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Latent learning and exploration






 

It is a natural idea that latent learning often precedes insightful behaviour. The term “latent learning” originated from a series of classic experiments carried out by Tolman and his co-authors in 1930-s. This phenomenon seems to be closely connected with what Tolman called formation of cognitive maps which, in turn, is based on the principle of “what-leads-to-what” expectancy (see Chapter 12). Beyond visible results of animal’s learning in mazes, sometimes learning would occur but there would be no observable change in animal’s behaviour. This form of learning is called “latent learning”.

One example of experiments showing latent learning concerns a widely known study of Tolman and Honzik (1930 a, b) in which rats could learn a route in a maze without obtaining reinforcement. Experimenters tested three groups of food-deprived rats in a maze. The rats in the first group were allowed to wander a maze once each day and obtained food reinforcement on reaching the end location. The rats in the second group were allowed to wander a maze once each day, but on reaching the end location received no reinforcement until the eleventh day. The rats in the third group served a control group and were allowed to wander a maze once each day, but on reaching the end location received no reinforcement. It turned out that the rats in the first group quickly learned the way through the maze, while the rats in the third group simply moved aimlessly around the maze. However, the rats in the second group moved about the maze randomly during the first eleven days, but when they received reinforcement they learned the maze faster than the rats in the first group. Therefore it appears that the rats in the second group had in fact learned the correct route in the maze before reinforcement was given because they were able to select the appropriate route much faster than the rats in the first group. Apparently, they were learning all along, but it was latent learning and not evident until it was activated by a patent reward. It seemed that learning the maze was a kind of reward in itself.

Tolman’s suggestion that “disinterested” learning can occur in animals, without a special motivation and in the absence of reinforcement generated violent discussion for at least two decades (Munn, 1950). The role of cognition in determining animal behaviour was more than problematic for behaviourist conditioning explanation. At the same time, holders of Skinner’s chambers were familiar with such a situations when a monkey was ready to perform a work, such as pulling a lever, simply to be able to look out of the box in which it was kept, so that the only reward seemed to be the chance to look around.

Although the term “latent learning” was born in a laboratory, this type of learning, together with exploratory activity, is very important during the lifetime of an animal. Emphasising these natural aspects of latent learning, Barnett (1958) and then Thorpe (1963) chose the term exploratory learning and defined it as an association of indifferent stimuli, or situations, without patent reward. Performing exploratory behaviour, an animal is searching for “news” in its surrounding and actively explores new surroundings.

For wild animals the necessities of life undoubtedly include learning about their home area. It is worth illustrating with several expressive laboratory and field experiments. For example, in a laboratory study, two groups of mice were turned loose in a room with an owl. One group was given a few days to familiarise themselves with the room before the owl was introduced. The second group was put into the room at the same time the owl was. The mice that were familiar with the room felt much better and fewer of them were caught (Metzgar, 1967). The survival value of an exploratory drive is obvious for wild animals and it is extremely high for small rodents. One can see how a squirrel, being placed into an unfamiliar area, estimates remoteness of different things by their visual displacement along with changes of a viewpoint. The squirrel makes characteristic movements with its head standing on its tiptoe before each jump. It learns all knots in its home range in the forest and quickly makes long sequences of jumps on its learned way, so that it will be exposed to predators for the shortest possible period of time. However it would be problematic for the squirrel to escape predators in an area that is not “zeroed in”.

There are many studies on exploratory behaviour in mice and rats in special equipped “mice-houses” as well as in labyrinths of a city (Crowcroft and Rowe, 1963; Crowcroft, 1966; Kotenkova and Bulatova, 1994). In a stable familiar surrounding a little animal knows where food is likely to be found and where to find holes into which it can dart at the approach of a danger. It is of particular interest that rodents sometimes undertake over-exploration of their familiar surroundings. After time of rest and foraging, time of exploration comes when an animal makes the round of its area, inspecting all things, smelling at them, and looking and creeping into them. Observers agree that the animals are likely to be looking for something new in their home range.

