Social learning strategies

Laland, Kevin N.

doi:10.3758/bf03196002

Cited by 1,269 publications

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“…Horses appear to stay with this tendency no matter what the demonstrator horses` rank is and whether they are confronted with evenly distributed low-quality food (Devenport et al 2005) or with limited high quality food. Their motivation to adopt a different feeding strategy from their natural feeding habit might be low in situations where unlimited food rewards are given or food rewards can not be controlled by the dominant animal (Laland 2004) Consequently, we agree with Clarke et al (1996) that the learning effect due to local enhancement, which has been reported to cause a faster approach to the feeding area in the learning situation than in the control trials, is connected to the general feeding location and not to a specific bucket. Furthermore horses did not use social information after observing conspecifics feeding, in terms of using their conspecifics as reference points for where to feed (i.e.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Social feeding decisions in horses (Equus caballus)

Krüger

Flauger

2008

Behavioural Processes

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Like many other herbivores, in a natural environment equids feed on rather evenly distributed resources. However, the vegetation in their vast habitats constantly changes. If food is plentiful only little competition occurs over food, and in non-competitive situations domestic horses tend to return to the same feeding site until it is overgrazed. In contrast, they compete over limited food for which the social status of the individuals appears to be important. Especially in ruminants several studies have proved an influence of social organisations, rank, sex and the depletion of feeding sites on the feeding behaviour of individuals. However, it is not yet understood whether and how social aspects affect horses´ feeding decisions. Curiosity about the influence of social rank on the horses´ feeding decisions between two, equally with high-quality surplus food filled buckets placed in different social feeding conditions, led us to create the test below. The observer horses were alternately tested with a dominant and a subordinate demonstrator placed in one of three different positions. We conclude that domestic horses use social cognition and strategic decision making in order to decide where to feed in a social feeding situation. When possible they tend to return to the same, continuously supplied feeding site and switch to an "avoidance tendency" in the presence of dominant horses or when another horse is already feeding there. Thus, the social rank and the position of conspecifics affect the feeding strategy of horses.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Social feeding decisions in horses (Equus caballus)

Krüger

Flauger

2008

Behavioural Processes

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“…Historically, scientists have tended to assume that individuals should rely on social learning when they can, but recent mathematical analyses reveal that this is incorrect, and that some mixture of social and asocial learning is expected to occur in a changing environment (Boyd and Richerson, 1985;Rogers, 1988;Feldman et al, 1996;Henrich and McElreath, 2003;Laland, 2004;Enquist et al, 2007). This result derives from a trade-off between the benefits of asocial and social learning that, as pointed out by Kameda and Nakanishi (2002) and Laland (2004), is similar to the producer-scrounger dilemma found in social foragers (Barnard and Sibly, 1981;Giraldeau and Caraco, 2000). Asocial learners (information producers) typically incur additional temporal or energetic costs as well as risk of mortality or injury associated with learning from direct interaction with the environment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although Rogers' result is not inherently paradoxical, it appears to conflict with the observation that social learning underlies the effect of human culture on our ecological success and population growth. One resolution to this conundrum is to recognise that, in a changing environment, selection ought to have fashioned in our minds specific evolved rules (Boyd and Richerson, 1985), or 'social learning strategies' (Laland, 2004), that specify the circumstances under which individuals should exploit information from others, and from whom they should learn. A small number plausible strategies have been subject to theoretical analysis (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A small number plausible strategies have been subject to theoretical analysis (e.g. Boyd and Richerson (1985); Henrich and McElreath (2003); Laland (2004)) and some have received experimental sup-4 A c c e p t e d m a n u s c r i p t port (Coolen et al, 2003;Kendal et al, 2005;Galef and Whiskin, 2008). For instance, Giraldeau and Lefebvre (1987) argued that pigeons failed to copy tutors because the tutors were apparently obtaining a smaller reward than their own (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The payoff-biased rule is a form of a more general 'copy if better' rule, which requires that social learners only copy a behaviour if the payoff is greater than that of their current behaviour (Schlag, 1998;Laland, 2004). Our implementation is a simple version of Schlag's (1998) proportional imitation rule, restricted to a single learned behaviour.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The evolution of social learning rules: Payoff-biased and frequency-dependent biased transmission

