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Transcript
We know that
humans can
learn
Learning in Animals
Which animals are able to learn?
(Hint: all animals have nervous systems)
Reasonable guess: All animals can learn!!
(Def.) Learning is a relatively long-lasting modification of
behavior due to experience or practice.
Psychology has focused on 2 types of learning:
* classical conditioning
* operant conditioning
Biologist View of Psychology:
1) Too much focus on rats & mice
(what about insects … fish … reptiles??)
2) Too little focus on other types of learning
We’ll consider the following types of learning:
- habituation
- classical conditioning
“associative learning”
- operant conditioning
- avoidance learning
- imprinting
- spatial learning
- cultural = observational learning
MEMORY
Is learning possible without memory?? (review learning def.)
Some animals:
short term
short-term and long-term memory
Events stored in long-term memory have to 1st pass
through short-term.
Examples of animal long-term memory??
Migrating Pacific salmon
Salmon life cycle
END
BEGIN
Upriver
Migration
Out Migration
Ocean Phase
Animals have “behavioral repertoires”
Source of repertoires??
Behaviors are …
1) Learned or
2) Innate = instinctual (= genetically endowed) or
3) Some combination of genes & learning
i.e., the old NATURE vs NURTURE argument
Can We Generalize??
What types of animals rely mostly on instinct?
“lower” animals: invertebrates
lower vertebrates
What types benefit from their ability to learn?
“higher” vertebrates
An Instinctual Animal …
the Organ Pipe Mud Dauber
ADULT
The newly-emerged adult wasp …..
Automatically begins building
a new mud nest
Automatically begins
hunting spiders
1 Egg
per cell
(paralyzed)
Are mud daubers robots??
No need or capacity to learn??
All behaviors “hard-wired”??
They probably learn, through experience, to:
-build nests more efficiently
- find prey faster
- navigate their surroundings better.
- avoid predators
Instinctual
Behavior
Learning Type 1: Habituation
Gradual disappearance of a response to a novel stimulus
that proves to be non-threatening.
EXAMPLE: Peckham & Peckham (1894) struck a
tuning fork in front of an orb-weaving spider.
Spider dropped shorter & shorter distances with each
successive sound.
Crayfish escape reaction
Tail-flip reflex diminishes
with repeated touches
Nereis – a marine worm living in sediments
Response to Threatening Stimuli
SHADOW
Habituation of Nereis (marine worm) to 2 stimuli
Stimulus-specificity
Time-sensitivity
EXAMPLE: YCP Senior Thesis by Becky Brown
Looked at fright reactions in Tyler Run minnows.
Her interest: Were minnows at the campus road
crossing habituated to car spray?
Compared crossing and downstream minnows for
reactions to spray.
car
spray
zone
car
crossing
TYLER
RUN
pool
HUMANITIES
YCP
Blacknose
Dace
Becky
with
Supersoaker
Record Swimming Activity
- before spray
- after spray
BECKY’S
DATA
Reaction of YCP Tyler Run Minnows
to a water spray disturbance
Road-crossing Minnows
Downstream Minnows
35
30
25
Swimming
Activity
20
Recovery
15
10
No Recovery
5
0
0
2
4
6
8
10 12 14 16 18 20
Minutes
Minutes
Water
Spray
Learning Type 2: Classical Conditioning
Russian Ivan Pavlov discovered CC… what was his animal model?
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING Vocab
Stimulus
(= Unconditioned Stimulus)
Response
(= Unconditioned Response)
Neutral Stimulus + US
UR
training
“Neutral” Stimulus
“UR”
(= conditioned stimulus)
(= conditioned response)
CS
CR
Applying the vocabulary …
Becomes
CS
US = ? meat powder
UR = ? salivation
Learning Type 3: Operant Conditioning
(also called trial & error learning)
Animal comes to associate its behavior with the consequences
of the behavior.
Consequences are either …
1) Obtaining something good (e.g., food)
2) Avoiding something bad (e.g., electric shock)
BAR that
may deliver
food pellets
(+)
FLOOR may
deliver
electric
current (-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQtDTdDr8vs
Behavior can be shaped by
reinforcing successive
approximations
+
Learning Type 4: Avoidance Learning
Recognizing, from experience, a dangerous or unpleasant
situation and avoiding it.
Most-studied:
Conditioned Taste Aversion
Animal associates discomfort or illness with food/drink
Result: future encounters with that food will be avoided.
Efficiency?? Usually one-trial learning!!
NOT JUST BAD TASTE!
Examples??
Rats avoiding poison
Predators avoiding
monarch butterflies
some toads
gila monster lizards
Rehnberg & Cassolet
Rehnberg & Sherry
Your own experience?
Learning Type 5: Imprinting
A rapid and irreversible attraction or affiliation to an
organism(s) or place that happens early in life.
Example 1: Konrad Lorenz and
water fowl
Example 2: Homing of Pacific salmon
Imprinting to odors
of natal stream
Critical Period??
SMOLT STAGE
Pacific Ocean
(Reproductive Migration of Pacific Salmon)
HOME
IMPRINTED
MIGRANTS
Learning Type 6: Spatial Learning
Recognizing and remembering features of home area
or territory to allow accurate movements.
Probably widespread ...
* Any animal that leaves nest to find food or
mates and then returns is guided by spatial learning.
* Any animal that stores food must find it later … guided
by spatial learning.
Example of Spatial Learning: Nest Location
?
Useful Spatial Learning: Finding stored food
Family Corvidae (crows & jays) are powerful spatial learners
Example: Clark’s Nutcracker
High mountain habitat: Must find stored seeds in winter
Find food ……… Cache (hide) it ………. Find
Clark’s Nutcracker
Finding it later requires
memory of location … which
resulted from spatial
learning.
MEMORY DEMONSTRATION EXPERIMENT
Large room …
330 holes in floor
central feeder
rocks, logs, etc. on floor
Bird allowed to cache seeds in holes on Day 0
9.5 months !!
On Days 11, 82, 183, & 285 birds did better than random!!
……………………………………
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…………………………………..
……………………………………
……………………………………
……………………………………
F
……………………………………
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Seed Caching in 3 Species of Western Corvids (crows)
Elevation
Winter
diet
Clark’s nutcracker
highest
100% cached
33,000
Pinyon jay
middle
70-90
20,000
Scrub jay
lowest
??
6,000
Species
Cached
seeds/yr
(remembering locations on a computer monitor)
Clark’s
(remembering colors on a computer monitor)
Clark’s
Learning Type 6: Cultural Learning
(= observational
learning)
An animal may learn a behavior by watching or otherwise
sensing what another animal is doing.
Learning by "copying".
BUT… it’s more than momentary imitation.
The learned behavior may appear some time after the
original observation(s).
EXAMPLE: Imo was a female Japanese macaque that
was the source of new food-cleaning techniques.
Imo introduced washing sweet potatoes to remove grit.
She also introduced the washing of wheat grains: float
them and the grit sinks.
These behaviors spread slowly through the group.
passage from Drickamer, p. 177
Learning Type 4: Insight Learning
Aha !
Insight Learning
Formulating new behaviors or solutions to
problems by thinking about them.
May require making mental models or
simulations to discover hypothetical outcomes
- Most advanced?
- Consciousness?
- Taxonomically limited
- Animal evidence limited & controversial
Insight
Learning
Kohler’s
chimps
New Caledonian
Crow
Insight Learning?
Operant Conditioning?
“Mere” Instinct?