Social signal learning of the waggle dance in honey bees.

Honey bees use a complex form of spatial referential communication. Their "waggle dance" communicates the direction, distance, and quality of a resource to nestmates by encoding celestial cues, retinal optic flow, and relative food value into motion and sound within the nest. We show that correct waggle dancing requires social learning. Bees without the opportunity to follow any dances before they first danced produced significantly more disordered dances with larger waggle angle divergence errors and encoded distance incorrectly. The former deficit improved with experience, but distance encoding was set for life. The first dances of bees that could follow other dancers showed neither impairment. Social learning, therefore, shapes honey bee signaling, as it does communication in human infants, birds, and multiple other vertebrate species.

Bumblebees acquire alternative puzzle-box solutions via social learning.

The astonishing behavioural repertoires of social insects have been thought largely innate, but these insects have repeatedly demonstrated remarkable capacities for both individual and social learning. Using the bumblebee Bombus terrestris as a model, we developed a two-option puzzle box task and used open diffusion paradigms to observe the transmission of novel, nonnatural foraging behaviours through populations. Box-opening behaviour spread through colonies seeded with a demonstrator trained to perform 1 of the 2 possible behavioural variants, and the observers acquired the demonstrated variant. This preference persisted among observers even when the alternative technique was discovered. In control diffusion experiments that lacked a demonstrator, some bees spontaneously opened the puzzle boxes but were significantly less proficient than those that learned in the presence of a demonstrator. This suggested that social learning was crucial to proper acquisition of box opening. Additional open diffusion experiments where 2 behavioural variants were initially present in similar proportions ended with a single variant becoming dominant, due to stochastic processes. We discuss whether these results, which replicate those found in primates and birds, might indicate a capacity for culture in bumblebees.

Spontaneous action matching in dog puppies, kittens and wolf pups.

We investigated the spontaneous tendency of dog puppies, kittens and wolf pups to match their behaviour to actions demonstrated by a human, in the absence of food reward. Based on dogs' inherent sociality and domestication history, we predicted that the tendency to match human actions is more pronounced in this species than in the other two. To test this, we exposed N = 42 dog puppies, N = 39 kittens and N = 8 wolf pups to ostensive human demonstrations of an object-related action. We found that dog puppies paid more attention to the demonstration than kittens and wolf pups. Dog puppies and wolf pups matched the demonstrated actions in more trials than kittens. Dog puppies also tended to reproduce the human demonstration that differed from the action they typically preformed in the absence of demonstration. These results support that dog puppies show a tendency to attend to humans and conform their behaviour to human demonstrations in the absence of extrinsic food rewards. This spontaneous tendency is also relevant for practical applications, by providing the basis to devise puppy-training methods that rely less on food rewards, and instead exploit puppies' natural predisposition for social learning.

Las Intervenciones Socioeducativas en Estudiantes de Magisterio para Reducir el Estigma en la Salud Mental / Socio-educational interventions with pre-service school teachers to reduce stigma in mental health

El presente estudio examinó el efecto de tres intervenciones socioeducativas en estudiantes de Magisterio sobre la reducción del estigma: un juego formativo denominado Stigma-Stop, programa basado en el contacto directo entre estudiantes y pacientes con problemas de salud mental y, en tercer lugar, la emisión de un documental junto con la charla de un profesional. Se contó con la participación de 120 alumnos que cursaban el Grado de Magisterio en Educación Infantil y de Magisterio en Educación Primaria. Se trata así de un un diseño experimental pretest-postest, en el que los participantes se dividieron de manera aleatoria en tres grupos experimentales y un grupo de control. Los resultados mostraron una reducción estadísticamente significativa del grado de estigma entre el pretest y postest en las tres intervenciones, a diferencia del grupo control que se mantuvo estable en ambas mediciones, lo cual implica que las tres intervenciones fueron eficaces en la reducción del estigma, particularmente en la dimensión de peligro y en la puntuación total.(AU)

This study examined the effect of three socio-educational interventions in teacher training students on the reduction of stigma: a serious game called Stigma-Stop, a program based on direct contact between students and people with mental health problems, and the broadcast of a documentary with a talk from a professional. The sample consisted of 120 undergraduates of the Degree in Teaching in Early Childhood Education and the Degree in Teaching in Primary Education of a Spanish university, with a pretest-posttest experimental design, the participants were randomly divided into three experimental groups and a control group. The results show a statistically significant reduction in stigma levels between the pretest and posttest in the three interventions, but not in the control group, which remained stable in both measurements. This showed that the three interventions were effective in reducing stigma, predominantly in the danger dimension and the total score.(AU)

The influence of task difficulty, social tolerance and model success on social learning in Barbary macaques.

