scholarly journals Negative results are needed to show the specific value of a cultural explanation for g: A commentary on Burkart et al.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruben C. Arslan ◽  
Christoph Julian von Borell ◽  
Julia Ostner ◽  
Lars Penke
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Genetic Load ◽  
Positive Trait ◽  
Negative Results ◽  
Social Species ◽  
Social Animals ◽  
Cultural Explanation

The authors suggest that social learning can explain the cognitive positive manifold for social animals including humans. We caution that simpler explanations of positive trait intercorrelations exist, such as genetic load. To test the suggested explanation’s specificity, we also need to examine non-social species and traits such as health that are distal to cognitive abilities.

Negative results are needed to show the specific value of a cultural explanation for g

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruben C. Arslan ◽  
Christoph J. von Borell ◽  
Julia Ostner ◽  
Lars Penke
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Genetic Load ◽  
Positive Trait ◽  
Negative Results ◽  
Social Species ◽  
Social Animals ◽  
Cultural Explanation

AbstractBurkart et al. suggest that social learning can explain the cognitive positive manifold for social animals, including humans. We caution that simpler explanations of positive trait intercorrelations exist, such as genetic load. To test the suggested explanation's specificity, we also need to examine non-social species and traits, such as health, that are distal to cognitive abilities.

scholarly journals Individual behavioural traits not social context affects learning about novel objects in archerfish

2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick A. R. Jones ◽  
Helen C. Spence-Jones ◽  
Mike Webster ◽  
Luke Rendell
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Behavioural Phenotype ◽  
Social Species ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Animals ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
The Individual

Abstract Learning can enable rapid behavioural responses to changing conditions but can depend on the social context and behavioural phenotype of the individual. Learning rates have been linked to consistent individual differences in behavioural traits, especially in situations which require engaging with novelty, but the social environment can also play an important role. The presence of others can modulate the effects of individual behavioural traits and afford access to social information that can reduce the need for ‘risky’ asocial learning. Most studies of social effects on learning are focused on more social species; however, such factors can be important even for less-social animals, including non-grouping or facultatively social species which may still derive benefit from social conditions. Using archerfish, Toxotes chatareus, which exhibit high levels of intra-specific competition and do not show a strong preference for grouping, we explored the effect of social contexts on learning. Individually housed fish were assayed in an ‘open-field’ test and then trained to criterion in a task where fish learnt to shoot a novel cue for a food reward—with a conspecific neighbour visible either during training, outside of training or never (full, partial or no visible presence). Time to learn to shoot the novel cue differed across individuals but not across social context. This suggests that social context does not have a strong effect on learning in this non-obligatory social species; instead, it further highlights the importance that inter-individual variation in behavioural traits can have on learning. Significance statement Some individuals learn faster than others. Many factors can affect an animal’s learning rate—for example, its behavioural phenotype may make it more or less likely to engage with novel objects. The social environment can play a big role too—affecting learning directly and modifying the effects of an individual’s traits. Effects of social context on learning mostly come from highly social species, but recent research has focused on less-social animals. Archerfish display high intra-specific competition, and our study suggests that social context has no strong effect on their learning to shoot novel objects for rewards. Our results may have some relevance for social enrichment and welfare of this increasingly studied species, suggesting there are no negative effects of short- to medium-term isolation of this species—at least with regards to behavioural performance and learning tasks.

Conclusions and Prospects

2020 ◽  
pp. 128-132
Author(s):  
Daniel Oro
Keyword(s):  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Information Gathering ◽  
Tipping Point ◽  
Social Species ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Animals ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Solitary Species

Throughout the book, I have been searching for empirical examples and theories dealing with how perturbations trigger behavioural feedback responses in social animals, how these responses affect the decision to disperse between patches, and the consequences of dispersal for complex, nonlinear population dynamics. What seems quite clear is that social feedbacks—and especially runaway dispersal by copying—do play an important role in those responses, compared to solitary species. Although philopatry to the patch has many benefits, perturbations may decrease the suitability of this patch. When a patch is perturbed, do social species show different responses than solitary species? Since evolution has selected for maximizing fitness prospects, individuals living either in groups or in solitary will try to avoid the detrimental effects of the perturbation, for instance by leaving the patch. The behavioural mechanisms triggered by perturbations are similar for both social and solitary species: increase of information gathering to reduce uncertainty and the use of this updated information to make optimal decisions about either staying or leaving. Thus, the answer is that solitary and social species show similar responses to perturbations. Nevertheless, the way those behavioural mechanisms operate is rather different between social and solitary species: in the former, information is shared among individuals, and decisions about when to leave the patch and where to go are made not only using private or personal information, but mostly using social information. Last but not least, there is social copying, a trend to copy in a nonrational way what others have decided before. This social copying, also called conformity, may trigger what I termed runaway dispersal: perturbations may accumulate over time, decreasing resilience of the social group until attaining a tipping point. Once this threshold is surpassed, the decision to disperse is led by a few individuals, and this decision is copied by the rest of the group in an autocatalytic way....

