Publications by authors named "Na'ama Aljadeff"
We studied how different types of social demonstration improve house sparrows' (Passer domesticus) success in solving a foraging task that requires both operant learning (opening covers) and discrimination learning (preferring covers of the rewarding colour). We provided learners with either paired demonstration (of both cover opening and colour preference), action-only demonstration (of opening white covers only), or no demonstration (a companion bird eating without covers). We found that sparrows failed to learn the two tasks with no demonstration, and learned them best with a paired demonstration.
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- Animal societies often show social conformity or diverse behaviors based on adaptive learning strategies.
- The complexity of a task can significantly influence whether individuals learn socially or independently; greater initial difficulty can lead to conformity.
- In a study with house sparrows, increasing task difficulty shifted their behavior from adaptive diversity to social conformity, demonstrating how cognitive demands affect learning dynamics.