Biological Basis of Behaviour Lecture 9 - Social Intelligence & Communication PDF

Lecture 9 Social Intelligence and Communication PSY2304Biological Basis of Behaviour Social Learning in Animals•Can animals learn from other animals?•The answer is yes, but the evidence for true social learning, e.g. imitation, is harder to come by. Mechanisms of Social Learning–Observational Cond...

Lecture 9 Social Intelligence and Communication PSY2304Biological Basis of Behaviour Social Learning in Animals•Can animals learn from other animals?•The answer is yes, but the evidence for true social learning, e.g. imitation, is harder to come by. Mechanisms of Social Learning–Observational Conditioning –Stimulus or Local Enhancement–Imitation–Tool Use–TeachingThen we move on to Communication Observational or Vicarious Conditioninge.g. fear of snakes in monkeys–based on CC•naïve monkey doesn’t fear snake•sees fear reaction in other monkey when snake present•fear of snakes conditioned–may be particularly important in phobias Enhancement–e.g. blue tits and milk–demonstrator’s behaviour draws observer’s attention to locationor stimulus–Makes imitation hard to establish Imitation–when enhancement and observational conditioning can’t explain new behaviour–“Two-Action Test”–with quail (+), rats (+), budgerigars (+), pigeons (+)–BUT: never a newbehaviour? Heyes and colleagues (1990, 1992, 1999) have looked at imitation in the rat. The response used was pushing a hanging joystick either to the left or right (so not a typical rat behavior, and the bi-directional nature of the response controls for effects of enhancement, cf. Grindley’s demonstration of instrumental learning in the guinea pig). Rats observed a demonstrator rat e.g. pushing the joystick to the demonstrator’s right, then were transferred to the demonstrator chamber and reinforced for pushing in either direction. They preferentially pushed in the same direction as the demonstrator -imitation? Imitation in primates–potato washing in Japanese macaques:•spreading in population too slow to be imitation (stimulus enhancement)–Anecdotal evidence -problem of anthropomorphising–Conclusion -evidence for true imitation at present inconclusive. Tool Use and Teaching–anvils to crack nuts, stick to fish for termites... Teaching–An intentional facilitation of learning, with costs for the teacher.–Flavour preferences in rats or mobbing in birds are not examples of teaching–Little evidence for intentional teaching in animals, only behaviour that helps the young to educate themselves and directs attention to an object, location or behaviour (e.g. Meerkats). –Animal communication•referential communication•tactical deception–But first an example that demonstrates the pitfalls present in this type of researchCommunication Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (1977) 29, 561-575 THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SIMPLE FORM OF COMMUNICATION* R. A. BOAKES AND ILSE GAERTNER Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, U.K. This paper is concerned with situations in which one of two possible stimuli is presented to one subject, the sender, while a second subject is required to make one of two responses. The stimuli are not available to the receiver, but the latter can perceive the sender. Successful performance depends on the sender indi- cating what stimulus is present to the receiver. It is proposed that the development of this form of communication, initially observed with dolphins, can be under- stood in the light of recent autoshaping research. An experiment demonstrated that pairs of pigeons can learn to perform appropriately in such a situation and provided evidence supporting an autoshaping analysis. Introduction A television programme on the behaviour of dolphins, (BBC Horizon, 1972) contains a sequence of shots which dramatically illustrate the programme’s theme : that dolphins are both unusually intelligent and unusually communicative. This sequence shows in adjacent enclosures a male and a female bottle-nose dolphin which are unable to see each other. Occasionally one of two possible visual stimuli, which we can call SI and Sz, are presented to the female. The male’s enclosure contains two paddles. Only if the male pushes the correct paddle when a stimulus is present for the female will both animals receive food. The rules for this situation are: if the female receives SI, then the left-hand paddle is correct for the male; if the female receives Sz, then the right-hand paddle is correct. The sequence shows that the female has learned to tell the male which of the two stimuli is present so that the pair receives food on practically every trial. A particularly interesting aspect of the study first using this procedure (Bastian, 1967; Evans and Bastian, 1969) is that no explicit training of the dolphin pair was carried 0ut.t Nevertheless, their performance was “very much what might * This work was partly supported by a grant from the UK Medical Research Council. Ilse Gaertner’s participation was made possible by a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). We are very grateful to Mike McCloskey