Learning about construction behaviour from observing an artefact: can experience with conspecifics aid in artefact recognition?

Camacho-Alpízar, Andrés; Eckersley, Tristan; Lambert, Connor T.; Balasubramanian, Gopika; Guillette, Lauren M.

doi:10.1007/s10071-021-01519-y

Cited by 11 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…However, social information appears to have been weighted differently depending on the strength of an observer’s initial color bias, with the probability of using social information increasing as observer bias toward an initially preferred color became weaker. Camacho-Alpízar et al (2021b) found a similar trend in social information used from artifact nests. Social artifacts are products of a demonstrator’s behavior that can provide social information to observers without the demonstrator being present (i.e.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 56%

“…A nest cup, when used, was always hung in between the two perches along the middle of the back (100 cm) side of the cage (see Figure 2). These three specific colors were selected as previous studies have shown that captive male zebra finches build nests using green (Muth & Healy, 2011), pink (Breen et al, 2019; Camacho-Alpízar et al, 2021b; Guillette & Healy, 2019; Guillette et al, 2016) and yellow (Muth & Healy, 2012; Muth et al, 2013) materials. Husbandry procedures and environmental parameters in the experimental room matched those of the colony and holding rooms…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Decisions made during the nest-building process can be informed by asocial information, such as individual experience with nest material (e.g., learning physical properties of materials; Bailey et al, 2014; Lambert et al, 2021), environmental cues (Bailey et al, 2015; Edwards et al, 2020), and past breeding success/failure using specific materials (Camacho-Alpízar et al, 2021a; Muth & Healy, 2011). Nest-building decisions can also be informed by social information, such as early social environment (Breen et al, 2020), watching familiar conspecifics build with a particular material (Guillette et al, 2016), and observing artifact nests of other individuals (Breen et al, 2019; Camacho-Alpízar et al, 2021b). Though numerous social and asocial sources of information are influence nest-building decisions made by zebra finches, studies have yet to consider how birds make decisions when sources of information are in agreement or conflict.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The roles of social information, asocial information, and initial bias in nest-building decisions.

Whittaker,

Balasubramanian,

Camacho-Alpízar

et al. 2024

Journal of Comparative Psychology

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Animals can use asocial (e.g., environmental cues) or social (e.g., conspecific behavior) information when making decisions. We investigated decisions made by zebra finches when asocial and social sources conveyed agreeing or conflicting information, and assessed the influence of initial bias on decision making. Finches completed an initial preference test ranking preference for three colors of nest-building material. Birds in the agree group (n = 14) then observed demonstrators build nests using nonpreferred color material (social information) that matched the environment color (asocial information). Birds in the conflict group (n = 15) observed demonstrators build nests with nonpreferred color material that did not match the cage environment (another nonpreferred color). A final preference test assessed any changes in color preference. The agree group reduced average preference for their initially preferred color, but did not significantly increase average preference for the asocial/social colors. The conflict group also reduced average preference for the initially preferred color and also increased preference for the socially demonstrated color. Observers with stronger initial bias were less likely to choose the socially demonstrated color than observers with weaker initial bias. This shows that social information informs nest-building decisions, even when in conflict with asocial information. However, bias influences social information use and adds nuance to how different individuals use information when making decisions.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 56%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The roles of social information, asocial information, and initial bias in nest-building decisions.

Whittaker,

Balasubramanian,

Camacho-Alpízar

et al. 2024

Journal of Comparative Psychology

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“…Once the sexes of the juvenile birds were visually distinguishable (~35–45 days posthatch), they were moved into colony cages that held other same-sex birds (165 × 66 × 184 cm). Each bird then went through another experiment after they had reached sexual maturity (~90 days posthatch) wherein nonsibling male–female pairs first built a partial nest using coloured twine (Baker’s Twine, James Lever Co., London, UK; Camacho-Alpízar et al, 2021b ), and then built a full nest using coconut fiber (Aves Canada); 26/34 birds successfully bred in these coconut fiber nests, while the other eight birds had failed nests or disrupted nests due to the COVID-19 pandemic research shut-down. Throughout all of the aforementioned housing, birds were provided ad libitum access to mixed seed (Hagen Canada, Quebec, Canada), gravel (Hartz, Ontario, Canada), oyster shell (Canadian Lab Diets, Inc.), cuttlefish bone (Canadian Lab Diets, Inc., Alberta, Canada), and water, on a 14:10 light:dark cycle (full spectrum lights—Standard, 32W, T8 Daylight).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Among-individual differences in auditory and physical cognitive abilities in zebra finches

