Chapter 5: Learning Part II

What is the ultimate perspective?

Animals with favorable traits allowed individuals to survive and pass on those traits to the next generation.

What type of experiment was the Zenaida doves study?

A population comparisons study

Steven’s Model for the Evolution of Learning is an example of…

A theoretical approach

What are the approaches to studying why animals learn?

1. Within a species

2. Population comparisons

3. Theoretical approach

What were the results of Garcia’s rat experiment? Why?

Rats that were given the tasty water learned to avoid it when the water was paired with x-rays or toxins, but not the shock. Shock was more easily paired with the bright/noisy water.

Internal discomfort in nature is more likely to be caused by something an animal has eaten rather than an audiovisual cue. In contrast, the pain from a shock is more commonly associated with an audiovisual cue.

What type of experiment was Garcia’s rat experiment?

Within-species study

Ecological learning school

There are just some things animals cannot learn and there are other things they are able to learn easily due to ecological fitness and evolution.

Learning always an advantage? True or false.

False

Give an example of optimal learning

Honeybees do not learn an individual flower to revisit since it already drank its nectar. There is no reason for the situation to be the same again.

Give an example of optimal “forgetting”

Male and female mantis shrimp pairs only remember each other for a brooding period. No long-term monogamy.

Zenaida doves experiment

The population of group living doves learned the skinner’s boxes more readily and quickly than the territorial/ solitary population. With increased difficulty of the boxes, the more pronounced the differences were between populations.

Three-spined spickleback case study

Fish from populations from areas of high predation learned to avoid an area containing food, and a predator, more quickly than the population that came from low predation areas

What question(s) does Stephen’s model for Evolution of Learning help answer?

Whether it is more favorable to have the ability to learn or to evolve an innate behavior.

Draw Stephen’s Model for the Evolution of Learning

Draw a diagram showing the differences in populations of solitary and communal Zenaida doves when learning a Skinner’s box

Steven’s model, for the evolution of learning is an example of a(n)…

Theoretical approach

How do Coho salmon learn to find home?

They learn chemical cues! This process is age dependent and happens when they are smolts.

What are the types of things animals learn that we discussed in class?

1. How to find home

2. Learning to identify a mate

3. Learning to recognize kin/family

4. Aggression

What kind of cues could be involved in individual recognition?

1. Scent

2. Visuals

3. Sound

4. Touch

Are there phylogenetic constraints to finding/recognizing a mate?

Yes, finding mates is limited to the adaptations a species has.

What is an example of when learning and individual mate might not be important?

The Japanese quail exhibit female-only care of offspring and they only need males for sperm. Therefore recognizing an individual mate is not important and they do not need to learn that.

If Long-tailed tits prefer the churr call of family members, what style of experiment could we do to see if this preference is learned or innate?

Cross-fostering experiment

What was the result of the cross-fostering experiment with Long-tailed tits?

Chicks learned similar calls to whichever family they were raised with!

Intrinsic vs extrinsic?

1. Intrinsic: Belonging to something by its very nature. It comes from within that person, animal, object, etc..,

2. Extrinsic: Coming from the outside of something

Can you think of any possible intrinsic factors that might incline an individual to get involved (or not) in an agonistic encounter?

Body condition

How does a water maze work?

Animal must find escape platform in a pool of water. Once they find the platform, the water is turned opaque and the animal must use memory to find the platform again.

Give an example of how endocrinology can affect learning.

Rats with low anxiety scores performed better than rats with high anxiety scores in the water maze experiment. Low anxiety rats were able to find the platform and their time searching decreased by the third trial.

What does the experiment with the high/low anxiety rats in the water maze tell us?

High anxiety can hinder the ability to make long term memories. In general, hormone levels can definitely effect an individuals capability to learn!

Sensitization is the process by which…

Animals become more likely to exhibit a response to a harmless stimulus over time

Learning is best defined as…

A relatively permanent change in behavior as a result if an experience

When psychologists construct extinction curves, they are examining…

How long an animal remembers a paired association once the pairing has stopped.

Phenotypic plasticity

The ability of an organism to adopt alternative phenotypes depending on environmental and/or social conditions

What is an example of phenotypic plasticity?

Female guppies having smaller, but more numerous offspring in high predation environments. When moved to low predation environments they have fewer but larger offspring.

David Stephens’s model of learning and environmental stability predicts that learning will be favored when environmental predictability is…

High within an individual’s lifetime but low between generations

Instrumental conditioning involves…

Positive and/or negative reinforcement of a behavioral response