Acerbi Alberto, Tennie Claudio, Nunn Charles L
University of Stockholm, Sweden.
Learn Behav. 2011 May;39(2):104-14. doi: 10.3758/s13420-010-0009-z.
Social transmission of behavior can be realized through distinct mechanisms. Research on primate social learning typically distinguishes two forms of information that a learner can extract from a demonstrator: copying actions (defined as imitation) or copying only the consequential results (defined as emulation). We propose a decomposition of these learning mechanisms (plus pure individual learning) that incorporates the core idea that social learning can be represented as a search for an optimal behavior that is constrained by different kinds of information. We illustrate our approach with an individual-based model in which individuals solve tasks in abstract "spaces" that represent behavioral actions, results, and benefits of those results. Depending on the learning mechanisms at their disposal, individuals have differential access to the information conveyed in these spaces. We show how different classes of tasks may provide distinct advantages to individuals with different learning mechanisms and discuss how our approach contributes to current empirical and theoretical research on social learning and culture.
行为的社会传播可以通过不同的机制来实现。对灵长类动物社会学习的研究通常区分学习者可以从示范者那里提取的两种信息形式：模仿动作（定义为模仿）或仅模仿相应的结果（定义为仿效）。我们提出了对这些学习机制（加上纯粹的个体学习）的一种分解，其中纳入了这样一个核心观点，即社会学习可以表示为对受不同类型信息约束的最优行为的搜索。我们用一个基于个体的模型来说明我们的方法，在这个模型中，个体在抽象的“空间”中解决任务，这些“空间”代表行为动作、结果以及这些结果的益处。根据它们所掌握的学习机制，个体对这些空间中所传达的信息有不同的获取途径。我们展示了不同类型的任务如何可能为具有不同学习机制的个体提供不同的优势，并讨论了我们的方法如何为当前关于社会学习和文化的实证研究和理论研究做出贡献。
