The impact of environmental and social factors on learning abilities: a meta‐analysis

Abstract

Since the 1950s, researchers have examined how differences in the social and asocial environment affect learning in rats, mice, and, more recently, a variety of other species. Despite this large body of research, little has been done to synthesize these findings and to examine if social and asocial environmental factors have consistent effects on cognitive abilities, and if so, what aspects of these factors have greater or lesser impact. Here, we conducted a systematic review and metaanalysis examining how different external environmental features, including the social environment, impact learning (both speed of acquisition and performance). Using 531 mean-differences from 176 published articles across 27 species (with studies on rats and mice being most prominent) we conducted phylogenetically corrected mixed-effects models that reveal: (i) an average absolute effect size jdj = 0.55 and directional effect size d = 0.34; (ii) interventions manipulating the asocial environment result in larger effects than social interventions alone; and (iii) the length of the intervention is a significant predictor of effect size, with longer interventions resulting in larger effects. Additionally, much of the variation in effect size remained unexplained, possibly suggesting that species differ widely in how they are affected by environmental interventions due to varying ecological and evolutionary histories. Overall our results suggest that social and asocial environmental factors do significantly affect learning, but these effects are highly variable and perhaps not always as predicted. Most notably, the type (social or asocial) and length of interventions are important in determining the strength of the effect.

What drives horse success at following human-given cues? An investigation of handler familiarity and living conditions

“…Therefore, when exploring the socio-cognitive skills of social species, the social and physical environment in which they are living is also important to consider. Many studies have observed the negative impacts of social deprivation on the cognitive abilities of social species (Ashton et al 2018a ; Lambert and Guillette 2021 ), but the effect of the social and physical environments on cognitive performance has rarely been studied in long-lived mammals. Moreover, to our knowledge, the effect of sociality with conspecifics has not been investigated in association with socio-cognitive skills towards humans.…”

“…We do not expect the relationship length with the main caretaker to affect the horses’ performances when tested with an unfamiliar informant. (3) When testing the effect of the social and physical environment of the horses, we hypothesise that horses living in groups or in dyads would show better success than horses living alone due to the benefit of sociality on cognitive abilities (Ashton et al 2018a ; Lambert and Guillette 2021 ). (4) We hypothesise that horses with access to bigger fields would show more success than horses living in smaller paddocks due to the benefit of a more enriched environment on cognitive abilities (Bekinschtein et al 2011 ; van Praag et al 2000 ).…”

Growing up in a crowd: social environment shapes the offspring's early exploratory phenotype in a colonial breeding species

“…The prenatal and post-natal context can therefore drive phenotypic adjustments to environmental conditions, and can become an instructive factor during development [10]. Recently, a lot of attention has been paid to the social component of the early-life environment, as the number and type of social interactions that newly born individuals have with their parents, siblings or other conspecifics ('interacting phenotypes' sensu [11]) can have a major impact on a suite of behavioural traits such as exploratory behaviour, aggressive behaviour, sociability, anxiety, learning ability and personality traits [12][13][14][15][16].…”

How Well Do Rodent Models of Parkinson’s Disease Recapitulate Early Non-Motor Phenotypes? A Systematic Review

“…While cognitive dysfunction in PD rodent models receives significant attention in the field, consistent impairments are not reported. This is in part due to the limited sensitivity of the cognitive tasks used and experimental and environmental variabilities [ 206 ]. Methodological and apparatus design differences within the same test can alter effect sizes and behavioural results, and in some cases may even assess different cognitive domains [ 207 ].…”