Despite playing a pivotal role in the inception of animal culture studies, macaque social learning is surprisingly understudied. Social learning is important to survival and influenced by dominance and affiliation in social animals. Individuals generally rely on social learning when individual learning is costly, and selectively use social learning strategies influencing what is learned and from whom. Here, we combined social learning experiments, using extractive foraging tasks, with network-based diffusion analysis (using various social relationships) to investigate the transmission of social information in free-ranging Barbary macaques. We also investigated the influence of task difficulty on reliance on social information and evidence for social learning strategies. Social learning was detected for the most difficult tasks only, with huddling relations outside task introductions, and observation networks during task introductions, predicting social transmission. For the most difficult task only, individuals appeared to employ a social learning strategy of copying the most successful demonstrator observed. Results indicate that high social tolerance represents social learning opportunities and influences social learning processes. The reliance of Barbary macaques on social learning, and cues of model-success supports the costly information hypothesis. Our study provides more statistical evidence to the previous claims indicative of culture in macaques.

Conditions that favour cumulative cultural evolution.

The emergence of human societies with complex language and cumulative culture is considered a major evolutionary transition. Why such a high degree of cumulative culture is unique to humans is perplexing given the potential fitness advantages of cultural accumulation. Here, Boyd & Richerson's (1996 Why culture is common, but cultural evolution is rare. Proc. Br. Acad. 88, 77-93) discrete-cultural-trait model is extended to incorporate arbitrarily strong selection; conformist, anti-conformist and unbiased frequency-dependent transmission; random and periodic environmental variation; finite population size; and multiple 'skill levels.' From their infinite-population-size model with success bias and a single skill level, Boyd and Richerson concluded that social learning is favoured over individual learning under a wider range of conditions when social learning is initially common than initially rare. We find that this holds only if the number n of individuals observed by a social learner is sufficiently small, but with a finite population and/or a combination of success-biased and conformist or unbiased transmission, this result holds with larger n. Assuming social learning has reached fixation, the increase in a population's mean skill level is lower if cumulative culture is initially absent than initially present, if population size is finite, or if cultural transmission has a frequency-dependent component. Hence, multiple barriers to cultural accumulation may explain its rarity. This article is part of the theme issue 'Human socio-cultural evolution in light of evolutionary transitions'.

Social learning in a nocturnal marsupial: is it a possum-ability?

Social learning can reduce the costs associated with trial-and-error learning. There is speculation that social learning could contribute to trap and bait avoidance in invasive species like the common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula)-a marsupial for which social learning has not previously been investigated. In large outdoor pens, we presented wild-caught 'demonstrator' possums with puzzle devices containing an attractive food reward; 2 of 8 demonstrators accessed the reward the first night the puzzle was presented and another three succeeded on later nights. Meanwhile, 'observer' possums in adjacent pens watched the demonstrators for five nights and then were given the opportunity to solve the puzzle themselves; 15 of 15 succeeded on their first night (a highly significant improvement). This experiment thus provides strong evidence of social learning by common brushtail possums. Future research should investigate whether information about aversive stimuli (such as traps and toxic baits) can similarly be transmitted between possums by social learning; if so, this could have important implications for possum pest control.

Learning from others is good, with others is better: the role of social interaction in human acquisition of new knowledge.

Learning in humans is highly embedded in social interaction: since the very early stages of our lives, we form memories and acquire knowledge about the world from and with others. Yet, within cognitive science and neuroscience, human learning is mainly studied in isolation. The focus of past research in learning has been either exclusively on the learner or (less often) on the teacher, with the primary aim of determining developmental trajectories and/or effective teaching techniques. In fact, social interaction has rarely been explicitly taken as a variable of interest, despite being the medium through which learning occurs, especially in development, but also in adulthood. Here, we review behavioural and neuroimaging research on social human learning, specifically focusing on cognitive models of how we acquire semantic knowledge from and with others, and include both developmental as well as adult work. We then identify potential cognitive mechanisms that support social learning, and their neural correlates. The aim is to outline key new directions for experiments investigating how knowledge is acquired in its ecological niche, i.e. socially, within the framework of the two-person neuroscience approach. This article is part of the theme issue 'Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences'.

