Laboratory studies of imitation/field studies of tradition: towards a synthesis in animal social learning.

Here I discuss: (1) historical precedents that have resulted in comparative psychologists accepting the two-action method as the "gold standard" in laboratory investigations of imitation learning, (2) evidence suggesting that the two-action procedure may not be adequate to answer questions concerning the role of imitation in the development of traditional behaviors of animals living in natural habitat, and (3) an alternative approach to the laboratory study of imitation that might increase the relevance of laboratory studies of imitation to the work of behavioral ecologists/primatologists interested in animal traditions and their relationship to human cumulative culture. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Tribute to Tom Zentall.

Imitation and local enhancement: detrimental effects of consensus definitions on analyses of social learning in animals.

Development of a widely accepted vocabulary referring to various types of social learning has made important contributions to decades of progress in analyzing the role of socially acquired information in the development of behavioral repertoires. It is argued here that emergence of a consensus vocabulary, while facilitating both communication and research, has also unnecessarily restricted research on social learning. The article has two parts.

Animal communication: sniffing is about more than just smell.

A recent study shows that subordinate rats reduce their rate of sniffing while dominants explore their faces thus delaying dominants' subsequent aggression. Sniffing not only facilitates acquisition of olfactory information, but unexpectedly, also serves as a medium for communication.

Social learning and traditions in animals: evidence, definitions, and relationship to human culture.

The number of publications concerned with social learning in nonhuman animals has expanded dramatically in recent decades. In this article, recent literature addressing three issues that have been of particular concern to those with both an interest in social learning and a background in experimental psychology are reviewed: (1) the definition as well as (2) empirical investigation of the numerous behavioral processes that support social learning in animals, and (3) the relationship of the 'traditions' seen in animals to the 'culture' that is so important in shaping the development of behavioral repertoires in humans. WIREs Cogn Sci 2012 doi: 10.

Social learning in humans and nonhuman animals: theoretical and empirical dissections.

The past decade has seen a resurgent, concerted interest in social learning research comparing human and nonhuman animals. In this special issue, we present a synthesis of work that consolidates what is currently known and provides a platform for future research. Consequently, we include both new empirical studies and novel theoretical proposals describing work with both human children and adults and a range of nonhuman animals.

A case study in behavioral analysis, synthesis and attention to detail: social learning of food preferences.

Philip Teitelbaum's focus on detailed description of behavior, the interplay of analysis and synthesis in experimental investigations and the importance of converging lines of evidence in testing hypotheses has proven useful in fields distant from the physiological psychology that he studied throughout his career. Here we consider the social biasing of food choice in Norway rats as an instance of the application of Teitelbaum's principles of behavioral analysis and synthesis and the usefulness of convergent evidence as well as the contributions of detailed behavioral analysis of social influences on food choice to present understanding of both sensory processes and memory.

Animal traditions: experimental evidence of learning by imitation in an unlikely animal.

A new field study provides the first experimental evidence of learning by imitation in a free-living animal and demonstrates that social learning can maintain two behavioral traditions in a single population.

Flower bats (Glossophaga soricina) and fruit bats (Carollia perspicillata) rely on spatial cues over shapes and scents when relocating food.

Background: Natural selection can shape specific cognitive abilities and the extent to which a given species relies on various cues when learning associations between stimuli and rewards. Because the flower bat Glossophaga soricina feeds primarily on nectar, and the locations of nectar-producing flowers remain constant, G. soricina might be predisposed to learn to associate food with locations.

Social learning of food preferences in rodents: rapid appetitive learning.

A procedure is described for quantitating the transfer of information about inducing increased intake of distinctively-flavored foods or fluids among common laboratory rodents. The method provides a simple, efficient, non-invasive way to produce robust, long-lasting changes in appetitive behaviors of laboratory rodents that can be used in studies of the neuroanatomical, neurochemical or genetic substrates of learning and memory.

Effects of enclosure size on sexual behavior of Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica).

The authors determined whether results of experiments on copulatory and affiliative behavior of pairs of Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) conducted in a closely confining apparatus would predict behavior in a large enclosure in which female quail could avoid contact with male quail. As found previously in studies of closely confined quail, in a large enclosure containing numerous barriers, both unmated female quail and mated female quail laying unfertilized eggs were more likely to remain near a confined male quail than were mated female quail laying fertilized eggs. Furthermore, the number of copulations that a pair engaged in when closely confined predicted the number of copulations that they engaged in when they were in the large enclosure.

Female Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) mated with males that harassed them are unlikely to lay fertilized eggs.

Results of previous studies of courtship and mating in Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) suggest that females avoid conspecific males because, while courting and mating, males engage in behaviors that are potentially injurious to females. However, prior experiments provided no direct evidence that females avoided harassing males. Here the authors show that a female quail choosing between a previous sex partner and an unfamiliar male avoids the former if he engaged in relatively many potentially injurious acts while courting and mating, (Experiments 1 and 2) and that males behaving aggressively toward mates are less likely than are gentler males to fertilize the females' eggs (Experiment 3).

Eggs of a female Japanese quail are more likely to be fertilized by a male that she prefers.