Kendal¹,

Giraldeau²,

Laland³

2009

Journal of Theoretical Biology

155

144

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International audienceHumans and other animals do not use social learning indiscriminately, rather, natural selection has favoured the evolution of social learning rules that make selective use of social learning to acquire relevant information in a changing environment. We present a gene-culture coevolutionary analysis of a small selection of such rules (unbiased social learning, payoff-biased social learning and frequency-dependent biased social learning, including conformism and anti-conformism) in a population of asocial learners where the environment is subject to a constant probability of change to a novel state. We define conditions under which each rule evolves to a genetically-polymorphic equilibrium. We find that payoff-biased social learning may evolve under high levels of environmental variation if the fitness benefit associated with the acquired behaviour is either high or low but not of intermediate value. In contrast, both conformist and anti-conformist biases can become fixed when environment variation is low, whereupon the mean fitness in the population is higher than for a population of asocial learners. Our examination of the population dynamics reveals stable limit cycles under conformist and anti-conformist biases and some highly complex dynamics including chaos. Anti-conformists can out-compete conformists when conditions favour a low equilibrum frequency of the learned behaviour. We conclude that evolution, punctuated by the repeated successful invasion of different social learning rules, should continuously favour a reduction in the equilibrium frequency of asocial learning, and propose that, among competing social learning rules, the dominant rule will be the one that can persist with the lowest frequency of asocial learning

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Cultural Evolution

Mesoudi

2018

Encyclopedia of Life Sciences

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Cultural evolution is the idea that cultural change, that is changes in socially acquired information such as knowledge or beliefs, constitutes a Darwinian evolutionary process that shares fundamental similarities with (but also some differences to) genetic evolution. While parallels between cultural and biological change have been drawn ever since Darwin provided his theory of evolution, it is only in the last few decades that this parallel has been fully pursued. Models, experiments and fieldwork has probed the details of how individuals learn from one another within societies (cultural microevolution), while comparative phylogenetic methods have been used to reconstruct long‐term cultural change and diversity over long timescales (cultural macroevolution). Key topics include language, cooperation, technology, innovation, migration and religion. The theory and field of cultural evolution can link the biological and social sciences by providing an evolutionarily based theory of cultural change and diversity. Key Concepts Culture is defined as information that is passed from individual to individual nongenetically, via social learning processes such as teaching or imitation. Cultural evolution is the idea that cultural change constitutes an evolutionary process. Cultural change constitutes an evolutionary process because cultural traits vary, they are inherited via social learning from individual to individual, and some cultural traits are more likely to be passed on than others. Many species possess culture in the form of social learning, but few (perhaps only humans) have cumulative cultural evolution where the body of culturally evolving knowledge exceeds that which a single individual could invent or discover. Cultural microevolution describes the ways in which cultural traits change within groups or societies, such as via different social learning biases. Social learning biases include tendencies to learn from specific classes of individuals (e.g. one's parents, knowledgeable teachers, prestigious celebrities), learn particular kinds of things (e.g. about disgust‐inducing stimuli), or learn from others in particular situations (e.g. when uncertain). Cultural macroevolution describes long‐term changes in culture at or above the level of the society and can be studied using phylogenetic methods similar to those used to reconstruct past genetic evolution. Gene‐culture coevolution describes cases where culturally evolving traits alter selection pressures on genes and vice versa. Common topics of study in the field of cultural evolution include language, cooperation, technology, innovation, migration and religion. The theory of cultural evolution can link the biological or natural sciences with the social sciences and humanities, by providing an evolutionarily‐based theory of cultural change.

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Social learning strategies

Cited by 1,269 publications

References 69 publications

Social feeding decisions in horses (Equus caballus)

Social feeding decisions in horses (Equus caballus)

The evolution of social learning rules: Payoff-biased and frequency-dependent biased transmission

Cultural Evolution

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