Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Towards a biology of traditions
- 2 What the models say about social learning
- 3 Relative brain size and the distribution of innovation and social learning across the nonhuman primates
- 4 Social learning about food in birds
- 5 The cue reliability approach to social transmission: designing tests for adaptive traditions
- 6 “Traditional” foraging behaviors of brown and black rats (Rattus norvegicus and Rattus rattus)
- 7 Food for thought: social learning about food in feeding capuchin monkeys
- 8 Traditions in mammalian and avian vocal communication
- 9 Like mother, like calf: the ontogeny of foraging traditions in wild Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.)
- 10 Biological and ecological foundations of primate behavioral tradition
- 11 Local traditions in orangutans and chimpanzees: social learning and social tolerance
- 12 Developmental perspectives on great ape traditions
- 13 Do brown capuchins socially learn foraging skills?
- 14 Traditions in wild white-faced capuchin monkeys
- 15 Conclusions and research agendas
- Further reading
- Index
- References
5 - The cue reliability approach to social transmission: designing tests for adaptive traditions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 October 2009
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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Towards a biology of traditions
- 2 What the models say about social learning
- 3 Relative brain size and the distribution of innovation and social learning across the nonhuman primates
- 4 Social learning about food in birds
- 5 The cue reliability approach to social transmission: designing tests for adaptive traditions
- 6 “Traditional” foraging behaviors of brown and black rats (Rattus norvegicus and Rattus rattus)
- 7 Food for thought: social learning about food in feeding capuchin monkeys
- 8 Traditions in mammalian and avian vocal communication
- 9 Like mother, like calf: the ontogeny of foraging traditions in wild Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.)
- 10 Biological and ecological foundations of primate behavioral tradition
- 11 Local traditions in orangutans and chimpanzees: social learning and social tolerance
- 12 Developmental perspectives on great ape traditions
- 13 Do brown capuchins socially learn foraging skills?
- 14 Traditions in wild white-faced capuchin monkeys
- 15 Conclusions and research agendas
- Further reading
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
Traditions are behaviors that persist over time and are shared among group members by virtue of social learning processes (see Ch. 1). The direct observation of animals using social cues to discover or learn a behavior is perhaps the most straightforward evidence of a tradition, and numerous longitudinal, naturalistic studies and controlled laboratory experiments have yielded such evidence (see, for instance, Chs. 7, 9, 13, and 14). However, efforts to collect direct evidence are sometimes deemed impractical; consequently investigators have sought ways to infer the existence of traditions on the basis of indirect evidence. Can we identify traditions when we lack direct observations of social learning?
I present a new approach for dealing with indirect evidence. This cue reliability approach (CRA) addresses a special category of potential traditions: behaviors that (a) reflect an individual's classification of a stimulus or tactic as either safe or harmful, and (b) are costly if the individual makes classification errors. Is hemlock a safe food or a dangerous toxin? Should garter snakes be dismissed as benign trespassers or avoided as lethal predators? Animals can answer these questions by consulting local traditions. However, traditional knowledge is not necessarily the only source of information available. The CRA is designed to help us to determine if animals need social cues to classify correctly potentially dangerous stimuli or bad tactics. It begins by identifying a decision-maker's options regarding an unfamiliar stimulus or untested tactic, and the possible outcomes associated with each option.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Biology of TraditionsModels and Evidence, pp. 127 - 158Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
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