Social and Asocial Learning in Humans and Orangutans
Open AccessSocial learning—the ability to learn information by observing others—has played an important role in human evolution, allowing humans to develop the complex cultures and technologies that characterize modern societies. Experimental research has generally shown that humans and other great apes learn more from social demonstrations than asocial demonstrations. However, attempts to differentiate between social and asocial learning have generally been accompanied by differences in the amount of information available in the different conditions. When the amount of available information is equalized, do differences in learning between social and asocial conditions remain? That is, do humans and other great apes process information from social and asocial sources differently? This project comprehensively addresses this question at different levels of analysis (developmental, behavioral, and neurobiological) in three populations: human children, human adults, and orangutans.The studies reported here used two computer-based tasks. Both require subjects to attend to, encode, and recall different features: item identity or spatial location. Novel sequences in these tasks can be learned in several ways. (i) In a “social” demonstration, a human demonstrator or model selects items in the correct sequence; the participant then has an opportunity to attempt to respond to the items in the correct order. (ii) In an asocial “ghost” demonstration, the computer highlights items in the correct sequence; the participant can then attempt to respond to the items in the correct order. The amount of information in social and ghost demonstrations is essentially equal. (iii) In another asocial condition, “baseline”, a correct answer is arrived at via individual trial-and-error learning. (iv) A third asocial condition, individual “recall” learning, requires participants to remember a previously learned sequence following a brief delay. (v) Finally, in a linguistic “instruction” condition, subjects are provided with written instructions for solving the task.In one portion of this research, I examined whether 3- and 5-year-old children and adult orangutans learn information equally well from each type of demonstration using behavioral experiments. In addition, I explored factors that affect what and how individuals learn when solving these tasks, including age (for children), task type, and learning condition. For children, performance indeed depends on learning condition, task, and age. Children in both age groups readily learned the item-identity task from both social and ghost demonstrations, but showed better performance in the social condition. Spatial-location task performance differed by age: older children performed similarly after social and ghost demonstrations, with high solution rates. Younger children performed similarly after both social and ghost demonstrations, with low solution rates. These results indicate that differences in social and asocial conditions depend on task type; in the item-identity domain, there is a learning deficit in the asocial condition. But in the spatial-location domain, there is no difference between social and asocial performance. Orangutans performed poorly in all conditions except for individual recall conditions. Future studies will be needed to describe in more fine-grained detail the pattern of performance that emerges when orangutans solve problems in social and asocial conditions.In a further portion of this research, a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment was conducted with adults to examine brain activation patterns when observing demonstrations and when subsequently executing sequences. Brain activation patterns during observation differed based on the task, with parietal lobe more active during spatial-location task demonstrations and fusiform cortex more active during item-identity task demonstrations. Few brain activation differences were found between demonstration types (social versus asocial). The main difference between demonstration types was in extrastriate body area, which is sensitive to biological movement and would be expected to be more active when viewing a social compared to a ghost demonstration. Surprisingly, few activations in the canonical mirror neuron system were found during this task, even when observing social demonstrations.Results from these studies address some fundamental questions regarding the differences between social and asocial learning in humans and other great apes. They also lay the groundwork for future research into the way individuals learn from various sources.
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