Social Learning Mechanisms Research Articles

Flint Type Analysis at Late Acheulian Jaljulia (Israel), and Implications for the Origins of Prepared Core Technologies

Prepared Core Technologies, often considered a hallmark of the Middle Paleolithic Mousterian, have recently been observed, to some extent, in many late Lower Paleolithic Acheulian sites. This may indicate a Lower Paleolithic origin of the Levallois method, although the circumstances leading to its emergence, spread and assimilation are still debated. We aim at contributing towards this intriguing issue by studying patterns of flint procurement and exploitation at Late Acheulian Jaljulia (Israel; ∼500–300 kya). We classified artifacts into flint types, using four samples: a general sample, bifaces, “regular” cores with one/two striking platforms, and prepared cores, divided into proto-Levallois, prepared (general) and discoid cores. A geologic survey located potential flint sources, and a petrographic analysis was used to assign flint types to sources. Our results show that while local Turonian flint of the Bi’na Formation dominates the general sample, selectivity in using specific flint types was observed, including among local materials. While brecciated flint types are especially common among handaxes and discoid cores, among proto-Levallois and prepared cores (general), fine-textured homogenous flint types are more common, suggesting that such flint types are better-suited when improved control over the end-product was desired. Based on our results, and following previous suggestions, we support the hypothesis that prepared core technologies in the Levant did not originate from one single technological trajectory. We support the idea that the production of predetermined blanks was based on knowledge gathered from several technological trajectories, including mainly biface shaping and the production of flakes from regular cores. This novel method was most likely transmitted time and again between individuals, gradually adjusting it to produce improved end-products. We see these conclusions as additional support for the view of prepared core technologies at the Late Acheulian as a demonstration of cumulative culture, and the existence of high-fidelity social learning mechanisms in practice already during the late Lower Paleolithic of the Levant.

Social Neuro AI: Social Interaction as the “Dark Matter” of AI

This article introduces a three-axis framework indicating how AI can be informed by biological examples of social learning mechanisms. We argue that the complex human cognitive architecture owes a large portion of its expressive power to its ability to engage in social and cultural learning. However, the field of AI has mostly embraced a solipsistic perspective on intelligence. We thus argue that social interactions not only are largely unexplored in this field but also are an essential element of advanced cognitive ability, and therefore constitute metaphorically the “dark matter” of AI. In the first section, we discuss how social learning plays a key role in the development of intelligence. We do so by discussing social and cultural learning theories and empirical findings from social neuroscience. Then, we discuss three lines of research that fall under the umbrella of Social NeuroAI and can contribute to developing socially intelligent embodied agents in complex environments. First, neuroscientific theories of cognitive architecture, such as the global workspace theory and the attention schema theory, can enhance biological plausibility and help us understand how we could bridge individual and social theories of intelligence. Second, intelligence occurs in time as opposed to over time, and this is naturally incorporated by dynamical systems. Third, embodiment has been demonstrated to provide more sophisticated array of communicative signals. To conclude, we discuss the example of active inference, which offers powerful insights for developing agents that possess biological realism, can self-organize in time, and are socially embodied.

What Counts as Evidence For or Against Vocal Culture in Humpback Whales?

The debate concerning the mechanisms that drive population-level song evolution in humpback whales rests on evidence that social learning mechanisms contribute to variations in song elements. In the following dialogue, Eduardo Mercado addresses points raised in support of claims that song evolution in humpbacks arises from social learning, and Heidi Lyn further challenges the idea that recent evidence argues against this interpretation.

A Multi-Colony Social Learning Approach for the Self-Organization of a Swarm of UAVs

This research offers an improved method for the self-organization of a swarm of UAVs based on a social learning approach. To start, we use three different colonies and three best members i.e., unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) randomly placed in the colonies. This study uses max-min ant colony optimization (MMACO) in conjunction with social learning mechanism to plan the optimized path for an individual colony. Hereinafter, the multi-agent system (MAS) chooses the most optimal UAV as the leader of each colony and the remaining UAVs as agents, which helps to organize the randomly positioned UAVs into three different formations. Afterward, the algorithm synchronizes and connects the three colonies into a swarm and controls it using dynamic leader selection. The major contribution of this study is to hybridize two different approaches to produce a more optimized, efficient, and effective strategy. The results verify that the proposed algorithm completes the given objectives. This study also compares the designed method with the Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) to prove that our method offers better convergence and reaches the target using a shorter route than NSGA-II.

