Marmosets (
            <i>Saguinus fuscicollis</i>
            ): Are Learning Sets Learned?

Menzel, Emil W.; Juno, Charles J.

doi:10.1126/science.217.4561.750

Cited by 120 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…The pattern of gradual improvement reported here is consistent with the pattern of incremental learning described in traditional studies of individual discrimination learning (Fobes & King, 1982;Harlow, 1944Harlow, , 1949); yet, it differs from the pattern of rapid learning reported in group studies (Lepoivre & Pallaud, 1986;Menzel & Juno, 1982;. Thus, discrimination testing of primates under more natural conditions produces both rapid and gradual learning, depending on, as yet, unidentified factors.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

“…Preferential searching in a baited area, regardless of reward retrieval, showed gradual improvement across trials, consistent with learningset formation. In contrast, group proximity to the baited cache showed one-trial associative learning, in agreement with Menzel and Juno (1982). However, this evidence ofone-trial learning occurred during a spatial discrimination task that followed a series of habituation, color discrimination acquisition, and discrimination reversal trials.…”

mentioning

confidence: 56%

“…For instance, animals require only one or two trials to learn the relationship between a stimulus and a reward when the cue is closely associated with the reward, but they require several trials if the cue is spatially removed from the reward (Jarvik, 1953). In Menzel and Juno's (1982) task, the cue and the reward were tightly coupled, whereas in the present task, they were not. Alternately, rapid learning by an 8-member family group of marmosets (Menzel & Juno, 1982) and an 11-member baboon group (Lepoivre & Pallaud, 1986), compared with gradual learning by our troop of74 rhesus macaques, may reflect species-specific characteristics oflearning or aspects of social organization.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…Notably, these studies produced results that challenge the notion oflearning-set formation. For instance, Menzel and Juno (1982) reported one-trial visual discrimination learning of a successive object discrimination task by a family group of marmosets (Saguinusfuscicollis). They found that a single exposure to objects associated with food increased the frequency of approach to those objects on the next trial.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gradual acquisition of visual discrimination tasks in a social group of rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)

Drea

Wallen²

1995

Animal Learning & Behavior

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An established, captive colony of 74 rhesus monkeys (Macapa mulatta) was group-tested on a simultaneous visual discrimination problem and three reversals of the initial discrimination. The task incorporated important aspects of rhesus foraging behavior. Although other studies of communal groups of nonhuman primates have reported rapid learning, subjects in the present study showed no evidence of one-trial acquisition of the initial problem or of rapid learning-set formation across the reversal series. Instead, mean and individual performance, on all variables measured, improved gradually, both within and across series. Subjects appeared to "learn how to learn," consistent with findings of traditional studies of individual discrimination learning. Our finding of gradual learning in group-living animals argues that the source of rapid learning in previous reports is not attributable to social influence or ecological relevance, but may reflect specific procedural or species differences between studies.The comparative study oflearning has used two broad approaches: a laboratory approach concerned with the mechanisms of learning, and an ecological approach concerned with functional significance. Studies of nonhuman primate discrimination learning have relied primarily on the former, investigating the behavior ofindividuals under the controlled and isolating conditions of a standardized apparatus. This traditional approach consistently has shown that performance gradually improves, within and across discrimination problems, as individuals either acquire problem-solving strategies or learn to successfully apply strategies to new problems (Harlow, 1944(Harlow, , 1949. This "learning how to learn," termed learning-set formation, is considered a fundamental characteristic of discrimination learning.The validity ofthis traditional approach has been questioned because it does not adequately duplicate ecological demands (

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

mentioning

confidence: 56%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gradual acquisition of visual discrimination tasks in a social group of rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)

Drea

Wallen²

1995

Animal Learning & Behavior

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“…We shall make no attempt to answer each of Schrier and Thompson's (1984) many criticisms of our report (Menzel & Juno, 1982). Instead, we shall first list some of the points on which we actually concur with these authors (usually despite their apparent opinions to the contrary), and then we shall expand upon a few details mentioned in our report, which they overlooked.…”

mentioning

confidence: 83%

Are learning sets learned? Or: Perhaps no nature-nurture issue has any simple answer

