Learning• Relatively permanent modification

of behavior that occurs through practice or experience

• Learning is not maturation

• Learning is not always observable

• Associative learning vs. non-associative learning

• Habituation - relatively persistent waning of a response, results from repeated stimulus not followed by any reinforcement, a process of learning to ignore irrelevant stimuli

• Benefit - save time by protecting animals from responding the irrelevant stimuli, to concentrate

on more important stimuli

• Delayed conditioning (1/2~2 sec.)

• Simultaneous conditioning

• Trace conditioning (no overlap)

• Backward conditioning

• Time as a stimulus (zoo animal)

• e.g. red light, alarm call

Operant conditioning (instrument)

• Trail-and-error learning

• Response is emitted by reinforcement, it is rewards which cause animals to respond

• e.g. chimp fishing termites

• e.g. search image

• Reinforcement - anything that alters the probability of behavior

• Positive vs. negative reinforcement

• Schedule of reinforcement: Fixed ratio, variable ratio, fixed interval, variable interval

• Extinction and spontaneous recovery

Original principle of learning

• Learning is a unitary trait - General process theory

• Natural scale of learning ability

• Equivalence of association - Principle of equipotentiality

• Reinforcement is required for learning - Law of effect

• Association strength - more reinforcement stronger learned response

Rebuttal of principle of learning

• Can't fix animal to scale

• Latent learning--association made with neither immediate reinforcement or reward nor particular behavior evident at the time of learning.

– e.g. digger wasp, rat in a maze

• Preparedness

Complex learning• Avoidance learning (aversive

conditioning)

– R* don't come immediately

– One trial learning

– Long lasting effect

• Biased learning

• Latent learning

• Insight learning - the animal makes new associations between previously learned tasks in order to solve a new problem

• Imprinting

– Acquired preference and development predisposition

• Social learning

– local enhancement: locate foraging sites by attending to others

– local facilitation: animals feed faster in a group

– observational learning: observers modify behavior after demonstrators

– imitation: observers match behavioral action and goal

• Learning set - the acquisition of a learning strategies, or given a series of problems, an animal will transfer some of what it has learned about solving the first problem to the solution of subsequent problems in a series.

• Constraints of learning – preparedness

– Methods constraints

Cost and Benefit of learning

• Cost--

– Take time

– More neural complexity

– more vulnerable until learning is complete

– increase investment by parent

– can be fooled

• Benefit--

– Ability to cope w/ a range of event (high adaptability)

– Programming everything is too costly

Development of behavior• Question of ontogeny – how behavior

changes over lifetime of an individual?

• Seek to identify the factors influencing the acquisition of behavior

• Food of larvae determines if they become queens (behaviorally and morphologically)

• Environmental sex determination: incubation temperature

• 2M males more likely to attack stranger at 90 days than 0M males

• 2M females have larger territory, are more aggressive and less attractive to males than 0M female

Seed storing in marsh tit • Hand-reared individuals allowing to

store seeds at different developmental stages have larger hippocampus (region ~ spatial learning) than control (no experience)

Effects of environment• A variety of environmental cues seem to

act as developmental “switches” between behavioral phenotypes

• e.g. caste switching in bee

• D1 ~12: young adult, clean nest

• D13 ~ 20: mid-aged adult, brood & queen care, nest maintenance, food storage

• D20 ~: old adults, foraging

• Interactions within hives can change timing of behavioral switches

• Many workers of same young age, some remain nursing till later, some become foragers earlier

• When younger bees add to colony, young residents become precocial foragers

• When older bees add to colony, young residents do not become precocial foragers

Sequential hermaphroditism

• Normal pattern = sex changes related to size, but in some species developmental change triggered by social cues

• In gobies, change may occur based on the size and sexes of new partners (usually smallest partners is female)

• In anemonefish, largest females dominate group; when largest female removed, larger males switch to female

Social deprivation in rhesus monkey

• Total isolation

• Isolation + cloth or wire surrogate mother

• Peer group

• W/ mother only

• W/ mother, but w/ varying periods of separation at specific age interval

• Small social group (control)

• Behavior homeostasis

Methods in behavior development

• 7 parameters of treatment– Age when treatment is given

– Type or quality

– Duration or quantity

– Age of testing

– Type of test

– Test for the persistence

– Test different strains or species

Testing procedure• Longitudinal

• Cross-sectioned

• Deprivation, enrichment, alter the quality of the stimuli