Negative role modeling in hospitality organizations: A social learning perspective on supervisor and subordinate customer-targeted incivility

The present study extends research on workplace incivility by investigating how and when supervisor customer-targeted incivility stimulates that of employees via a social learning mechanism. This study examines a dual-stage moderated mediation model using hotel samples of 409 frontline service employees from 62 service teams. The results demonstrate that employees learn (i.e., observe and imitate) from their supervisor’s customer-targeted uncivil behavior and subsequently engage in this behavior themselves. Employee devaluation of customers plays a mediating role in this social learning process. In addition, this study identifies leader-member exchange (LMX) and perceived service climate as boundary conditions of the observation and imitation processes, respectively. Specifically, employees are more likely to devalue customers when they have a higher LMX with supervisors and show more incivility to customers when perceiving a weaker service climate. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are addressed.

Enhancing leader inclusion while preventing social exclusion in the work group

Research on inclusion and exclusion at work has grown in recent years, but for the most part has been treated as separate domains. In this paper, we integrate these literatures to build greater understanding of leader inclusion and leader exclusion. Leaders play a critical role in determining group member experiences of inclusion and exclusion through direct treatment of employees, and by serving as a role model (Bandura, 1977). According to social identity theory, when the leader is rewarded by the organization, this signifies that the leader is a prototypical organizational member who exemplifies the set of norms and behaviors most consistent with the organizational ideal (Hogg & van Knippenberg, 2003). We argue that through both social learning and social identity mechanisms, the leader can encourage inclusionary and exclusionary behavior in their work group. We first examine leader inclusion and present the types of behaviors that will aid in creating inclusive team member experiences. By exhibiting these behaviors, a leader can be a role model, an advocate and an ally for building work group inclusion. Next, we present the negative roles of ostracizer and bystander adopted by leaders that indicate support for behaving in an exclusionary manner, which can lead to exclusion among coworkers. We then describe leader remedies for social exclusion. Finally, we discuss the implications of our model and directions for future research.

Social behavior mediates the use of social and personal information in wild jays

The factors favoring the evolution of certain cognitive abilities in animals remain unclear. Social learning is a cognitive ability that reduces the cost of acquiring personal information and forms the foundation for cultural behavior. Theory predicts the evolutionary pressures to evolve social learning should be greater in more social species. However, research testing this theory has primarily occurred in captivity, where artificial environments can affect performance and yield conflicting results. We compared the use of social and personal information, and the social learning mechanisms used by wild, asocial California scrub-jays and social Mexican jays. We trained demonstrators to solve one door on a multi-door task, then measured the behavior of naïve conspecifics towards the task. If social learning occurs, observations of demonstrators will change the rate that naïve individuals interact with each door. We found both species socially learned, though personal information had a much greater effect on behavior in the asocial species while social information was more important for the social species. Additionally, both species used social information to avoid, rather than copy, conspecifics. Our findings demonstrate that while complex social group structures may be unnecessary for the evolution of social learning, it does affect the use of social versus personal information.

Reputation for Competence: Social Learning Mechanisms Create an Incentive to Help Others

Research on social learning has identified mechanisms that learners use to decide from whom to learn. Several of these mechanisms indicate that learners prefer to learn from more competent people over less competent people. This requires learners to measure the competence of other people. We use this article to analyze the incentives that this measure of competence creates. Learners measure the competence of models, people they would consider learning from, and share these judgments with other learners. This gives each model a reputation for competence within a community. Each model has a biological incentive to increase the magnitude of that reputation; at the very least, increasing the magnitude should make the model more attractive to potential mates. In this article, we present logic that indicates that one way for the model to increase the magnitude of that reputation is for the model to help people who think the model is competent. This reveals a novel evolutionary incentive for humans to help other humans.

Neural systems that facilitate the representation of social rank.

Across species, animals organize into social dominance hierarchies that serve to decrease aggression and facilitate survival of the group. Neuroscientists have adopted several model organisms to study dominance hierarchies in the laboratory setting, including fish, reptiles, rodents and primates. We review recent literature across species that sheds light onto how the brain represents social rank to guide socially appropriate behaviour within a dominance hierarchy. First, we discuss how the brain responds to social status signals. Then, we discuss social approach and avoidance learning mechanisms that we propose could drive rank-appropriate behaviour. Lastly, we discuss how the brain represents memories of individuals (social memory) and how this may support the maintenance of unique individual relationships within a social group.This article is part of the theme issue ‘The centennial of the pecking order: current state and future prospects for the study of dominance hierarchies’.

