Summary Oxford University Biology revision notes: Learning
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Course
Animal Behaviour
Institution
Oxford University (OX)
My Oxford University notes for the Biology FHS exam in Animal Behaviour. Useful for Biology and Human Sciences. I achieved a first and multiple academic prizes. Includes descriptions of concepts and key examples/references.
Compare Pavlovian and operant conditioning. // EITHER: Discuss, with examples, the phenomena of
emulation and imitation, elaborating on their significance for culture. // Is social learning different from
individual learning, and if so, how? // Explain how social learning benefits animals, including humans. //
How do birds learn their songs? // Can all learning be adequately described as associative? // Is the
concept of innate behaviour still useful? // What is the evidence that animals imitate? // Who benefits
from mimicry? // All learning is just associative conditioning. Discuss. // OR: Do humans teach?
Defining
Learning: an adaptive process that occurs as a result of experience
Flexible – if you can learn something you can generally unlearn it (dependent on the environment)
Learning: long-term change in behaviour brought about by experience/acquiring information.
THORPE (1963) defines learning as “that process which manifests itself by adaptive changes in individual
behaviour as a result of experience”.
Most behaviour cannot be neatly divided into ‘innate’ (unlearnt) and learnt behaviour. Most behaviour can
be described either as innate behaviour modified by learning OR as learning influenced by genes
Learning and instinctive behaviours are both ways of equipping an animal with a set of adaptive
responses to its environment; normally both are found in combination
Example: only newly hatched herring gull chicks can be fooled by crude cardboard models of their parent.
They soon learn to direct their ‘innate’ behaviour at more appropriate stimuli
Initial response is modified by learning
Example: chaffinch song development (CATCHPOLE AND SLATER 2008)
Basic song does not need learning
Learning needed for full song
Will only learn chaffinch song
Learning only during 1st year
Genes affect learning
Monkeys learn which stimuli to fear but more easily learn to fear snakes than flowers (ÖHMAN AND
MINEKA 2001)
Genes can interfere with efficient learning (at least in unnatural environments). K AND M BRELAND
(1961) trained racoons to put tokens into a slot machine for a food reward, but they would “waste”
time washing tokens as this is their innate behaviour for food preparation (contradicts notion that
animals are a “blank slate”)
Genes promote learning by: selecting for learning at certain times of life (e.g. from parents), making
some associations easier than others, providing animals with goals (positive reinforcements e.g.
sweet taste and negative reinforcements e.g. pain) to guide them to learn to approach and avoid
different situations adaptively
Latent learning (form of learning that is not immediately expressed in an overt response; it occurs without
any obvious reinforcement of the behavior or associations that are learned).
Importance
, The importance of learning: the egg and the space ship
Getting out is predictable and can be performed according to pre-set instructions
But life outside is predictable and needs flexibility (learning)
Learning is a genetic strategy
Animals want to make their behaviour flexible to their environment. If an animal lives for all its life
in a stable or similar environment with a predictable life history, then genetic preprograming is
sufficient (and advantageous because learning takes time). However, if an animal lives in an
unpredictable environment then learning will be favoured by natural selection so that an animal’s
behaviour will be flexible and adaptable to the environment
Learning is flexible and not irreversible because you can unlearn something; if your experience changes
you too can change.
Non-associative learning
Instances in which an animal’s behaviour toward a stimulus changes in the absence of any apparent
associated stimulus or event (such as a reward or punishment).
Habituation: learning not to respond to irrelevant stimuli
Persistent waning of response
Stimulus specific
The closer together stimuli are the easier it is for habituation to occur
Only habituate to irrelevant stimuli (i.e. the horse crowd control example only works because flag-
waving/shouting does not result in a biologically significant event (irrelevant). An animal will not
habituate to food, for example)
Not fatigue
Example: presenting crowd stimuli to crowd-control horses so they don’t respond to
flag-waving/shouting
Habituation, which occurs when a stimulus is repeated without reinforcement is a form of learning
(albeit a simple one) because it is long-lasting, and it is stimulus specific – only the stimulus which is
repeated without reinforcement is habituated to
Sensitisation: when the repeated presentation of a particular significant stimulus (such as food or electric
shock) lowers the threshold for the elicitation of appropriate behaviour to the point where a second
stimulus, not normally capable of calling forth that behaviour, now does so
Example: the marine worm Nereis. If the worm is kept in a small tube and fed at regular intervals, it
becomes progressively more likely to respond to any novel stimulus, such as a change in
illumination, by exploratory, food-seeking movements toward the open end of the tube. If, on the
other hand, the worm receives mild electric shocks at regular intervals, it becomes progressively
more likely to respond to a novel stimulus by withdrawal
Experimental analysis suggests that both habituation and sensitisation may be engaged in the same
experiment, so that the observed change in behaviour actually results from a mixture of the two
Common finding in habituation experiments is that responding initially increases before declining;
the implication is that the initial presentations of a stimulus result in more sensitization than
habituation, while further presentations produce more habituation than sensitization
A weak stimulus, or one with little intrinsic biological significance, will show relatively rapid
habituation and little or no initial sensitization. A stronger stimulus, especially one, such as food or
shock, that has substantial significance to the animal, may show marked sensitization and relatively
little habituation
Sensitization is not a form of learning because it is too indiscriminate (it is not stimulus specific,
happens with any stimulus after a biologically significant event/reinforcement) and too short lived,
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