while the opposite was expected for the latter. Men were expected to exhibit no change. In fact, no systematic change in any variable was observed for any group. Even unsystematic change was minimal. This suggests that the survey instrument is highly reliable, but it does not support the biological hypothesis for political orientations. Attempts to test biological explanations of observed political behavior are reasonable enough given the underdeveloped status of the research. Testing for biological roots of male-female political differences is justified by extant literature. Given this, what inter-pretation should be placed on the negative empirical results just reported? One might conclude that reasonable though the attempt may have been, there is little justification for further work in this field. Indeed, at least by implication, the case for cultural explana-tions of sex differences in politics is strengthened. If negative results can stimulate more imaginative inquiry into cultural explanation, they still serve a very useful purpose, for there is much to be done here. Similarly, though they should not have been deterred by positive findings, persons who seek more equitable status for women through modification of the cultural environment may take heart from this, for it does underscore the likely efficacy of their strategy. There are other implications to this effort. First, it is possible to do actual research about the importance of biological variables in political behavior. The process does not have to be difficult; ques-tions generated by the literature are amenable to straightforward research. One study producing negative results in a single area can-not represent closure across the whole broad question of biology and political behavior. Hopefully this work will stimulate further think-ing on related concepts in the discipline. Finally, it is unlikely that the question of whether there are biological roots to male-female political differences will be regarded as definitively settled at any time in the near future. Perhaps this will encourage measured, re-sponsible research into the matter; it would not do to leave this area of inquiry entirely to chauvinists and polemicists. NOTES

2012 ◽  
pp. 152-220
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Systematic Change ◽  
Cultural Environment ◽  
Negative Results ◽  
Biological Variables ◽  
Political Orientations ◽  
Cultural Explanation ◽  
Political Differences ◽  
Near Future

scholarly journals Social learning and evolution: the cultural intelligence hypothesis

2011 ◽  
Vol 366 (1567) ◽  
pp. 1008-1016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carel P. van Schaik ◽  
Judith M. Burkart
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Cultural Intelligence ◽  
Social Deprivation ◽  
Learning Ability ◽  
Learning Performance ◽  
Selection For ◽  
Cultural Skills ◽  
Independent Individual ◽  
Do So

If social learning is more efficient than independent individual exploration, animals should learn vital cultural skills exclusively, and routine skills faster, through social learning, provided they actually use social learning preferentially. Animals with opportunities for social learning indeed do so. Moreover, more frequent opportunities for social learning should boost an individual's repertoire of learned skills. This prediction is confirmed by comparisons among wild great ape populations and by social deprivation and enculturation experiments. These findings shaped the cultural intelligence hypothesis, which complements the traditional benefit hypotheses for the evolution of intelligence by specifying the conditions in which these benefits can be reaped. The evolutionary version of the hypothesis argues that species with frequent opportunities for social learning should more readily respond to selection for a greater number of learned skills. Because improved social learning also improves asocial learning, the hypothesis predicts a positive interspecific correlation between social-learning performance and individual learning ability. Variation among primates supports this prediction. The hypothesis also predicts that more heavily cultural species should be more intelligent. Preliminary tests involving birds and mammals support this prediction too. The cultural intelligence hypothesis can also account for the unusual cognitive abilities of humans, as well as our unique mechanisms of skill transfer.

scholarly journals Solitary bees reduce investment in communication compared with their social relatives

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (25) ◽  
pp. 6569-6574 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernadette Wittwer ◽  
Abraham Hefetz ◽  
Tovit Simon ◽  
Li E. K. Murphy ◽  
Mark A. Elgar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Behavior ◽  
Communication Systems ◽  
Group Membership ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Signal Perception ◽  
Eusocial Insects ◽  
Social Species ◽  
Solitary Living ◽  
Social Animals ◽  
Signal Production

Social animals must communicate to define group membership and coordinate social organization. For social insects, communication is predominantly mediated through chemical signals, and as social complexity increases, so does the requirement for a greater diversity of signals. This relationship is particularly true for advanced eusocial insects, including ants, bees, and wasps, whose chemical communication systems have been well-characterized. However, we know surprisingly little about how these communication systems evolve during the transition between solitary and group living. Here, we demonstrate that the sensory systems associated with signal perception are evolutionarily labile. In particular, we show that differences in signal production and perception are tightly associated with changes in social behavior in halictid bees. Our results suggest that social species require a greater investment in communication than their solitary counterparts and that species that have reverted from eusociality to solitary living have repeatedly reduced investment in these potentially costly sensory perception systems.

scholarly journals Food discovery is associated with different reliance on social learning and lower cognitive flexibility across environments in a food-caching bird

2021 ◽  
Vol 288 (1951) ◽  
pp. 20202843
Author(s):  
Virginia K. Heinen ◽  
Angela M. Pitera ◽  
Benjamin R. Sonnenberg ◽  
Lauren M. Benedict ◽  
Eli S. Bridge ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cognitive Flexibility ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Information Acquisition ◽  
Social Information ◽  
High Elevation ◽  
Independent Learning ◽  
Food Sources ◽  
Novel Food ◽  
Food Caching