et al. 2022

Self Cite

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Among-individual variation in performance on cognitive tasks is ubiquitous across species that have been examined, and understanding the evolution of cognitive abilities requires investigating among-individual variation because natural selection acts on individual differences. However, relatively little is known about the extent to which individual differences in cognition are determined by domain-specific compared with domain-general cognitive abilities. We examined individual differences in learning speed of zebra finches across seven different tasks to determine the extent of domain-specific versus domain-general learning abilities, as well as the relationship between learning speed and learning generalization. Thirty-two zebra finches completed a foraging board experiment that included visual and structural discriminations, and then these same birds went through an acoustic operant discrimination experiment that required discriminating between different natural categories of acoustic stimuli. We found evidence of domain-general learning abilities as birds’ relative performance on the seven learning tasks was weakly repeatable and a principal components analysis found a first principal component that explained 36% of the variance in performance across tasks with all tasks loading unidirectionally on this component. However, the few significant correlations between tasks and high repeatability within each experiment suggest the potential for domain-specific abilities. Learning speed did not influence an individual’s ability to generalize learning. These results suggest that zebra finch performance across visual, structural, and auditory learning relies upon some common mechanism; some might call this evidence of “general intelligence”( g ), but it is also possible that this finding is due to other noncognitive mechanisms such as motivation. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13420-022-00520-w.

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“…McDowell et al 2018 ; Tia et al 2017 ) but these use technologies that are not yet appropriate for examining nest building. But given that builders will observe others, and change their building decisions as a result (if the birds they observe are familiar: Guillette et al 2016 ), and perhaps even more usefully, will respond to videos of building (Guillette and Healy 2019 ) and even views of a nest (Breen et al 2019 ; Camacho-Alpizar et al 2021 ), perhaps functional scanning of nest builder brains may not be too far in the future. Furthermore, although zebra finches do not appear to imprint on to the colour of the material of their natal nest (Muth and Healy 2012 ; Sargent 1965 ), they do learn about the colour of material to which they are exposed during post-fledging juvenile development (Breen et al 2020 ), which opens a window of opportunity for examining neural function during this developmental stage.…”

Section: Neuro + Nest Buildingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adding the neuro to cognition: from food storing to nest building

Healy

2022

Anim Cogn

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Typically, investigations of animal cognition couple careful experimental manipulations with examination of the animal’s behavioural responses. Sometimes those questions have included attempts to describe the neural underpinnings of the behavioural outputs. Over the past 25 years, behaviours that involve spatial learning and memory (such as navigation and food storing) has been one context in which such dual or correlated investigations have been both accessible and productive. Here I review some of that work and where it has led. Because of the wealth of data and insights gained from that work and song learning before it, it seems that it might also be useful to try to add some neurobiology to other systems in animal cognition. I finish then, with a description of recent work on the cognition and neurobiology of avian nest building. It is still relatively early days but asking questions about the cognition of nest building has already shown both neural correlates of nest building and that learning and memory play a much greater role in this behaviour than previously considered. While it is not yet clear how putting these components together will be synergistic, the examples of song learning and food storing provide encouragement. Perhaps this might be true for other behaviours too?

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Learning about construction behaviour from observing an artefact: can experience with conspecifics aid in artefact recognition?

Cited by 11 publications

References 40 publications

The roles of social information, asocial information, and initial bias in nest-building decisions.

The roles of social information, asocial information, and initial bias in nest-building decisions.

Among-individual differences in auditory and physical cognitive abilities in zebra finches

Adding the neuro to cognition: from food storing to nest building

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