Find research datasets worth reusing

opencc-zeroDec 2012View details →

Data from: Social learning of migratory performance

Successful bird migration can depend on individual learning, social learning, and innate navigation programs. Using 8 years of data on migrating whooping cranes, we were able to partition genetic and socially learned aspects of migration. Specifically, we analyzed data from a reintroduced population wherein all birds were captive bred and artificially trained by ultralight aircraft on their first lifetime migration. For subsequent migrations, in which birds fly individually or in groups but without ultralight escort, we found evidence of long-term social learning, but no effect of genetic relatedness on migratory performance. Social learning from older birds reduced deviations from a straight-line path, with 7 years of experience yielding a 38% improvement in migratory accuracy.

opencc-zeroFeb 2020View details →

Divergent neurogenomic responses shape social learning of both personality and mate preference

Behavior plays a fundamental role in shaping the origin and fate of species. Mating decisions can act to promote or restrict gene flow, as can personality traits that influence dispersal and niche use. Mate choice and personality are often both learned and therefore influenced by an individual's social environment throughout development. Likewise, the molecular pathways that shape these behaviors may also be co-expressed. In this study on swordtail fish (Xiphophorus birchmanni), we show that female mating preferences for species-typical pheromone cues are entirely dependent on social experience with adult males. Experience with adults also shapes development along the shy-bold personality axis, with shy behaviors arising from exposure to risk-averse heterospecifics as a potential stress-coping strategy. In maturing females, conspecific exposure results in a strong upregulation of olfaction and vision genes compared to heterospecific exposure, as well as immune response genes previously linked to anxiety, learning and memory. Conversely, heterospecific exposure involves an increased expression of genes important for neurogenesis, synaptic plasticity and social decision-making. We identify subsets of genes within the social decision-making network and with known stress-coping roles that may be directly coupled to the olfactory processes females rely on for social communication. Based on these results, we conclude that the social environment affects the neurogenomic trajectory through which socially-sensitive behaviors are learned, resulting in adult phenotypes adapted for specific social groupings.

opencc-zeroJan 2020View details →

Social learning of acoustic anti-predator cues occurs between wild bird species

In many species, individuals gather information about their environment both through direct experience and through information obtained from others. Social learning, or the acquisition of information from others, can occur both within and between species and may facilitate the rapid spread of antipredator behaviour. Within birds, acoustic signals are frequently used to alert others to the presence of predators, and individuals can quickly learn to associate novel acoustic cues with predation risk. However, few studies have addressed whether such learning occurs only though direct experience or whether it has a social component, nor whether such learning can occur between species. We investigate these questions in two sympatric species of Parids: blue tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) and great tits (Parus major). Using playbacks of unfamiliar bird vocalisations paired with a predator model in a controlled aviary setting, we find that blue tits can learn to associate a novel sound with predation risk via direct experience, and that antipredator response to the sound can be socially transmitted to heterospecific observers, despite lack of first-hand experience. Our results suggest that social learning of acoustic cues can occur between species. Such interspecific social information transmission may help to mediate the formation of mixed-species aggregations.

opencc-zeroSep 2019View details →

Data from: Social foraging extends associative odor-food memory expression in an automated learning assay for Drosophila melanogaster

Animals socially interact during foraging and share information about the quality and location of food sources. The mechanisms of social information transfer during foraging have been mostly studied at the behavioral level, and its underlying neural mechanisms are largely unknown. Fruit flies have become a model for studying the neural bases of social information transfer, because they provide a large genetic toolbox to monitor and manipulate neuronal activity, and they show a rich repertoire of social behaviors. Fruit flies aggregate, they use social information for choosing a suitable mating partner and oviposition site, and they show better aversive learning when in groups. However, the effects of social interactions on associative odor–food learning have not yet been investigated. Here, we present an automated learning and memory assay for walking flies that allows the study of the effect of group size on social interactions and on the formation and expression of associative odor–food memories. We found that both inter-fly attraction and the duration of odor–food memory expression increase with group size. This study opens up opportunities to investigate how social interactions during foraging are relayed in the neural circuitry of learning and memory expression.

opencc-zeroMar 2020View details →

Early life learning ability predicts adult social structure, with potential implications for fitness outcomes in the wild

1. Social environments influence important ecological processes and can determine how selection acts on traits. Cognitive abilities can shape these social environments and in turn, affect individuals' fitness. 2. To understand how cognitive abilities evolve, we need to understand the complex interplay between an individual's cognitive abilities, the social environment that they inhabit and the fitness consequences of these relationships. 3. We measured the associative learning ability of pheasant chicks, Phasianus colchicus, then released them into the wild where we quantified their social position by observing their associations at feeding stations and monitored the number of days survived. 4. We observed disassortative mixing by learning performance at the population level, and poor learners had more associates than good learners. Learning was beneficial for survival when focal individuals had fewer than four associates, but survival probability across learning abilities equalized for individuals with more than four associates. 5. While the mechanisms underlying these relationships remain to be determined, the patterns of association exhibited by pheasants at feeders can be predicted by individual variation in cognitive performances and we suspect these patterns are related to differences in information use. Critically, these resulting patterns of association have fitness consequences for individuals that cannot be explained directly by their cognitive ability, but which could mediate selection on cognition.