Should I learn from you? Seeing expectancy violations about action efficiency hinders social learning in infancy.

Infants generate basic expectations about their physical and social environment. This early knowledge allows them to identify opportunities for learning, preferring to explore and learn about objects that violate their prior expectations. However, less is known about how expectancy violations about people's actions influence infants' subsequent learning from others and about others. Here, we presented 18-month-old infants with an agent who acted either efficiently (expected action) or inefficiently (unexpected action) and then labeled an object. We hypothesized that infants would prefer to learn from the agent (label-object association) if she previously acted efficiently, but they would prefer to learn about the agent (voice-speaker association) if she previously acted inefficiently. As expected, infants who previously saw the agent acting efficiently showed greater attention to the demonstrated object and learned the new label-object association, but infants presented with the inefficient agent did not. However, there was no evidence that infants learned the voice-speaker association in any of the conditions. In summary, expectancy violations about people's actions may signal a situation to avoid learning from them. We discussed the results in relation to studies on surprise-induced learning, motionese, and selective social learning, and we proposed other experimental paradigms to investigate how expectancy violations influence infants' learning about others.

The method of exclusion (still) cannot identify specific mechanisms of cultural inheritance.

The method of exclusion identifies patterns of distributions of behaviours and/or artefact forms among different groups, where these patterns are deemed unlikely to arise from purely genetic and/or ecological factors. The presence of such patterns is often used to establish whether a species is cultural or not-i.e. whether a species uses social learning or not. Researchers using or describing this method have often pointed out that the method cannot pinpoint which specific type(s) of social learning resulted in the observed patterns. However, the literature continues to contain such inferences. In a new attempt to warn against these logically unwarranted conclusions, we illustrate this error using a novel approach. We use an individual-based model, focused on wild ape cultural patterns-as these patterns are the best-known cases of animal culture and as they also contain the most frequent usage of the unwarranted inference for specific social learning mechanisms. We built a model that contained agents unable to copy specifics of behavioural or artefact forms beyond their individual reach (which we define as "copying"). We did so, as some of the previous inference claims related to social learning mechanisms revolve around copying defined in this way. The results of our model however show that non-copying social learning can already reproduce the defining-even iconic-features of observed ape cultural patterns detected by the method of exclusion. This shows, using a novel model approach, that copying processes are not necessary to produce the cultural patterns that are sometimes still used in an attempt to identify copying processes. Additionally, our model could fully control for both environmental and genetic factors (impossible in real life) and thus offers a new validity check for the method of exclusion as related to general cultural claims-a check that the method passed. Our model also led to new and additional findings, which we likewise discuss.

A cultural evolutionary theory that explains both gradual and punctuated change.

Cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) occurs among humans who may be presented with many similar options from which to choose, as well as many social influences and diverse environments. It is unknown what general principles underlie the wide range of CCE dynamics and whether they can all be explained by the same unified paradigm. Here, we present a scalable evolutionary model of discrete choice with social learning, based on a few behavioural science assumptions. This paradigm connects the degree of transparency in social learning to the human tendency to imitate others. Computer simulations and quantitative analysis show the interaction of three primary factors-information transparency, popularity bias and population size-drives the pace of CCE. The model predicts a stable rate of evolutionary change for modest degrees of popularity bias. As popularity bias grows, the transition from gradual to punctuated change occurs, with maladaptive subpopulations arising on their own. When the popularity bias gets too severe, CCE stops. This provides a consistent framework for explaining the rich and complex adaptive dynamics taking place in the real world, such as modern digital media.

The social learning and development of intra- and inter-ethnic sharing norms in the Congo Basin: A registered report protocol.