Menzel

Juno

1984

Animal Learning & Behavior

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We shall make no attempt to answer each of Schrier and Thompson's (1984) many criticisms of our report (Menzel & Juno, 1982). Instead, we shall first list some of the points on which we actually concur with these authors (usually despite their apparent opinions to the contrary), and then we shall expand upon a few details mentioned in our report, which they overlooked. If any loose ends still remain, we request readers to consult, or reread, our original report and Kamil and Yoerg's (1982) overview of the relations between learning and foraging behavior.The points of agreement are as follows: (1) Our report is not directly concerned with interproblem improvement in performance during the course of our observations. (We could detect no such improvement. Insofar as direct comparisons of data are warranted, our animals seemed to start where marmosets might be expected to asymptote. And if we must demonstrate interproblem improvement before talking about "learning sets," is not the doctrine that learning sets are learned unfalsifiable?) (2) Our report does not contain conclusive evidencethat the difference between our data and data from "real" learning-set studies is attributable to testing the animals in their home cage as a group instead of in isolation. (3) The ability for one-trial learning in our subjects does not prove that the genesis of this ability involved no trace of slow, gradual learning at any point in their lifespan. (4) It is hard to imagine that test-naive primates of any and all species would perform as our animals did. (5) Our methods are so different from those of Harlow that precise comparisons of the numerical data would be of dubious validity. (6) Students of learning set should not feel compelled to adopt the methods and concepts of foraging theorists if they do not want to. (7) The data we presented do not, as such, prove that animals were cognitive geniuses. (8) Slow, gradual learning is not necessarily maladaptive or unknown outside of the laboratory. (9) Our animals did not learn all that could conceivably be learned about an object in a single trial. were a single individual. And, coincidentally, we also presented data that we construed as strong evidence of learning on the part of individual group members. Schrier and Thompson do not mention these data.) (13) Laboratory research is a good thing and can teach us a lot that we could not learn otherwise. (14) Readers who did not read the references that we cited might possibly infer, incorrectly, that learningset theorists today still hold that performance on learning-set tasks is a good index of so-called general intelligence. (15) We did not provide a comprehensive review of the history or theory of learning set.The principal purpose of our report was to describe, for the benefit of scientists in general, rather than only specialists in learning, how group-living Saguinus fusctcollis behave with respect to one another and with respect to novel objects. It extended a previous study on this same general topic (Menzel & Menzel, 1979) and al...

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Structure-guided foraging in long-tailed macaques

Menzel

1996

Am. J. Primatol.

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The aim of this study was to identify some of the cues that macaques follow when they search for new food sites. A social group of 37 long‐tailed macaques was confined to a holding cage while an experimenter concealed food in an outdoor enclosure according to one of the following rules: (1) along the edge of a visible environmental border, (2) within structures of the same general type, or (3) along an ecologically irrelevant, invisible straight line. To provide the animals with a cue for detecting the rule, three piles of visible food were also presented according to the rule. Each of the 60 trials involved a different location in the 880 m2 enclosure. The animals showed clear evidence of utilizing the first two rules from the outset of testing and the third rule about five trials. The animals found concealed food along environmental borders and within matching objects more quickly than along invisible lines. They also showed a rapid improvement in food finding on the invisible line. The results suggest that long‐tailed macaques extend their search for food to a given class of environmental structure rather than exclusively by pure spatial gradients. © 1996 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

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Marmosets ( Saguinus fuscicollis ): Are Learning Sets Learned?

Cited by 120 publications

References 13 publications

Gradual acquisition of visual discrimination tasks in a social group of rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)

Gradual acquisition of visual discrimination tasks in a social group of rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)

Are learning sets learned? Or: Perhaps no nature-nurture issue has any simple answer

Structure-guided foraging in long-tailed macaques

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