opencc-zeroDec 2017View details →

Data from: Context-specific learning and its implications for social learning

Social learning is widespread but the causes for variation in the use of social versus private information are not always clear. Alongside adaptive explanations, suggesting that animals learn socially only when it is indeed adaptive to do so, it is also possible that the use of social learning is limited by mechanistic constraints. A common, but frequently overlooked challenge for social learning mechanisms is the need to allow learners to solve a problem through watching it being solved by others. This requires animals to be able to shift between contexts: from the context of the observed solution, to the context of the unsolved problem. For instance, for the social learning of cues associated with hidden food, an individual that merely sees a conspecific exploiting the food must, in the later absence of demonstrators or visible rewards, also learn to explore the cue for itself. Here we show that this shift in context can indeed be difficult. In two experiments involving sand colors, house sparrows trained with hidden seeds learned to search for hidden seeds (based on food-color association) better than sparrows trained with exposed seeds. However, the latter showed color preference when tested with seeds exposed on both sand colors. These results demonstrate that context-specific learning makes it difficult to generalize reward-cue association from "exposed" to "hidden" conditions, which may explain why social learning is often more effective when it is based on socially facilitated active search (for hidden food), similar to that used in the context of independent foraging.

opencc-zeroDec 2018View details →

Data from: It's a trap! invasive common mynas learn socially about control-related cues

Social learning of novel threats coupled with adaptive generalization from learned to novel cues together provide the cognitive mechanisms by which adaptive avoidance of threats can spread rapidly both within and across generations. Whereas attention to effects of fishing and hunting on prey is increasing, nothing is known about how human predation can alter the behavior of invasive animals. Here, we examined whether common (Indian) mynas, Acridotheres tristis, one of the most widespread invasive birds in Australia, and invasive to many other parts of the world, are learning to respond to anthropogenic predation. We analyzed behavior at an experimental food patch provisioned by two distinctly clothed persons both before and after mynas had observed one of the two persons seemingly capture conspecifics inside a trap placed at the food patch. After the demonstration, mynas landed in smaller numbers at the food patch and took longer to land. Further, mynas alarm called more when provisioned by the person who had been involved in trapping. Future work will determine whether narrow generalization gradients are a consistent feature of synanthropic species or whether they broaden as a function of human predation threat level as is predicted by the Predator Recognition Continuum Hypothesis. Practical implications for control are discussed.

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Evolution and stability of social learning in animal migration - Figure genation

Code and Data to generate figures in article "Evolution and stability of social learning in animal migration" (n.d.)   Run Article_Figures.m to generate all plots. See README for details.

opencc-by-4.0Oct 2024View details →

opencc-zeroFeb 2022View details →

Neural Arbitration between Social and Individual Learning Systems

Decision making requires integrating self-gathered information with advice from others. However, the arbitration process by which one source of information is selected over the other has not been fully elucidated. In this study, we formalised arbitration as the relative precision of predictions, afforded by each learning system, using hierarchical Bayesian modelling. In a probabilistic learning task, participants predicted the outcome of a lottery using recommendations from a more informed advisor and/or self-sampled outcomes. Decision confidence, as measured by the number of points participants wagered on their predictions, varied with our relative precision definition of arbitration. Functional neuroimaging demonstrated arbitration signals that were independent of decision confidence and involved modality-specific brain regions. Arbitrating in favour of self-gathered information activated the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the midbrain, whereas arbitrating in favour of social information engaged the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. These findings indicate that relative precision captures arbitration between social and individual learning systems at both behavioural and neural levels.

opencc-zeroJul 2021View details →

Personality predicts innovation and social learning in children; Implications for cultural evolution

Innovation and social learning are the pillars of cultural evolution, allowing cultural behaviours to cumulatively advance over generations. Yet, little is known about individual differences in the use of social and asocial information. We examined whether personality influenced children's propensity to observe others or independently generate solutions to novel problems. Conscientiousness was associated with electing for no demonstrations, while agreeableness was associated with opting for demonstrations. For children receiving demonstrations, openness to experience consistently predicted deviation from observed methods. Children who opted for no demonstrations were also more likely than those opting for demonstrations to exhibit tool manufacture on an innovation challenge and displayed higher creativity. These results highlight how new cultural traditions emerge, establish and advance by identifying which individuals generate new cultural variants in populations and which are influential in the diffusion of these variants, and help reduce the apparent tension within the 'ratchet' of cumulative culture.

