Editing Observational learning (section)

==Other human and animal behavior experiments==

When an animal is given a task to complete, they are almost always more successful after observing another animal doing the same task before them. Experiments have been conducted on several different species with the same effect: animals can learn behaviors from peers. However, there is a need to distinguish the propagation of behavior and the stability of behavior. Research has shown that social learning can spread a behavior, but there are more factors regarding how a behavior carries across generations of an [[animal culture]].<ref name="Frith, Chris D. 2012">{{cite journal|doi=10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100449|title=Mechanisms of Social Cognition|year=2012|last1=Frith|first1=Chris D.|last2=Frith|first2=Uta|journal=[[Annual Review of Psychology]]|volume=63|pages=287–313|pmid=21838544}}</ref>

===Learning in fish===
Experiments with [[ninespine stickleback]]s showed that individuals will use social learning to locate food.<ref name="Frith, Chris D. 2012"/>

===Social learning in pigeons===
[[File:Columba livia in Japan.JPG|thumb|Pigeon]]A study in 1996 at the University of Kentucky used a foraging device to test social learning in pigeons. A pigeon could access the food reward by either pecking at a treadle or stepping on it. Significant correspondence was found between the methods of how the observers accessed their food and the methods the initial model used in accessing the food.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Zentall | first1 = T. R. | last2 = Sutton | first2 = J. E. | last3 = Sherburne | first3 = L. M. | s2cid = 59455975 | year = 1996 | title = True imitative learning in pigeons | journal = Psychological Science | volume = 7 | issue = 6| pages = 343–346 | doi = 10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb00386.x }}</ref>

===Acquiring foraging niches===
Studies have been conducted at the University of Oslo and University of Saskatchewan regarding the possibility of social learning in birds, delineating the difference between cultural and genetic acquisition.<ref>{{Cite journal|title = Social learning in birds and its role in shaping a foraging niche|journal = Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences|volume = 366|issue = 1567|pages = 969–77|date = 2011|last = Slagsvold|first = Tore|author-link=Tore Slagsvold|pmid = 21357219|pmc = 3049099|doi = 10.1098/rstb.2010.0343}}</ref> Strong evidence already exists for [[mate choice]], bird song, predator recognition, and foraging.

Researchers cross-fostered eggs between nests of blue tits and great tits and observed the resulting behavior through audio-visual recording. Tits raised in the foster family learned their foster family's foraging sites early. This shift—from the sites the tits would among their own kind and the sites they learned from the foster parents—lasted for life. What young birds learn from foster parents, they eventually transmitted to their own offspring. This suggests cultural transmissions of foraging behavior over generations in the wild.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Slagsvold | first1 = T.|author-link=Tore Slagsvold | last2 = Wiebe | first2 = K. L. | year = 2011 | title = Social learning in birds and its role in shaping a foraging niche | journal = Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences | volume = 366 | issue = 1567| pages = 969–977 | doi = 10.1098/rstb.2010.0343 | pmid=21357219 | pmc=3049099}}</ref>

===Social learning in crows===
The University of Washington studied this phenomenon with crows, acknowledging the evolutionary tradeoff between acquiring costly information firsthand and learning that information socially with less cost to the individual but at the risk of inaccuracy. The experimenters exposed wild crows to a unique "dangerous face" mask as they trapped, banded, and released 7-15 birds at five different study places around Seattle, WA. An immediate scolding response to the mask after trapping by previously captured crows illustrates that the individual crow learned the danger of that mask. There was a scolding from crows that were captured that had not been captured initially. That response indicates conditioning from the mob of birds that assembled during the capture.

Horizontal social learning (learning from peers) is consistent with the lone crows that recognized the dangerous face without ever being captured. Children of captured crow parents were conditioned to scold the dangerous mask, which demonstrates vertical social learning (learning from parents). The crows that were captured directly had the most precise discrimination between dangerous and neutral masks than the crows that learned from the experience of their peers. The ability of crows to learn doubled the frequency of scolding, which spread at least 1.2&nbsp; km from where the experiment started to over a 5-year period at one site.<ref>Cornell, H. N., Marzluff, J. M., & Pecoraro, S. (2012). Social learning spreads knowledge about dangerous humans among American crows. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences,</ref>

===Propagation of animal culture===

Researchers at the Département d’Etudes Cognitives, Institut Jean Nicod, Ecole Normale Supérieure acknowledged a difficulty with research in social learning. To count acquired behavior as cultural, two conditions need must be met: the behavior must spread in a social group, and that behavior must be stable across generations. Research has provided evidence that imitation may play a role in the propagation of a behavior, but these researchers believe the fidelity of this evidence is not sufficient to prove the stability of animal culture.

Other factors like ecological availability, reward-based factors, content-based factors, and source-based factors might explain the stability of animal culture in a wild rather than just imitation. As an example of ecological availability, chimps may learn how to fish for ants with a stick from their peers, but that behavior is also influenced by the particular type of ants as well as the condition.  A behavior may be learned socially, but the fact that it was learned socially does not necessarily mean it will last. The fact that the behavior is rewarding has a role in cultural stability as well. The ability for socially-learned behaviors to stabilize across generations is also mitigated by the complexity of the behavior. Different individuals of a species, like crows, vary in their ability to use a complex tool. Finally, a behavior's stability in animal culture depends on the context in which they learn a behavior. If a behavior has already been adopted by a majority, then the behavior is more likely to carry across generations out of a need for conforming.

