Galef B G, Whiskin E E
Department of Psychology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4K1, Canada.
Behav Processes. 1995 Sep;34(3):279-84. doi: 10.1016/0376-6357(95)00008-i.
Norway rat subjects were exposed for either 3 or 10 days to conspecific demonstrators eating a cinnamon-flavoured, protein-deficient diet. While in contact with their demonstrators, and for several days thereafter, subjects were offered a choice between the cinnamon-flavoured, protein-deficient diet that their demonstrators were eating and a less palatable, nutmeg-flavoured, protein-rich diet. While subjects were in contact with their respective demonstrators they ate little protein-rich diet; during the 7 days immediately following removal of demonstrators from the experiment, subjects learned to eat sufficient amounts of protein-rich diet to permit normal growth. The results indicate that effects of social influence on food choice are transitory. They suggest that the time scale on which animals learn individually to modify socially acquired behaviour is considerably shorter than usually considered in discussions of quantitative models of the evolution of social learning processes.
将挪威大鼠暴露于食用肉桂味、蛋白质缺乏饮食的同种示范者面前3天或10天。在与示范者接触期间以及此后的几天里，为大鼠提供了两种选择：一种是示范者正在食用的肉桂味、蛋白质缺乏的饮食，另一种是口感较差、肉豆蔻味、蛋白质丰富的饮食。在大鼠与各自的示范者接触时，它们很少食用蛋白质丰富的饮食；在示范者从实验中移除后的紧接着7天里，大鼠学会了食用足够量的蛋白质丰富的饮食以实现正常生长。结果表明，社会影响对食物选择的作用是短暂的。它们表明，动物个体学习改变社会习得行为的时间尺度比在社会学习过程进化的定量模型讨论中通常所认为的要短得多。
