Chapter 6: Cultural Transmission( PrincipalsofABehavior ed#3) )

"Motor Training" hypothesis of play behavior

"stone play" may facilitate the development of perceptual and cognitive skills. -juveniles engaged in many short bouts of "stone play" -adults engaged in fewer but longer bouts of "stone play" hypothesized to slow down the deterioration of cognitive processes seen in aging primates.

genetic and cultural interaction in mate choice copying

- female guppies copy the mate choice of other females - preference for orange males; and orange body color is heritable but results from each treatment showed that the females copied the model female in their preference for the less orange male. Culturally transmitted information overrode a females genetic predisposition to mate with males with lots of orange body color.

social learning

- learning by watching others - imitation and copying are 2 forms of this - ex. Bandura's "bobo" doll study - example in humans where aggression in adults toward doll resulted in aggression in children as reaction to doll also.

local enhancement

- the action of a model draws attention to some aspect of the environmentindividuals learn from others, not so much by doing what they observe, as by being drawn to a particular area because another individual was in that location - ex. - ex. sticklebacks- experiment where they put more food in one place, but when a model was foraging in a place with less food they went there (local enhancement stronger than personal experience)

Importance of cultural transmission

-1.)information can be spread through a population in a very efficient manner. 2.)What is learned by one individual may be passed down through many generations

examples of Vertical cultural transmission

1.) beach hunting by bottlenose dolphins transmitted to young. dolphin surges out of water and onto beach to catch fish. isolates fish 2.) Grant's Finches learn songs they will sing from father, female finches develop song preferences based on songs their fathers sang.

Teaching Themes

1.) involves parent and offspring 2.) involves"opportunity teaching" or "coaching:"

Teaching Definition (Caro & Hauser, 1992)

1.)immediate benefit to another and not oneself 2.)"naive" students 3.)impart new information to student faster than they would have gained it on their own.

Benefits of social learning

1.)more efficient than trial and error 2.)some complex actions or behaviors cannot be learned without social learning.

Modes of cultural transmission

1.)vertical 2.)horizontal 3.)oblique

example of horizontal cultural transmission

Japanese macaque Imo and all individuals that learned potato washing were her peers and close relatives

example of oblique cultural transmission

Rhesus monkeys during snake trials.learned snake aversion by rhesus monkeys - after juveniles observe an adult model respond to snakes with typical fear gestures, they would adopt these same gestures. Though the same didn't occur when a trained monkey displayed fear to a flower

macaque example

a macaque named Imo washed the sweet potatoes researchers gave her soon the rest of the group was doing this (social learning). Then they gave them wheat and they did the same thing social learning was also found in other macaques in regards to "stone play." "stone play" was being transmitted from older to younger individuals.

cultural transmission

a system of information transfer that affects an individual's phenotype by means of either teaching or some form of social learning

Coaching

a teacher directly alters the behavior of students by encouragement or punishment

mirror neurons

an action must first be watched before mirror neurons will be fired

copying

an observer repeats what a model has done. it need not involve a topographically novel behavior

example of Imitation

blue tit birds in england learned to get through the foil on top of milk bottles by imitation another bird

local enhancement example:

cliff swallow groups draw attention to better foraging areas to other swallow groups. other swallow groups come because other swallows are foraging there.

Tool use

ex: digging for honey ex 2: Female bottlenose dolphins break a marine sponge off the seafloor and place it over their mouth. This tool is used to probe the seafloor for fish prey and to protect them from scrapes and stings as they forage.

Culturally transmitted traits in chimpanzees

examples 1.)hammering open nuts with stones 2.)swatting flies 3.)squashing parasites with leaves

ultimate

factors involving evolutionary forces and survival. example question: Why do plumage color difference persist over evolutionary time? ultimate factors/cause: bright red males are more likely to get a mate, so they have made carotenoid rich foods a major source of their diet.

proximate

factors that work within a lifetime of an organism, in the here and now. looks at within- and between -population comparisons. example question: what causes males and females to differ in plumage coloration? proximate cause: plumage coloration in male finches due to carotenoid color pigments (primarily red) that the birds ingested

Example of Social Facilitation

increased group size increased foraging rates per individual. Individuals learned that the mere presence of others made them safer.

teaching in animals

mostly seen involving the parent teaching offspring.

Opportunity teaching

teachers actively place students in a situation conducive to learning a new skill or acquiring knowledge. ex: meerkat parents or "helpers" teach hunting skills to pups by removing scorpion stinger and teaching depended on begging calls of pups

imitation

the acquisition of a topographically novel response through observation of a demonstrator making that response. must be new behavior learned from others and that behavior must involve some sort of new spatial (topographic) manipulation as well as lead to the achievement of some goal.

cultural transmission of behavior

the transfer of information from individual to individual through social learning or teaching - both within and between generations of animals

individual learning

through local enhancement, a model draws an observer to a particular area and the observer than learns on its own.

vertical cultural transmission

transfer of information across generations from parents to offspring.

oblique cultural transmission

transfer of information across generations, but not parent to offspring (non-parent adult to young)

horizontal cultural transmission

transfer of information from Individual to peers of the same age. ex:- fish learn a preferred path from peers in their school.

Social Facilitation

unlike local enhancement, the mere presence of a model regardless of what it does, is thought to facilitate learning in observer.

mirror system

watching others and translating what we see