BZ 300 204 1st Edition Lecture 7Outline of Last Lecture I. Learning Continued…II. Imprintinga. General Traitsb. Types of Imprintingi. Filial and SexualIII. HabituationIV. SensitizationV. Classical ConditioningVI. Operant ConditioningVII. Differences between Operant and Classical ConditioningVIII. Definitions to know:a. Intermittent Reinforcementb. ExtinctionIX. Constraints in Learning Studiesa. Biological Constraintsb. MethodsX. Reinforcement and Punishmenta. Reinforcementb. PunishmentOutline of Current Lecture:I. Trial and Error LearningII. Taste Aversion LearningIII. Taste Aversion Vs. Associative Learning/Operative LearningIV. Example: Bat Vampire StudyV. Cache RetrievalVI. PilferageVII. Social LearningVIII. What about the evolution of learning?IX. PlayCurrent Lecture:I. Trial and Error Learninga. Animal attempts series of solutions, eliminating ones that do not work.b. Can be fairly risky, especially if solution does not work. The error part canbe scary, depending on what the risk is.c. Can be a cognitive skill. II. Taste Aversion Learninga. an animal associates intestinal upset after eating or drinking certain items, and that animal will continually avoid that certain item, even to the point of starvation. b. What makes you very ill, is something you may not eat or drink again for a very long time. III. Taste Aversion Vs. Associative learning/ Operative learning: a. The time needed for the learning. The connection between behavior and consequence must be very close in operant conditioning, but taste aversionthere can be a big delay. b. Relevance of the learning- poisons (vs. other stimuli) more readily associated with food. Highly relevant stimuli are always something you eat or drink.c. Specificity of environment- taste aversion learning is immediately generalized, does not have to be in the same environmentd. Maturation of learning abilities- rat weanlings learn taste aversion as well as adults do.e. Active/ passive exposure- if actively ingested it will learn the avoidance much greater than force-feeding.f. Anesthesia- can learn taste aversion even while under anesthesia.IV. Example: Vampire Bat Studya. In experiment 1, they determined that vampire bats can taste citric acid. (they consumed less blood when it contained citric acid) b. In experiment 2, they used cinnamon as stimulus for non-vampire bats. (They encounter citric acid in normal food) i. They then tested if bats can associate cinnamon or citric acid with illness caused by simultaneous injection of LiCl. ii. Control bats were not given LiCl. iii. Vampire bats never learned to avoid citric acid to avoid throwing up. iv. All other bat species were able to exhibit taste aversion and learnedto avoid the cinnamon to avoid throwing up. v. In this study they learned, vampire bats do not learn taste aversion. Natural selection did not select for that because all the blood was fresh upon which they are feeding and there was no need to avert spoiled food by having taste aversion.V. Cache Retrieval is the idea of animals storing food for a long time. a. Scatter hoard a type of storing food where you’re storing the food at many different areas and have to retrieve it from many locations. Advantage is if one place gets wiped out, you still have the other areas. Disadvantage is that you must remember all the other areas. b. Larger hoard is where you store your all of your food in one single place.This method requires defense.c. Strategies to find the cache?i. Learn and return (Learned cache retrieval) uses episodic memory, memory associated with specific experience. Did the animal learn it and find it again or did they just simply find it by coming acrossit? Experimental test to compare how quickly an animal might findfood that is hidden and one that someone else hid. d. A few alternate hypotheses:i. Reforaging is where the animal puts food around its home range and then searches for it. Requires no mental ability to find the food. ii. Searching by rule is where the animal always hide their food in onespecific area in your home range, a method they use to hide and search. This method is analogous to a good filing system.VI. Pilferage is basically thievery. There are two strategies:a. Search in another home range to retrieve cache instead of randomly searching.b. Observational learning to find their food cache. This is where another animal watches a specific animal in order to get an insight on their food caches. For ex. ravens go through a much greater effort to hide cache when being watched to avoid any pilfers.VII. Social Learninga. Observational learning occurs when one animal watches the actions of another animal and learns. It is an unusual kind of behavior, that you would not expect normally.b. Cultural transfer of information is faster than genetic evolution, is in an individuals lifetime. c. Imitation is a type of learning where an animal immediately copies the actions of another animal when it is the presence of the other animal. d. See example in book:i. e.g., Octopus, Blue Tits and European Robins (UK)-learned to rip off lids of milk and eat the cream. e. Two possible explanations for observational learning:i. that it must be social learning, the action is learned just by watching another bird ii. the alternate hypotheses is that if one bird did it, than could it be that to all birds do it independently without the aid of watching another animal, an independent action.iii. Survival of Learning- an animal that can learn has a wide range of options in survival techniques and to adapt. VIII. What about the evolution of learning. Possible hypotheses:a. Is brain size a good indicator?b. The longer an animal lives, the more time it has to learn, life history correlates. Social animals can be under selection to learn better. c. If you live in a social group, you must make associations to watch for cuesand reactions at what will happen. d. In a social animal, learning has a set of advantages that is not present in individuals, because you learn behaviors that you will associate with another social animal. e. Phenology itself, there could possibly be some lineages to animals that will learn better.IX. Playa. A seemingly purposeless activity, with no immediate survival value, lacks apparent external goals.b. Currently, we aren’t sure on many aspects of play; if it is an apparent activity and if it is a part of learning. c. The further away we get from our own species the less we are able to recognize