Compared to other species, the extent of human cooperation is unparalleled. Such cooperation is coordinated between community members via social norms. Developmental research has demonstrated that very young children are sensitive to social norms, and that social norms are internalized by middle childhood. Most research on social norm acquisition has focused on norms that modulated intra-group cooperation. Yet around the world, multi-ethnic communities also cooperate, and this cooperation is often shaped by distinct inter-group social norms. In the present study, we will investigate whether inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic social norm acquisition follows the same, or distinct, developmental trajectories. Specifically, we will work with BaYaka foragers and Bandongo fisher-farmers who inhabit multi-ethnic villages in the Republic of the Congo. In these villages, inter-ethnic cooperation is regulated by sharing norms. Through interviews with adult participants, we will provide the first descriptive account of the timing and mechanism by which BaYaka and Bandongo learn to share with out-group members. Children (5-17 years) and adults (17+ years) will also participate in a modified Dictator Game to investigate the developmental trajectories of children's intra- and inter-ethnic sharing choices. Based on our ethnographic knowledge of the participating communities, we predict that children's intra-ethnic sharing choices in the Dictator Game will match those of adults at an earlier age than their inter-ethnic sharing choices. We will analyze our data using logistic Bayesian modelling.

Blind alleys and fruitful pathways in the comparative study of cultural cognition.

A mere few decades ago, culture was thought a unique human attribute. Evidence to the contrary accumulated through the latter part of the twentieth century and has exploded in the present one, demonstrating the transmission of traditions through social learning across all principal vertebrate taxa and even invertebrates, notably insects. The scope of human culture is nevertheless highly distinctive. What makes our cultural capacities and their cognitive underpinnings so different? In this article I argue that in behavioural scientists' endeavours to answer this question, fruitful research pathways and their ensuing discoveries have come to exist alongside popular, yet in the light of current empirical evidence, highly questionable scenarios and even scientific blind alleys. I particularly re-evaluate theories that rely on the centrality of a supposed uniquely human capacity for imitative copying in explaining the distinctive capacity for massive cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) in our species. The most extreme versions of this perspective suffer logical incoherence and severe limits on scientific testability. By contrast the field has generated a range of rigorous observational and experimental methodologies that have revealed both long-term cultural fidelity and limited forms of CCE in non-human species. Attention now turns to directly investigating the scope, limits and underlying cognition of non-human versus human CCE, with a broader approach to factors additional to cultural transmission, notably the role of invention, innovation and evolved motivational biases underlying the scope of CCE in the species studied.

Considering individual differences and variability is important in the development of the bifocal stance theory.

Jagiello and colleagues offer a bifocal stance theory of cultural evolution for understanding how individuals flexibly choose between instrumental and ritual stances in social learning. We argue that the role of culture, developmental age-related differences, and the intersectionality of these and other individual's identities need to be more fully considered in this theoretical framework.

Revisiting an extant framework: Concerns about culture and task generalization.

The target article elaborates upon an extant theoretical framework, "Imitation and Innovation: The Dual Engines of Cultural Learning." We raise three major concerns: (1) There is limited discussion of cross-cultural universality and variation; (2) overgeneralization of overimitation and omission of other social learning types; and (3) selective imitation in infants and toddlers is not discussed.

Culture is an optometrist: Cultural contexts adjust the prescription of social learning bifocals.

The "prescription" of humans' social learning bifocals is fine-tuned by cultural norms and, as a result, the readiness with which the instrumental or conventional lenses are used to view behavior differs across cultures. We present evidence for this possibility from cross-cultural work examining children's imitation and innovation.

Representational exchange in social learning: Blurring the lines between the ritual and instrumental.

We propose that human social learning is subject to a trade-off between the cost of performing a computation and the flexibility of its outputs. Viewing social learning through this lens sheds light on cases that seem to violate bifocal stance theory (BST) - such as high-fidelity imitation in instrumental action - and provides a mechanism by which causal insight can be bootstrapped from imitation of cultural practices.

Can bifocal stance theory explain children's selectivity in active information transmission?

To shed light on the key premise of the bifocal stance theory (BST) that social learners flexibly take instrumental and ritual stances, we focus on developmental origins of child-led information transmission, or teaching, as a core social learning strategy. We highlight children's emerging selectivity in information transmission influenced by epistemic and social factors and call for systematic investigation of proposed stance-taking.