkably distinct within the literature, with little discussion or integration among them. Are these distinctions warranted? We tackle the issue by exploring similarities and differences between the concepts with respect to how animals gather and use social information, the type of information gathered, how information is packaged, and the relative payoffs to individuals involved. We contend that none of the currently dominant paradigms, social learning, public information use, or social eavesdropping, provide a unifying theme for studying social information use. Instead, we favour the central characteristic of the three concepts, social information use, as the overarching umbrella, and advocate a broader conceptual framework for understanding more comprehensively how animals behave with their social environments. Our intention is not to revolutionize the fields of social learning, public information use or social eavesdropping, but rather to stimulate discussion among researchers investigating the abilities of animals to extract information from the social environment.
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Rogers, A. R. (1988). Does Biology Constrain Culture? Am Anthropol, 90(4), 819–831.
Abstract: Most social scientists would agree that the capacity for human culture was probably fashioned by natural selection, but they disagree about the implications of this supposition. Some believe that natural selection imposes important constraints on the ways in which culture can vary, while others believe that any such constraints must be negligible. This article employs a “thought experiment” to demonstrate that neither of these positions can be justified by appeal to general properties of culture or of evolution. Natural selection can produce mechanisms of cultural transmission that are neither adaptive nor consistent with the predictions of acultural evolutionary models (those ignoring cultural evolution). On the other hand, natural selection can also produce mechanisms of cultural transmission that are highly consistent with acultural models. Thus, neither side of the sociobiology debate is justified in dismissing the arguments of the other. Natural selection may impose significant constraints on some human behaviors, but negligible constraints on others. Models of simultaneous genetic/cultural evolution will be useful in identifying domains in which acultural evolutionary models are, and are not, likely to be useful.
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Giraldeau, L. - A., Valone, T., J., & Templeton, J., J. (2002). Potential disadvantages of using socially acquired information. Phil. Trans. Biol. Sci., 357(1427), 1559–1566.
Abstract: The acquisition and use of socially acquired information is commonly assumed to be profitable. We challenge this assumption by exploring hypothetical scenarios where the use of such information either provides no benefit or can actually be costly. First, we show that the level of incompatibility between the acquisition of personal and socially acquired information will directly affect the extent to which the use of socially acquired information can be profitable. When these two sources of information cannot be acquired simultaneously, there may be no benefit to socially acquired information. Second, we assume that a solitary individual's behavioural decisions will be based on cues revealed by its own interactions with the environment. However, in many cases, for social animals the only socially acquired information available to individuals is the behavioural actions of others that expose their decisions, rather than the cues on which these decisions were based. We argue that in such a situation the use of socially acquired information can lead to informational cascades that sometimes result in sub-optimal behaviour. From this theory of informational cascades, we predict that when erroneous cascades are costly, individuals should pay attention only to socially generated cues and not behavioural decisions. We suggest three scenarios that might be examples of informational cascades in nature.
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Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (1995). Why does culture increase human adaptability? Ethol. a. Sociob., 16(2), 125–143.
Abstract: It is often argued that culture is adaptive because it allows people to acquire useful information without costly learning. In a recent paper Rogers (1989) analyzed a simple mathematical model that showed that this argument is wrong. Here we show that Rogers' result is robust. As long as the only benefit of social learning is that imitators avoid learning costs, social learning does not increase average fitness. However, we also show that social learning can be adaptive if it makes individual learning more accurate or less costly.
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Brennan, P. A. (2004). The nose knows who's who: chemosensory individuality and mate recognition in mice. Horm Behav, 46(3), 231–240.
Abstract: Individual recognition is an important component of behaviors, such as mate choice and maternal bonding that are vital for reproductive success. This article highlights recent developments in our understanding of the chemosensory cues and the neural pathways involved in individuality discrimination in rodents. There appear to be several types of chemosensory signal of individuality that are influenced by the highly polymorphic families of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) proteins or major urinary proteins (MUPs). Both have the capability of binding small molecules and may influence the individual profile of these chemosignals in biological fluids such as urine, skin secretions, or saliva. Moreover, these proteins, or peptides associated with them, can be taken up into the vomeronasal organ (VNO) where they can potentially interact directly with the vomeronasal receptors. This is particularly interesting given the expression of major histocompatibility complex Ib proteins by the V2R class of vomeronasal receptor and the highly selective responses of accessory olfactory bulb (AOB) mitral cells to strain identity. These findings are consistent with the role of the vomeronasal system in mediating individual discrimination that allows mate recognition in the context of the pregnancy block effect. This is hypothesized to involve a selective increase in the inhibitory control of mitral cells in the accessory olfactory bulb at the first level of processing of the vomeronasal stimulus.
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Gould, J. L. (2004). Animal cognition. Curr Biol, 14(10), R372–5.
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Marten, K., & Psarakos, S. (1995). Using self-view television to distinguish between self-examination and social behavior in the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus). Conscious Cogn, 4(2), 205–224.
Abstract: In mirror mark tests dolphins twist, posture, and engage in open-mouth and head movements, often repetitive. Because postures and an open mouth are also dolphin social behaviors, we used self-view television as a manipulatable mirror to distinguish between self-examination and social behavior. Two dolphins were exposed to alternating real-time self-view (“mirror mode”) and playback of the same to determine if they distinguished between them. The adult male engaged in elaborate open-mouth behaviors in mirror mode, but usually just watched when played back the same material. Mirror mode behavior was also compared to interacting with real dolphins (controls). Mark tests were conducted, as well as switches from front to side self-views to see if the dolphins turned. They presented marked areas to the self-view television and turned. The results suggest self-examination over social behavior.
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Anderson, J. R. (1995). Self-recognition in dolphins: credible cetaceans; compromised criteria, controls, and conclusions. Conscious Cogn, 4(2), 239–243.
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Salzen, E. A., & Cornell, J. M. (1968). Self-perception and species recognition in birds. Behaviour, 30(1), 44–65.
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Boughner, R. L., & Papini, M. R. (2006). Appetitive latent inhibition in rats: preexposure performance does not predict conditioned performance. Behav. Process., 72(1), 42–51.
Abstract: Nonreinforced preexposure to a conditioned stimulus impairs subsequent conditioning with that stimulus. The goal of these studies was to assess the extent to which acquisition performance could be predicted from preexposure performance using a correlational approach. For both preexposure and autoshaping, four measures of performance were computed, including overall average lever pressing, lever pressing in the initial session, percentage change in lever pressing, and slopes. These measures were correlated in a large sample of rats trained in an autoshaping situation. None of the three measures of autoshaping performance was consistently predicted by any of the three measures of preexposure performance. These results are consistent with the view that latent inhibition is not reducible to long-term habituation.
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