Abstract:Selectively learning from specific types of individuals may be adaptive if demonstrator characteristics can be used to identify more beneficial sources of social information.Such "social learning biases" have been experimentally demonstrated in a number of species, but these experiments generally involve restricted laboratory conditions using a limited number of potential demonstrators and tend to consider only the characteristics of demonstrators rather than the importance of pairwise relationships on informa… Show more
“…The abovementioned procedures should be taken into careful consideration when planning experiments because of the extensive amount of research effort involved. Only one record did not implement a learning phase because the test was recorded and analysed for the entire duration (Easter et al 2022 ). Fig.…”
Section: Resultsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Behaviours demonstrated by live or video-recorded birds include nest-building and foraging using specific coloured materials and lid removal. A computer-controlled feeding apparatus may also be used to assess the learning between partners through foraging scans Demonstration of foraging: (Benskin et al 2002 ; Camacho-Alpízar et al 2021 ; Guillette et al 2014 , 2022 ; Guillette and Healy 2014 , 2017 ; Katz and Lachlan 2003 ; Larose and Dubois 2011 ; Mora and Forstmeier 2014 ; Osbrink et al 2021 ; Riebel et al 2012 ; Templeton et al 2017 ; Van Leeuwen et al 2021 ); demonstration of nest-building: Breen et al 2019 ; Guillette et al 2016 ; Guillette and Healy 2019 ; Lid removal: Easter et al 2022 ; Farine et al 2015 ; foraging scan: Beauchamp and Kacelnik 1991 Spatial learning Spatial learning tests are used to assess a subject’s ability to recognise the location of the correct feeder based on environmental cues (e.g. surrounding and distant objects).…”
The process of learning in birds has been extensively studied, with a focus on species such as pigeons, parrots, chickens, and crows. In recent years, the zebra finch has emerged as a model species in avian cognition, particularly in song learning. However, other cognitive domains such as spatial memory and associative learning could also be critical to fitness and survival, particularly during the intensive juvenile period. In this systematic review, we provide an overview of cognitive studies on zebra finches, with a focus on domains other than song learning. Our findings indicate that spatial, associative, and social learning are the most frequently studied domains, while motoric learning and inhibitory control have been examined less frequently over 30 years of research. All of the 60 studies included in this review were conducted on captive birds, limiting the generalizability of the findings to wild populations. Moreover, only two of the studies were conducted on juveniles, highlighting the need for more research on this critical period of learning. To address this research gap, we propose a high-throughput method for testing associative learning performance in a large number of both juvenile and adult zebra finches. Our results demonstrate that learning can occur in both age groups, thus encouraging researchers to also perform cognitive tests on juveniles. We also note the heterogeneity of methodologies, protocols, and subject exclusion criteria applied by different researchers, which makes it difficult to compare results across studies. Therefore, we call for better communication among researchers to develop standardised methodologies for studying each cognitive domain at different life stages and also in their natural conditions.
“…The abovementioned procedures should be taken into careful consideration when planning experiments because of the extensive amount of research effort involved. Only one record did not implement a learning phase because the test was recorded and analysed for the entire duration (Easter et al 2022 ). Fig.…”
Section: Resultsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Behaviours demonstrated by live or video-recorded birds include nest-building and foraging using specific coloured materials and lid removal. A computer-controlled feeding apparatus may also be used to assess the learning between partners through foraging scans Demonstration of foraging: (Benskin et al 2002 ; Camacho-Alpízar et al 2021 ; Guillette et al 2014 , 2022 ; Guillette and Healy 2014 , 2017 ; Katz and Lachlan 2003 ; Larose and Dubois 2011 ; Mora and Forstmeier 2014 ; Osbrink et al 2021 ; Riebel et al 2012 ; Templeton et al 2017 ; Van Leeuwen et al 2021 ); demonstration of nest-building: Breen et al 2019 ; Guillette et al 2016 ; Guillette and Healy 2019 ; Lid removal: Easter et al 2022 ; Farine et al 2015 ; foraging scan: Beauchamp and Kacelnik 1991 Spatial learning Spatial learning tests are used to assess a subject’s ability to recognise the location of the correct feeder based on environmental cues (e.g. surrounding and distant objects).…”
The process of learning in birds has been extensively studied, with a focus on species such as pigeons, parrots, chickens, and crows. In recent years, the zebra finch has emerged as a model species in avian cognition, particularly in song learning. However, other cognitive domains such as spatial memory and associative learning could also be critical to fitness and survival, particularly during the intensive juvenile period. In this systematic review, we provide an overview of cognitive studies on zebra finches, with a focus on domains other than song learning. Our findings indicate that spatial, associative, and social learning are the most frequently studied domains, while motoric learning and inhibitory control have been examined less frequently over 30 years of research. All of the 60 studies included in this review were conducted on captive birds, limiting the generalizability of the findings to wild populations. Moreover, only two of the studies were conducted on juveniles, highlighting the need for more research on this critical period of learning. To address this research gap, we propose a high-throughput method for testing associative learning performance in a large number of both juvenile and adult zebra finches. Our results demonstrate that learning can occur in both age groups, thus encouraging researchers to also perform cognitive tests on juveniles. We also note the heterogeneity of methodologies, protocols, and subject exclusion criteria applied by different researchers, which makes it difficult to compare results across studies. Therefore, we call for better communication among researchers to develop standardised methodologies for studying each cognitive domain at different life stages and also in their natural conditions.
“…After the experiment, participants completed a post-study questionnaire, used to gather information about individual characteristics that may influence social information use, including age and gender. As prior research has indicated that aggression may play a role in social learning (Bandura et al, 1961;Easter et al, 2022), we also obtained self-assessed aggression scores for each participant, using Bryant and Smith's (2001) aggression questionnaire, to investigate whether aggression levels influenced social information use in our study. We also considered that a participant's tendency to play video games may influence their general behaviour within VERSEe.g.…”
Social learning strategies describe what, when, and from whom individuals choose to learn. Evidence suggests that both humans and animals are capable of strategic social learning. However, human research generally lacks ecological and spatial realism, making it difficult to understand the importance of our use of social information in an evolutionary context. In this study, we use virtual reality to simulate three novel tasks inspired by the animal literature (Container, Route Choice and Foraging tasks) within complex, three-dimensional environments. In each experiment, combinations of demonstrators with different characteristics gave opposing solutions to the task to determine from whom participants preferentially learned. Importantly, participants were able to freely navigate the environment and attempt the task in any way they chose by using or ignoring social information. We found that participants displayed an overall bias towards learning asocially (independently) rather than socially. Asocial learning was favoured more strongly during complex tasks that spanned larger spatial scales, potentially due to the difficulties in keeping track of social information in such scenarios. When learning from others, participants displayed a bias towards learning from the majority over the minority (positive frequency-dependent social learning) and towards learning from the most successful demonstrators (payoff-based social learning), which supports the findings of previous, lab-based experiments. There was no apparent bias with respect to demonstrator dominance status, gender and body size. Our findings are the first to show a variation in the use of social learning across task and environmental complexities in humans, to carry out a comprehensive evaluation of hypothetical human learning biases, and to provide a methodological link between non-human and human social learning experiments. As demonstrated here, immersive virtual environments have great potential for research into human social evolution and we strongly encourage future research to adopt a similar approach.
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