Animals are able to acquire behaviors from social learning, but whether or not that behavior carries across generations requires more investigation.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Claidiere | first1 = N. | last2 = Sperber | first2 = D. | year = 2010 | title = Imitation explains the propagation, not the stability of animal culture | journal = Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences | volume = 277 | issue = 1681| pages = 651–659 | doi = 10.1098/rspb.2009.1615 | pmid = 19889707 | pmc = 2842690 }}</ref>

===Hummingbird experiment===
Experiments with hummingbirds provided one example of apparent observational learning in a non-human organism. Hummingbirds were divided into two groups. Birds in one group were exposed to the feeding of a knowledgeable "tutor" bird; hummingbirds in the other group did not have this exposure. In subsequent tests the birds that had seen a tutor were more efficient feeders than the others.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Altshuler | first1 = D. | last2 = Nunn | first2 = A. | year = 2001 | title = Obeservational learning in hummingbirds | journal = The Auk | volume = 118 | issue = 3| pages = 795–799 | doi=10.2307/4089948| jstor = 4089948 | doi-access = free }}</ref>

===Bottlenose dolphin===
Herman (2002) suggested that [[bottlenose dolphins]] produce goal-emulated behaviors rather than imitative ones. A dolphin that watches a model place a ball in a basket might place the ball in the basket when asked to mimic the behavior, but it may do so in a different manner seen.<ref>Herman, L. M. (2002). Vocal, social, and self-imitation by bottlenosed dolphins. In [[Kerstin Dautenhahn|K. Dautenhahn]] & C. Nehaniv (Eds.), Imitation in animals and artifacts (pp. 63–108). Cambridge: MIT Press.</ref>

===Rhesus monkey===
Kinnaman (1902) reported that one [[rhesus monkey]] learned to pull a plug from a box with its teeth to obtain food after watching another monkey succeed at this task.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Kinnaman | first1 = A. J. | year = 1902 | title = Mental life of two Macacus rhesus monkeys in captivity | journal = The American Journal of Psychology | volume = 13 | issue = 2| pages = 173–218 | doi=10.2307/1412738| jstor = 1412738 }}</ref>

Fredman (2012) also performed an experiment on observational behavior. In experiment 1, human-raised monkeys observed a familiar human model open a foraging box using a tool in one of two alternate ways: levering or poking. In experiment 2, mother-raised monkeys viewed similar techniques demonstrated by monkey models. A control group in each population saw no model. In both experiments, independent coders detected which technique experimental subjects had seen, thus confirming social learning. Further analyses examined copying at three levels of resolution.

The human-raised monkeys exhibited the greatest learning with the specific tool use technique they saw. Only monkeys who saw the levering model used the lever technique, by contrast with controls and those who witnessed poking. Mother-reared monkeys instead typically ignored the tool and exhibited fidelity at a lower level, tending only to re-create whichever result the model had achieved by either levering or poking.

Nevertheless, this level of social learning was associated with significantly greater levels of success in monkeys witnessing a model than in controls, an effect absent in the human-reared population. Results in both populations are consistent with a process of canalization of the repertoire in the direction of the approach witnessed, producing a narrower, socially shaped behavioral profile than among controls who saw no model.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Fredman | first1 = Tamar | last2 = Whiten | first2 = Andrew | s2cid = 10437237 | year = 2008 | title = Observational Learning from Tool using Models by Human-Reared and Mother-Reared Capuchin Monkeys (Cebus Apella) | journal = Animal Cognition | volume = 11 | issue = 2| pages = 295–309 | doi=10.1007/s10071-007-0117-0| pmid = 17968602 }}</ref>

===Light box experiment===
Pinkham and Jaswal (2011) did an experiment to see if a child would learn how to turn on a light box by watching a parent. They found that children who saw a parent use their head to turn on the light box tended to do the task in that manner, while children who had not seen the parent used their hands instead.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Pinkham | first1 = A.M. | last2 = Jaswal | first2 = V.K. | year = 2011 | title = Watch and learn? Infants privilege efficiency over pedagogy during imitative learning | journal = Infancy | volume = 16 | issue = 5| pages = 535–544 | doi=10.1111/j.1532-7078.2010.00059.x| pmid = 32693552 }}</ref>

===Swimming skill performance===
When adequate practice and appropriate feedback follow demonstrations, increased skill performance and learning occurs. Lewis (1974) did a study<ref>Weiss, Maureen et al. (1998). Observational Learning and the Fearful Child: Influence of Peer Models n Swimming Skill Performance and Psychological Responses. 380–394</ref> of children who had a fear of swimming and observed how modelling and going over swimming practices affected their overall performance. The experiment spanned nine days, and included many steps. The children were first assessed on their anxiety and swimming skills. Then they were placed into one of three conditional groups and exposed to these conditions over a few days.

At the end of each day, all children participated in a group lesson. The first group was a control group where the children watched a short cartoon video unrelated to swimming. The second group was a peer mastery group, which watched a short video of similar-aged children who had very good task performances and high confidence. Lastly, the third group was a peer coping group, whose subjects watched a video of similar-aged children who progressed from low task performances and low confidence statements to high task performances and high confidence statements.

The day following the exposures to each condition, the children were reassessed. Finally, the children were also assessed a few days later for a follow-up assessment. Upon reassessment, it was shown that the two model groups who watched videos of children similar in age had successful rates on the skills assessed because they perceived the models as informational and motivational.

=== Do-as-I-do chimpanzee ===
Flexible methods must be used to assess whether an animal can imitate an action. This led to an approach that teaches animals to imitate by using a command such as "do-as-I-do" or "do this" followed by the action that they are supposed to imitate.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|last=Gluck, Mark A.|title=Learning and memory : from brain to behavior|date=2014|publisher=Worth|isbn=978-1-4292-9858-2|oclc=842272491}}</ref> Researchers trained chimpanzees to imitate an action that was paired with the command. For example, this might include a researcher saying "do this" paired with clapping hands. This type of instruction has been utilized in a variety of other animals in order to teach imitation actions by utilizing a command or request.<ref name=":0" />