Is exploratory latent learning possible in invertebrates? It is a natural idea that cockroaches possibly have knowledge about localisations of shelters in their home range and thus know in which direction to run when the light is switched on in the kitchen where they happily live. Verron (1952) first studied latent learning in cockroaches in laboratory. The group of insects that had a possibility to familiarise themselves with a maze walking on the transparent lid of the maze, searched for an entrance much better than the control group which was not familiar with the maze. As we have already seen in Chapter 12 Thorpe (1950) revealed that digger wasps effectively find an optimal way to the vicinity of their nest from wherever they happen to capture the prey. He noted that these insects are in the habit of undertaking long “aimless” trips along their home ranges which obviously help them to operate in familiar surroundings under changing circumstances.

Reznikova (1983, 2005) devised a method which can be used to compare levels of exploratory behaviour in ants and possibly in other small animals. The main idea was to estimate and compare the time duration which animals spend on exploration of models that simulate pieces of nature. Usually ants search for food in shelters, under stones, within grass columns, and so on. Each ant knows all ins and outs in its territory, and introduction of new things triggers on its exploratory behaviour. The experimental models imitate natural situations such as underground passages, crevices between stones, burrs in the ground, and columns of grass. Field experimental device includes two-high arenas (0.5 H 0.5 m) equipped with models of several types: (1) mazes that imitate underground passages attached beneath arena’s surface, (2) parallel plates that imitate crevices, (3) “brushes” made of vinyl bars that imitate grass stems. Ants can visit both levels of the device via bridges. Eight species were tested possessing different ecological and ethological features such as foraging style (group or solitary), preferred tier of steppe ecosystem (ground surface, soil, grass), and some others (Fig. VI-1).

At the first stage ants were simply welcome to have some food on the open surface of arenas. There was no difference between species in their activity as free-lance consumers. After three days cafeteria closed and all models were placed onto arenas. Then two series of experiments were conducted with two groups of ants. The first group was presented with food placed into all types of models in order to examine whether ants of different species are able to penetrate all models. So it was the “cafeteria”-experiment again. It turned out that ants of all species can effectively forage in all models. The second group was presented with models without food so that only “disinterested” behaviour was displayed. All ants preferred to spend time on the open surface of the arenas. In experiments levels of exploratory activity in different ant species were estimated by comparing ratios of duration of time spent by ants on the surface of the arenas and in different models. High correlation was revealed between efficiency of problem solving and levels of exploratory activity in ants’ species. Both characteristics were in turn connected with ecological specific of ants (Reznikova, 1982).

Together with other reviewed results, these data support a hypothesis that animals’ ability to actively gain and retrieve information on a large number of locations, as well as the level of their general exploratory activity, are closely connected with ecologically and evolutionary traits of species and can be very specific in some species, basing on their ability to learn news very quickly within species-specific domains. We will consider the problem of species specificity in connection with development of intelligence in Part VIII.

 

18. TOOL USING AS A TOOL FOR EXPERIMENTAL STUDYING OF ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE

 

To what extent animal’s manipulations with physical objects expresses their intelligence? The main idea of this chapter is that, just as working with language-trained animals (about which we will learn in details from Part VIII) enables experimenters to obtain unprecedented data on animal’s cognitive skills, working with species that possess tool using allows researchers observing unparalleled behaviours based on problem solving and rule extraction.

Tool behaviour is distributed rather oddly in different classes of animals and it is relatively rare occurrence taxonomically, so it is not easy to choose appropriate species for studying instrumental problem solving. Besides, sometimes species that have not been observed in the wild as natural tool users (for instance, bonobos, tamarins, and blue jays), demonstrate wonders of engineering in laboratory studies. Anyway, a great progress has been made during the last two decades in our understanding of what animals think about the physical world, and the asset of tool using animals should be appreciated.


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