Male Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) that conspecific females preferred in a 10-min, forced-choice test of affiliative preference were more likely than were males not preferred in such a test to fertilize females' eggs when subsequently mated with them, although preferred and nonpreferred males mated equally often with females. Further, the probability that a nonpreferred male would fertilize a female's eggs was significantly increased if she watched while he courted and mated with another female. The results indicate that in Japanese quail (a) affiliative preference reliably predicts females' choices of fathers for their offspring and (b) females may have some degree of control over whether the males with whom they mate actually fertilize their eggs.

Lack of interference in long-term memory for socially learned food preferences in rats (Rattus norvegicus).

Outside the laboratory, rats (Rattus norvegicus) are likely both to interact with several conspecifics that have eaten various foods and to eat a variety of foods themselves before they encounter any particular food for which they have a socially enhanced preference. Here the authors examine the stability of rats' socially learned food preferences following 6 days of potentially disruptive ingestive experiences. The authors found that 6 days of (a) eating unfamiliar foods, (b) interacting with demonstrators that had eaten unfamiliar foods, or (c) both eating unfamiliar foods and interacting with demonstrators that had eaten those foods had no measurable effect on rats' socially learned food preferences.

Differences between golden hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus) and Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) in preference for the sole diet that they are eating.

D. DiBattista (2002) reported that hamsters but not rats showed reduced preferences for the sole diet they had eaten for 10 days. In the current study, the authors fed Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) a nutritious diet for either 3 or 10 days, then tested them either immediately or 1 or 3 days later.

Avoidance of relatively aggressive male Japanese Quail (Coturnix japonica) by sexually experienced conspecific females.

Sexually experienced female Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) that are offered a choice between 2 conspecific males previously observed engaging in an aggressive encounter prefer to affiliate with the less aggressive male. The authors determined whether this apparent preference for less aggressive males results from females approaching less aggressive individuals or avoiding more aggressive individuals. The authors found that females that had seen 2 males fight before choosing, in counterbalanced order, between each of them and a neutral stimulus were indifferent to less aggressive males but avoided more aggressive males.

Long lasting effects of rearing by an ethanol-consuming dam on voluntary ethanol consumption by rats.

For exposure to alcohol early in life to potentiate alcohol abuse in adolescence or adulthood, consequences of early exposure to alcohol must be of considerable duration. In two experiments using Norway rats as subjects, we examined effects of exposure during weaning to a dam consuming ethanol on adolescents' later affinity for ethanol. In a preliminary experiment, we offered rat pups a choice between 8% ethanol and water for 7 days immediately after they were weaned at 26 days of age.

Effects of ethanol consumption by adult female rats on subsequent consumption by adolescents.

We used a two-bottle choice test to measure voluntary ethanol consumption by adolescent rats that had lived with ethanol-consuming or water-consuming adult conspecifics. We found that housing weanlings with either a virgin or a lactating adult female rat that ingested ethanol increased the weanlings' subsequent voluntary intake of ethanol when they were fluid-deprived and provided with choices between 8% ethanol solution and water for 2 h/day. Rats housed with both an ethanol-consuming virgin female and their water-consuming dam drank more ethanol than did rats housed with a dam and virgin female, both consuming water.

Approaches to the study of traditional behaviors of free-living animals.

I review literature on four different approaches to the study of traditions in animals: observation of free-living animals, laboratory experiment, armchair analysis, and field experiment. Because, by definition, a tradition entails social learning of some kind, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to establish that a behavior is in fact traditional without knowledge of how it develops. Observations of free-living animals often provide strong circumstantial evidence of a tradition.

Socially transmitted food preferences can be used to study long-term memory in rats.

Immediately after a recently fed rodent demonstrator interacts with a conspecific observer, the observer shows a substantially enhanced preference for whatever food its demonstrator ate. Here we show that (1) influence of a single, 30-min interaction with a demonstrator on an observer's food preference lasts for at least 1 month, and (2) observers interacting on 2 successive days with a demonstrator fed a different diet on each day show significantly enhanced preferences for both diets a month later. Such enduring effects of single, brief interactions between a demonstrator rat and its observer provide an efficient means for studying physiological and behavioral substrates of long-term memory in rodents.

Preference for novel flavors in adult Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus).

The authors fed rats 1 of 2 distinctively flavored, roughly equipalatable diets for 3 days then offered them an ad libitum choice between the 2 diets. For 3 days, subjects exhibited a reduced relative intake of whichever diet they had previously eaten (Experiment 1). Such reduction in relative intake was as effective as a toxicosis-induced conditioned aversion in determining subjects' food choices (Experiment 2).

Ethanol consumption by rat dams during gestation, lactation and weaning increases ethanol consumption by their adolescent young.

In two experiments, we examined effects of ethanol consumption in rat dams during gestation, lactation, and weaning on voluntary ethanol consumption by their adolescent young. We found that exposure to an ethanol-ingesting dam throughout gestation, lactation, and weaning enhanced voluntary ethanol consumption by 26- to 33-day-old adolescents. We systematically examined effects on adolescent ethanol intake or requiring dams to drink ethanol during various periods in their pups' development.

Socially induced delayed reproduction in female Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus): is there anything special about dominant females?

In 4 experiments, the authors explored effects of interaction with both sexually active adult female and unfamiliar adult male Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) on young female gerbils' ages at first parturition. Presence of a natural mother retarded development of her daughters. However, presence of a natural mother had no greater effect on her daughters' development than did presence of any other familiar animal, either male or female.