Social learning is a primary mechanism for information acquisition in social species. Despite many benefits, social learning may be disadvantageous when independent learning is more efficient. For example, searching independently may be more advantageous when food sources are ephemeral and unpredictable. Individual differences in cognitive abilities can also be expected to influence social information use. Specifically, better spatial memory can make a given environment more predictable for an individual by allowing it to better track food sources. We investigated how resident food-caching chickadees discovered multiple novel food sources in both harsher, less predictable high elevation and milder, more predictable low elevation winter environments. Chickadees at high elevation were faster at discovering multiple novel food sources and discovered more food sources than birds at low elevation. While birds at both elevations used social information, the contribution of social learning to food discovery was significantly lower at high elevation. At both elevations, chickadees with better spatial cognitive flexibility were slower at discovering food sources, likely because birds with lower spatial cognitive flexibility are worse at tracking natural resources and therefore spend more time exploring. Overall, our study supported the prediction that harsh environments should favour less reliance on social learning.

scholarly journals Evaluating the personality structure of semi-captive Asian elephants living in their natural habitat

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 172026 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin W. Seltmann ◽  
Samuli Helle ◽  
Mark J. Adams ◽  
Khyne U Mar ◽  
Mirkka Lahdenperä
Keyword(s):  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Natural Habitat ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Personality Structure ◽  
Asian Elephants ◽  
Wild Mammals ◽  
Social Species ◽  
Explanatory Factor Analysis ◽  
Study Population

Data on personality for long-lived, highly social wild mammals with high cognitive abilities are rare. We investigated the personality structure of Asian elephants ( Elephas maximus ) by using a large sample of semi-captive timber elephants in Myanmar. Data were collected during 2014–2017 using questionnaires, for which elephant riders (mahouts) rated 28 behavioural adjectives of elephants. Repeated questionnaires were obtained for each elephant from several raters whenever possible, resulting in 690 ratings of 150 female and 107 male elephants. We started by performing a confirmatory factor analysis to compare the fit of our data to a previously published captive elephant personality structure. Owing to a poor fit of this model to our data, we proceeded by performing explanatory factor analysis to determine the personality structure in our study population. This model suggested that personality in these elephants was manifested as three factors that we labelled as Attentiveness, Sociability and Aggressiveness. This structure did not differ between the sexes. These results provide the basis for future research on the link between personality and reproductive success in this endangered species and more generally, help to resolve the selective pressures on personalities in long-lived, highly social species.

The Impact of COVID-19-Prompted Virtual/Remote Work Environments on Employees’ Career Development: Social Learning Theory, Belongingness, and Self-Empowerment

2021 ◽  
pp. 152342232110178
Author(s):  
Shana Yarberry ◽  
Cynthia Sims
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Career Development ◽  
Learning Theory ◽  
Social Learning Theory ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Physical Contact ◽  
Remote Work ◽  
Virtual Mentoring ◽  
The Impact

The Problem The COVID-19 pandemic caused many workers to move from brick and mortar buildings to virtual/remote environments. This created situations in which workers were forced to not only work virtually, but to work alone. The lack of physical contact with others has the potential to stifle efforts to remain engaged and consequently impede career development and progress. The Solution Virtual mentoring is essential for providing emotional support, creating opportunities for dialogue, helping employees discover a balance between work and life, implementing a reward system, and enhancing an overall sense of well-being and belongingness for employees working in virtual/remote environments. Self-efficacy, a component of social learning theory, is a useful concept to study virtual/remote workers who often become self-empowered and rely on their own cognitive abilities to perform in a virtual/remote environment to ensure successful career outcomes. The Stakeholders HRD professionals, managers, supervisors, and others involved in ensuring that workers are engaged, supported, and continuously building skills while working virtually.

The effect of demonstrator reward on social learning of operant key pecking by domestic hens

2001 ◽  
Vol 2001 ◽  
pp. OC2-OC2
Author(s):  
C.M. Sherwin ◽  
C.M. Heyes ◽  
C. Leeb ◽  
C.J. Nicol
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Food Preferences ◽  
Naive Animal ◽  
Key Pecking ◽  
Maladaptive Behaviours ◽  
Novel Behaviour

Social learning is said to occur when social interaction facilitates the acquisition of a novel pattern of behaviour. It usually takes the form of an experienced animal (the demonstrator) performing a behaviour such that a naive animal (the observer) subsequently expresses the same novel behaviour, earlier or more completely than it would have done using individual learning. Social learning is involved in the transmission of a great variety of behaviours, e.g. tool-use, food preferences, and has also been implicated in maladaptive behaviours such as stereotypies in voles. In studies of social learning, the observers usually see the demonstrators receive a reward for performing the required behaviour. But, the role of the reward has rarely been investigated and results have been equivocal. Understanding the role of demonstrator reward on social learning is necessary to assess the cognitive abilities of individuals of different species, and aids understanding of the transmission of maladaptive behaviours.

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