Sexual selection of conspicuous consumption

Recently, a number of papers draw upon ideas from sexual selection and costly signaling theory to argue that conspicuous consumption has evolved as a sexually selected mating strategy. I outline what are considered to be the criteria for arguing that a trait is the outcome of sexual selection and I explore whether conspicuous consumption is sexual adaptation. Though I share the insight that evolutionary theory can contribute to our understanding of consumption behavior, I argue that existing evolutionary explanations of conspicuous consumption do not examine human evolved psychology and available evidence about past environments. I further argue that cultural evolution theory provides an alternative explanation of conspicuous consumption in modern environments. In particular, conspicuous consumption is understood as a pattern of behavior marked by specific social learning mechanisms. Such an approach reflects the analytical tools of cultural evolution theory and provides a classification of cognitive factors involved in consumption choices.

Monopoly Pricing with Participation‐Dependent Social Learning About Quality of Service

The quality of many online services (such as online games, video streaming, cloud services) depends not only on the service capacity but also on the number of users using the service simultaneously. For a new online service, the potential users are often uncertain about both the capacity and congestion level of the service, and hence are uncertain about the quality of service (QoS). In this study, we consider users’ participation‐dependent social learning (PDSL), that is, learning of the QoS through participants’ online reviews. The key difference from the traditional social learning mechanism is that the learning object (QoS) is not a fixed value, but instead, it depends on the number of review participants. We study how such a new learning process affects the service provider's dynamic pricing strategy in four different market scenarios, depending on whether the decisions are for two periods or infinite periods and whether users are aware of the congestion effect or not. Our analysis yields several key insights. First, the presence of PDSL significantly affects the provider's optimal pricing policy. In a two‐period market with congestion‐unaware users, the provider would always set a flat price when there is no PDSL; in contrast, when there is PDSL, the optimal price can either increase or decrease, depending on the capacity and the prior mean QoS belief. Second, users’ congestion‐awareness causes the provider to set a non‐decreasing pricing policy in the two‐period market, while the provider's steady‐state pricing policy in the infinite‐period market increases with the capacity and the prior QoS belief. Third, the existence of PDSL increases the provider's profit in all four market scenarios as long as the provider's capacity is larger than users’ prior mean QoS belief.

A cognitive-evolutionary model for the evolution of teaching

Mechanisms for social learning have rightly been the focus of much work in cultural evolution. But mechanisms for teaching—mechanisms that determine what information is available for learners to learn in the first place—are equally important to cultural evolution, especially in the case of humans. Here, we propose a simple model of teaching in the context of skill transmission. Our model derives the evolutionary cost and benefit of teaching by explicitly representing cognitive aspects of skill transmission as a dual-inheritance process. We then show that teaching cannot evolve when its direct cost is too high. We also show that there is an “explain-exploit” trade-off inherent to teaching: when payoffs from sharing information are not constant, there can be an indirect cost to teaching. This gives rise to an opportunity cost that goes beyond any direct cost that it may also entail. Finally, we show that evolution limits the strength of teaching provided that the direct cost of teaching is an increasing function of teaching effort. We then discuss how these factors might explain why teaching mechanisms are self-limiting, suggesting that such mechanisms may nevertheless play an important role in the evolution of cumulative culture in humans.

Learning Together for and with the Martuwarra Fitzroy River

Co-production across scientific and Indigenous knowledge systems has become a cornerstone of research to enhance knowledge, practice, ethics, and foster sustainability transformations. However, the profound differences in world views and the complex and contested histories of nation-state colonisation on Indigenous territories, highlight both opportunities and risks for Indigenous people when engaging with knowledge co-production. This paper investigates the conditions under which knowledge co-production can lead to improved Indigenous adaptive environmental planning and management among remote land-attached Indigenous peoples through a case study with ten Traditional Owner groups in the Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) Catchment in Western Australia’s Kimberley region. The research team built a 3D map of the river and used it, together with an interactive table-top projector, to bring together both scientific and Indigenous spatial knowledge. Participatory influence mapping, aligned with Traditional Owner priorities to achieve cultural governance and management planning goals set out in the Fitzroy River Declaration, investigated power relations. An analytical framework, examining underlying mechanisms of social learning, knowledge promotion and enhancing influence, based on different theories of change, was applied to unpack the immediate outcomes from these activities. The analysis identified that knowledge co-production activities improved the accessibility of the knowledge, the experiences of the knowledge users, strengthened collective identity and partnerships, and strengthened Indigenous-led institutions. The focus on cultural governance and management planning goals in the Fitzroy River Declaration enabled the activities to directly affect key drivers of Indigenous adaptive environmental planning and management—the Indigenous-led institutions. The nation-state arrangements also gave some support to local learning and decision-making through a key Indigenous institution, Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council. Knowledge co-production with remote land-attached Indigenous peoples can improve adaptive environmental planning and management where it fosters learning together, is grounded in the Indigenous-led institutions and addresses their priorities.