opencc-zeroOct 2022View details →

Data for: Fish can infer relations between colour cues in a non-social learning task

Transitive inference (TI) describes the ability to infer relationships between stimuli that have never been seen together before. Social cichlids can use TI in a social setting where observers assess dominance status after witnessing contests between different dyads of conspecifics. If cognitive processes are domain-general, animals should use abilities evolved in a social context also in a non-social context. Therefore, if TI is domain-general in fish, social fish should be able to use TI also in non-social tasks. Here we tested whether the cooperatively-breeding cichlid Neolamprologus pulcher can infer transitive relationships between artificial stimuli in a non-social context. We used an associative learning paradigm where the fish received a food reward when correctly solving a colour discrimination task. Eleven of twelve subjects chose the predicted outcome for TI in the first test trial and five subjects performed with 100% accuracy in six successive test trials. We found no evidence that the fish solved the TI task by value transfer. Our findings show that fish use TI also in non-social tasks with artificial stimuli, thus generalizing past results reported in a social context and hinting toward a domain-general cognitive mechanism.

opencc-zeroDec 2022View details →

Biogenic amines for individual and social learning

Individuals learn about their environment through personal observation or by observing their social conspecifics. The speed-accuracy trade-off associated with these two strategies results in two possible learning phenotypes – slow but more accurate individual learners and fast but more inaccurate social learners. While the costs and benefits of these different learning strategies are well known, we know much less about the possible neurophysiological mechanisms that underlie such cognitive variation. Neurotransmitters, based on their important role in driving cognitive differences in all taxa, are the most likely candidates that underlie the neurophysiological differences between these learning phenotypes. We measured individual honeybees for their performance on an individual and a social learning task followed by quantifying the concentrations of various neurotransmitters in their brains. Our results show that the two learning phenotypes and their accompanying differences in the speed-accuracy trade-off are consistently characterized by the opposite effects of an interaction between octopamine and serotonin and another between octopamine and glutamate. These findings challenge the general notion that social learning is simply an extension of individual learning and provide an important insight into the mechanistic underpinnings of the two different learning phenotypes and the neurophysiological mechanism that underlies slow-fast differences across taxa.

opencc-zeroJun 2023View details →

Evidence for maintenance of key components of vocal learning in aging budgerigars despite diminished affiliative social interaction

In some species, the ability to acquire new vocalizations persists into adulthood and may be an important mediator of social interactions. While it is generally assumed that vocal learning persists undiminished throughout the lifespan of these open-ended learners, the stability of this trait remains largely unexplored. We hypothesize that vocal learning exhibits senescence, as is typical of complex cognitive traits, and that this decline may relate to age-dependent changes in sociality. The budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus), an open-ended learner which develops new contact call types that are shared with social associates upon joining new flocks, provides a robust assay for measuring the effects of aging on vocal learning ability. We formed captive flocks of 4 previously unfamiliar adult males of the same age class, either "young adults" (6 mo.-1 yr.) or "older adults" (≥ 3 yr.), and concurrently tracked changes in contact call structure and social interactions over time. Older adults exhibited decreased vocal diversity, which may be related to the sparser and weaker affiliative bonds observed in older adults. Older adults, however, displayed equivalent levels of vocal plasticity and vocal convergence compared to young adults, suggesting vocal learning ability is largely maintained into later adulthood in an open-ended learner.

Examining the Effectiveness of Education Based on Social Learning Theory in Fostering Self-care and Social Skills

ClinicalTrials.gov study NCT06485882. IPD Sharing: NO. Countries: 1. Publications: 3.

ICT-enabled Social-emotional Learning: Development of Responsibility and Well-being in the Educational Environment

ClinicalTrials.gov study NCT04414449. IPD Sharing: NO. Countries: 1. Publications: 2.

Discover Learning - Social, Emotional and Identity Learning for Very Young Adolescents

ClinicalTrials.gov study NCT04458077. IPD Sharing: NO. Countries: 1. Publications: 2.

restrictedIPD-UNDECIDEDFeb 2026View details →

Supporting Our Caregivers In ADRD Learning (SOCIAL)

ClinicalTrials.gov study NCT06276023. IPD Sharing: Not stated. Countries: 1. Publications: 15.

Feasibility of a Social-emotional Learning Curriculum in an After-school Program for Youth

ClinicalTrials.gov study NCT06619639. IPD Sharing: NO. Countries: 1. Publications: 1.

The Effect of a Mobile Application Based on the Social Cognitive Learning Theory on Medication Adherence and Hypertension Self-Efficacy in Patients With Hypertension: A Randomized Controlled Trial

ClinicalTrials.gov study NCT07050303. IPD Sharing: NO. Countries: 1. Publications: 13.

Application of Social Media as a Supporting Tool in the Teaching and Learning Process of Dentistry Students

ClinicalTrials.gov study NCT07184359. IPD Sharing: NO. Countries: 1. Publications: 15.