Topic 7: Learning and Cognition - Study GuideThe key words when thinking about learning are: “relatively permanent or lasting change” and “experience.”The study of learning in animal behavior has traditionally been conducted by Comparative Psychologists although all researchers in animal behavior understand the importance of experience in modifying an animal’s behavior.Learning is not predicted to evolve in either a completely fixed world (no need to learn from experience since your experience of the environment will always be the same) OR a completely random or dynamic world (environmental changes are unpredictable, so learning does not help survival or reproduction). Learning does evolve in animal species because the REAL world is intermediate between fixed and dynamic, so learning can help an animal respond to changes in the environment.There are several types of learning that can vary from common (e.g., habituation) to very uncommon (e.g., insight learning) depending on an animal’s cognitive complexity.Remember that “behavioral phenotype” includes not just innate behavior patternscontrolled largely by genotype, but also what an animal learns during its lifetime.1. Sensitization/Habituation occur on the level of the neuron, so ALL animals arecapable of this kind of behavioral alteration as a result of experience. Habituation is much better understood than sensitization. (See Topic 5 for more information about habituation).2. Imprinting is characterized by a “critical period” which is a time during development in which this type of learning can be expressed. Konrad Lorenz is particularly associated with this kind of learning. The fact that an animal imprints is innate, but what the animal imprints on is learned, so this is a good behavior to examine the interactions of innate and learned behaviors. What an animal imprintsupon (filial imprinting) can have life-long ramifications, especially concerning mate choice.Memory and learning involve changes in the brain. Habituationis usually associated with down-regulating synaptic response. Learning a motor skill such as running on a rotorod have been associated with a proliferation of dendritic spines.3. Pavlovian/Classical Conditioning is the association between a stimulus and response which are paired over time. Classical conditioning always starts with a natural association between a stimulus and physiological response. Pavlov’s salivating dogs are the usual examples of this type of learning. Beginning with Pavlov, Comparative Psychologists thought thatANY 2 stimuli could be paired and the animal would form an association between the stimuli. However, animal “Misbehavior” was noted by the Brelands in 1961 after which the Comparative Psychologists recognized that innate, or genetic influences, can have a significant effect on behavior.3a. Taste Aversion/1-Trial Learning differs from Classical Conditioning in that there are limitations to the associations the animals can form between stimulus and response. It can occur with a long delay between stimulus and response (e.g., tasting something and feeling sick); it can occur in 1-trial (rather than repeated presentations in classical conditioning); and it can be highly species and stimulus specific (e.g., in a rat, taste and sickness can be associated, or pain and tactile sensation, but not a cue and consequence that would not occur in the animal’s natural environment).4. Instrumental Learning or Operant Conditioning is when an animal learns through reward or punishment and the animal learns an association between behavior and the consequence of the behavior. B.F. Skinner is credited with the pioneering work on this type of learning. Two variables associated with this type oflearning are: adding or subtracting something from the animal’s life AND does the reward or punishment increase or decrease the likelihood of the behavior repeating? This sets up a nice 2X2 factorial design of which there are several examples in the PPs. Note that “negative reinforcement” is commonly misunderstood by the general public.5. Social Interactions or Cultural Transmission is a type of learning in which other individuals are used as a source of information for learning. This is the type of learning that is very common in humans and, although once considered extremely rare in non-human animals, is being shown to be more wide-spread as more information is compiled regarding natural animal behaviors. Potato washingin Japanese macaques is a classic example of this type of learning.“Culture” can be defined as a system of information transfer that affects an individual’s phenotype, in the sense that part of the phenotype is acquired from others by teaching or social learning.Cultural transmission of information differs from individual learning in several respects:1. A single individual in a population can have a significant effect on the behavior of the entire population. Learning transcends the lifetime of an individual– lasting sometimes for a long time after the death of the individual.2. Cultural transmission of information can spread very rapidly through a population. Behavioral changes in a population due to selection pressures would undoubtedly take much longer.Example from class: If you never put your hand on a hot stove it could be because 1. You did it once and learned the association between the behavior (hand on stove)and consequence (pain) which would be individual learning; OR 2. Your mother told you not to put your hand on the stove and you never did which would be cultural transmission of information.Modes of cultural transmission can be vertical, horizontal, or oblique depending on who is teaching or learning from whom. (Classroom learning is generally “oblique.”)Meme, which is a term coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976, has come to mean units of cultural transmission. The internet is a huge meme pool.Tool use and vocal dialects among members of some animal species are behavioral traditions that animals can learn from each other.6. Insight Learning is a rare type of learning among animal species although human primates are very good at it. Insight learning has sometimes been referred to as the “Ah ha!” moment in which problem solving occurs through understandingthe relationships of various parts of a problem rather than through trial-and-error. Wolfgang Kohler’s experiments showed that chimps can problem-solve with