The quest for context-relevant governance of agro-forest landscape restoration in Central Malawi: Insights from local processes

Failures of sectoral approaches to avert environmental degradation increase demands for integrated approaches that mitigate conflictual management of forest, tree, and land resources. Despite much agreement on the consequent need for a holistic landscape approach for a well-integrated governance system, the requisite governance interactions and processes remain under-studied. Under the idea of polycentric governance systems (PGS), we employ the Ecology of Games Theory (EGT) to investigate qualitatively the structure and functions of the current governance system supporting collective restoration of two agro-forest landscapes in central Malawi. The EGT offers theoretical grounding for context-appropriate assessment of the quality of a PGS, based on 35 focus group discussions with local-level resource-governance bodies leading restoration efforts, 21 key informant interviews (KIIs) with district-level officers and local traditional authorities, and 16 KIIs with national-level stakeholders. The current governance system shares some PGS attributes but does not foster adequate cooperation to address challenges of limited resource capacity, inequitable resource distribution, and negative institutional externalities. Social learning and coordination mechanisms helped to catalyze critical interactions to realize some PGS benefits, but need strengthening. Findings show promise for a PGS that can achieve inter-sectoral and cross-scale coordination, building on the effective operationalization of existing decentralization institutions offering multi-stakeholder platforms and coordination venues. Dynamizing relevant policy spaces, institutions, and processes that foster necessary deliberation, learning, and coordination is important to mitigate negative institutional externalities. Findings uncover challenges of governance integration and can inform necessary institutional arrangements for well-coordinated landscape-scale restoration in Malawi and similar contexts in sub-Saharan Africa.

Finding shared solutions in landscape or natural resource management through social learning: A quasi-experimental evaluation in an Alpine region

ContextThe implementation of landscape-management decisions is often blocked because actors disagree in their perception of the problem at hand. These conflicts can be explained with the concept of problem framing, which argues that actors’ problem perspectives are shaped by their interests. Recent literature suggests that social learning through deliberative processes among actors enables shared solutions to complex landscape-management conflicts.MethodsTo examine these assumptions, a participatory process on integrated water-resource-management in a Swiss Alpine region was systematically evaluated using a quasi-experimental intervention-research design. The involved actors’ problem perspectives were elicited before and after the participatory processes using qualitative interviews and standardized questionnaires. Furthermore, a standardized survey was sent to a sample of regional residents (N = 2000) after the participatory process to measure the diffusion of actors’ social learning to the wider public.ResultsThe data analysis provided systematic evidence that a convergence of involved actors’ problem perspectives, which were found to differ considerably before the intervention, had taken place during the participatory process. Furthermore, it determined diffusion effects of actors’ social learning to the wider public in terms of its attitude towards participatory regional planning.ConclusionsThe findings confirm the expected mechanism of social learning through deliberative processes and demonstrate it as a promising approach to implementing landscape-management decisions successfully. The catalyzing role of shared interests among actors suggests that landscape-management decisions should be implemented by participatory integrated planning on the regional level, which would require a new, strategic role of regional institutions.

The power of social learning: How do observational and word-of-mouth learning influence online consumer decision processes?