and Dr Louis M. Herman for their comments on this paper and to the Department of Psychology, Princeton University, for providing facilities for its preparation. t The film material is based on a replication of Bastian’s study which was carried out at Dolfinar- Details of this replication (C. Kamminga, W. H. Dudok van Heel and A general account of Bastian’s study and a Reprints are obtainable from the first author. ium Harderwijk, Holland. A van der Ru, in preparation) are not yet available. description of its context is provided by Wood (1973, pp. 113-118). Downloaded by [University of Exeter], [Ian McLaren] at 06:53 07 February 2012 Here’s the paper that studied this behaviour in pigeons –based on previous work done in dolphins.Boakes and Gaertner (1977) in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 29, 561-75.Well worth a read… “Communication”in pigeons: It’s not what it seems to be….The pigeons are set up as shown, the bird on the left is the “Sender”, that on the right the “Receiver”. The Sender can see two lights that cannot be directly viewed by the Receiver, the Receiver can, however, see the Sender. The Receiver has two response keys, Left Hand (LH) and Right Hand (RH) to peck, and once again the Sender cannot directly view these keys. The contingencies in play are such that the Sender and Receiver both get rewarded if the Receiver pecks RH when the green light is on and LH when the red light is on. Can they communicate to solve this problem? The answer is that they can solve the problem after a lot of training on it, but it’s not quite what most people would mean by “communication”.2 Communication or Exploitation?•Advantage for the sender: manipulation of behaviour of others•Benefits for both sender and receiver ?•Altruistic behaviour? Intention•"communication” = intention to send a message to the receiver •reliable effect on the receiver's behaviour •can be between different species Referential Communication•releaser/FAP communication: no decision, direct instruction to the receiver•referential communication: messages give varied information about matters external to sender and receiver –vervet alarm calls–other primate species–The "dance language" of honey bees is referential A brief word about languageThe main focus of this lecture is not directly on language -as you will receive other lectures on this topic. But a few words on the issue of whether or not animals can truly be said to have learned a language in the same sense that humans can.My answer is -I’m not convinced that this has been demonstrated. Perhaps the main problem is that animals who are language trained have never shown the productivity that is so characteristic of human language use.“John likes Mary”is different to “Mary likes John”but similar in meaning to… Mary is liked by JohnJohn thinks Mary ain’t half badMary is the subject of a certain amount of affection from JohnTo set against this we have evidence such as Washoe’s famous “water bird”example. But it’s not particularly impressive when you realise that Washoe is looking at both a bird and water, and is signing both terms over a period of time. See Terrace et al (1979) in Science for more on this (the Nim project –which I consider next). Nim§His actual name was Neam Chimpsky§Terrace studied him intensively for years –he had tutors round the clock teaching him sign language.§Terrace was originally convinced that Nim could form sentences –i.e. “More banana” would be signed rather than “Banana more”.§But then he spotted something: Nim was using the signs provided by his tutors to produce his signs –he was effectively copying them or responding to them –but at such a short lag that they didn’t notice. You could only spot it on film.§His conclusion ultimately was that Nim did not acquire language. He was smart, he was fast, but he did not communicate in the way that humans can. He didn't really generate his own sentences. He was simply good at producing responses that achieved the goal of getting food.§Terrace took a lot of flak for this conclusion and for this experimental work. There’s a recent documentary “Nim”which portrays him in an unflattering light. He stands by his conclusions, and feels that his portrayal in this documentary is unfair. The question put by the tutor is “Who?”. What looks like a sentence, is not, in fact, a reply to this question. Instead it’s the sequence “Who –Me”, “Who –Hug”, “Who –Cat”. ReferencesAkins, C. K. & Zentall, T. R. (1999). Imitation in Japanese quail: The role of reinforcement of demonstrator responding. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review5, 694-697.Mitchell, C. J., Heyes, C. M., Gardner, M. R. & Dawson, G. R. (19999). Limitations of a bidirectional control procedure for the investigation of imitation in rats: odourcues on the manipulandum. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology52B, 193-202Seyfarth,R.M.,Cheney,D.L.&Marler,P.(1980).Monkeyresponsestothreedifferentalarmcalls:Evidenceofpredatorclassificationandsemanticcommunication.Science,210,801-803.Te r r a c e ,H.S.,Pettto,L.A.,Sanders,R.J.&Bever,T.G.(1979).Cananapecreateasentence?Science,206,891-902.