Observational learning (OL) and word-of-mouth learning (WOML), two main types of social learning, can influence online consumer decisions. The consumer decision process is not limited to consumption decisions; it may be viewed as a problem-solving process that includes three stages: search, evaluation, and purchase. To date, the effects and the mechanisms of OL and WOML on the purchase process remain unclear for both researchers and marketers. In this study, we examined the differences between the effects of OL and WOML on consumers’ decisions at three online shopping stages through the theoretical route of motivation reinforcement. This approach revealed the influencing mechanisms, and we further investigated the moderating role of product involvement. We found that WOML has a greater influence on the consumer decision process than OL when consumers purchase high-involvement products, while OL has a greater influence on the consumer decision process than WOML when consumers purchase low-involvement products. Furthermore, OL will reinforce consumers’ extrinsic motivations, while WOML will reinforce consumers’ intrinsic motivations, which are negatively moderated by product involvement and sequentially affect the consumer decision process. This study enhances the theoretical understanding of the effects and mechanisms of social learning on the consumer decision process. Our findings provide meaningful insights for platform managers and sellers on how to effectively assist consumers from the beginning to the end of the purchase process.

Improving project-to-organization learning

Purpose Project-based learning is an effective means for companies to capture, retain and use knowledge. To exploit both explicit and tacit knowledge, firms can combine knowledge transfer with social learning mechanisms to boost the overall effectiveness of project-to-organization learning. Design/methodology/approach This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings Project-based learning is an effective means for companies to capture, retain and use knowledge. To exploit both explicit and tacit knowledge, firms can combine knowledge transfer with social learning mechanisms to boost the overall effectiveness of project-to-organization learning. Originality/value The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The value of subsequent memory paradigms in uncovering neural mechanisms of early social learning

The value of subsequent memory paradigms in uncovering neural mechanisms of early social learning

The Method of Local Restriction: in search of potential great ape culture-dependent forms.

Humans possess a perhaps unique type of culture among primates called cumulative culture. In this type of culture, behavioural forms cumulate changes over time, which increases their complexity and/or efficiency, eventually making these forms culture-dependent. As changes cumulate, culture-dependent forms become causally opaque, preventing the overall behavioural form from being acquired by individuals on their own; in other words, culture-dependent forms must be copied between individuals and across generations. Despite the importance of cumulative culture for understanding the evolutionary history of our species, how and when cumulative culture evolved is still debated. One of the challenges faced when addressing these questions is how to identify culture-dependent forms that result from cumulative cultural evolution. Here we propose a novel method to identify the most likely cases of culture-dependent forms. The 'Method of Local Restriction' is based on the premise that as culture-dependent forms are repeatedly transmitted via copying, these forms will unavoidably cumulate population-specific changes (due to copying error) and therefore must be expected to become locally restricted over time. When we applied this method to our closest living relatives, the great apes, we found that most known ape behavioural forms are not locally restricted (across domains and species) and thus are unlikely to be acquired via copying. Nevertheless, we found 25 locally restricted forms across species and domains, three of which appear to be locally unique (having been observed in a single population of a single species). Locally unique forms represent the best current candidates for culture-dependent forms in non-human great apes. Besides these rare exceptions, our results show that overall, ape cultures do not rely heavily on copying, as most ape behaviours appear across sites and/or species, rendering them unlikely to be culture-dependent forms resulting from cumulative cultural evolution. Yet, the locally restricted forms (and especially the three locally unique forms) identified by our method should be tested further for their potential reliance on copying social learning mechanisms (and in turn, for their potential culture-dependence). Future studies could use the Method of Local Restriction to investigate the existence of culture-dependent forms in other animal species and in the hominin archaeological record to estimate how widespread copying is in the animal kingdom and to postulate a timeline for the emergence of copying in our lineage.

What Matters to You Matters: Natural Mentors and Self‐valuation in School Sports

Mentors for adolescents are widely believed to improve life chances and reduce problem behavior. Using 42 retrospective qualitative interviews with undergraduate former high school athletes and social learning theory as a framework, we investigate what it means to adolescents to matter to their school‐based natural mentors. Findings indicate that natural mentors represent a fundamental social connection that helped participants feel like they mattered. We identify three structural domains of social identity in which mattering operates: relationship, gender, and athletic. Natural mentoring led to connecting with non‐kin, feeling important, and creating accountability to significant others. Mentorship and mattering were deeply gendered; in reinforcing attributes of athletic success and physical or mental growth, mentor relationships both contributed to and helped subvert the structure of traditional gender roles and provide insight into the ways men and women navigate the contested and gendered space of sport. Finally, these mentoring relationships demonstrated the intersectional nature of sport and its physicality by linking the body and soul. Mattering is the mechanism for social learning that facilitates these crucial relationships. The implications of these findings are discussed, along with suggestions for future research.